Hey, there's a World Cup on
But rugby and the Olympics are what everybody's taking about in Australia
![The City Cat, a catamaran ferry on the Brisbane River, August 8, 2012](https://img1.hscicdn.com/image/upload/f_auto,t_ds_w_1280,q_70/lsci/db/PICTURES/CMS/148500/148534.2.jpg)
The City Cat on the Brisbane River • George Binoy/ESPNcricinfo Ltd
Changi airport. Singapore. Four gargantuan television screens are arranged in a square. The couches in front of three are virtually empty. Those in front of the fourth are full, with a crowd behind waiting for the potatoes to budge. Few do. That television is showing the Olympics. Some passengers are wearing Team Great Britain tees and carrying similar bags. They gape as Lawrence Okoye's first throw of the discus is a shambles; they cheer when his third is more than 65 metres. Lots of Australian accents are heard, but no Team Australia clothing to be seen. Not much to cheer about, says a half-Aussie lady on the flight. She's also half-Kiwi. Three gold medals to Australia's two.
Brisbane International Airport. Sniffed by a labrador searching for drugs. Sniffed by a beagle ferreting out bio-stuff: foreign food and the like. Think someone's M&Ms are smelt out. Australia is careful about what enters its island borders. "Have you been in a freshwater body in a foreign land in the recent past", they ask, to safeguard their aquatic ecosystem. It makes sense. There were once few rabbits in Australia, until one Thomas Austin introduced 12 pairs on his Victoria farm because he liked to hunt. Their descendants have cost the country's agriculture millions.
Few people in Brisbane know their state is hosting the Under-19 World Cup. Fewer at the University of Queensland know South Africa and New Zealand are playing a warm-up in their backyard - at the WEP Harris Oval.
Look at road signs through jet-lagged eyes while traversing the city to find tiny grounds at which the U-19s are playing practice matches: Wynnum Road, Tingalpa, Seven Hills, Coorparoo, Vulture Street. Bell rings. Vulture Street End. Spot the Gabbatoir. Wonder if there's a tour, but it will have to wait.
The papers are filled with stories and photos of Queensland's golden girls. Overnight, hurdler Sally Pearson and track cyclist Anna Meares have taken Australia's gold-medal count in London to five. Pearson moved from Sydney to the Gold Coast when she was eight and did all her training there. Meares was born in the mining town of Blackwater, which, in the last census, had a population of just over 5000. Few people are talking about them, though. Not on the bus, not in cafés, and not on the streets. Suspect the overall disappointment at the Olympics is overwhelming the success coming through in the latter half of the Games. Haven't seen the U-19 World Cup in the papers yet.
Leave Brisbane before an impression of the city is formed. Not experienced it enough, apart from using the public transport extensively and seeing cricket fields and quaint Queenslander houses - wooden, pastel-coloured, with plants all around. Leave the city as I arrived, on a cloudless early morning. See lots of cyclists riding the sloping, wide and smooth roads. Like it a little more now.
Day one of the World Cup. Four-dollar bus ride to the Tony Ireland Stadium in Thuringowa, on the outskirts of Townsville. The ground is big and beautiful, circled by grass banks, trees and hills. The pitch is quick too. Daniel Bell-Drummond hugs his dad after making a duck; Reece Topley breaks a middle stump. Notice how effortlessly the Australia and England players are fielding in tandem at such a young age. Get locked inside the stadium and miss the last bus back to the city after staying too late in the press area. Cab driver comes to the rescue. Tells of how he drove Andrew Symonds from the airport to his house in the city. Apparently Symonds has a crew-cut now and wants to go fishing on the reef on Thursday. Ride costs $50.
There is no bus from the city that reaches Thuringowa before 9am on a Sunday. The first one gets there 11 minutes past the hour, after the India-West Indies toss. Most people on the bus are talking about how the Cowboys thrashed the Warriors 52-12 last night. Rugby League. Everyone wants to talk about it.
George Binoy is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo