10 January 2006 and Boof, Mumbles, Sloon, Humptydoo, Tickets, Walt
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10 January 2006 and Boof, Mumbles, Sloon, HumptyDoo, Tickets, Walt and Jack for the Redbacks take on the Western Warriors in the KFC Twenty20 Big Bash at Adelaide Oval on a big night out. Diz scratched, sensible man. 14,298 people rock up and plenty of them munch their way through mountains of hamburgers, pies, chips, magnum and cornetto ice creams, and wash it all down with beers, cokes and maybe a glass of wine or two. Out in the middle blokes have bats and a ball in their hands but you have to wonder what for. I leave early and run into journalist (and former player) Alan Shiell. He remarks on my going and I say ‘I’ve seen it once and once is enough’. He says ‘that’s a fair call’, shakes his head, and adds there's nothing to interpret, you may as well just print the scores’. The Australian attempts a national interpretation in its editorial the next day: As abominations go, Twenty20 cricket is a lot of fun. The record crowd of 40,000 who turned out at the Gabba to watch Australia teach South Africa a lesson on Monday had a great time. But a lesson in what? Not in the cunning and craft that every Test player needs, or even the tactics, energy and ingenuity it takes to succeed in the one-day game. That’s because Twenty20 requires a different skill set. With each side facing 20 overs, it is a game for broad shouldered batsmen, whose idea of finesse is to swing, run and hope for the best. And one for bowlers who can accept seeing balls that would be treated respectfully in a Test walloped with a cross bat. What we saw on Monday was a good-natured circus. .. Purists have all the evidence they need to revile it. But people who don’t take their sport all that seriously will probably love it.2 Mainstream sports start out as amusements. Kicking or throwing a stone, maybe catching it or hitting it with a stick. Games often see the use of informal systems of rules and some degree of etiquette but when they become sports they are more formal. This is evolution and going up the scale the highest form in cricket is the Test match. One-day cricket has its place but at the international level it is devolution, the tasty hamburger versus the gourmet slow-cooked meal. Twenty20 represents a further drop. It might be ‘finger-lickin’ good but the burnt chook that falls off the barbie into the sand is an acquired taste which better bred dogs would not touch. You cannot argue that Kentucky Fried Chicken might find value in being a sponsor but to think that the 10 January crowd was the biggest at a domestic cricket match since 17,777 went to see Don Bradman hunt down a world record of seven consecutive first-class centuries in a Sheffield Shield match against Victoria, and fall 95 runs short, defies belief. When was that again? Oh, yeah! - 25 February 1939 Let us take another date. 13 December 1873 when British-born South Australians take on those born in the colony. The British are bowled out on a 'lumpy pitch' for 95 and the Colonials after tumbling to 8-75 reply with 142 to win convincingly. Whoever kept wickets for the British had a hard day as top score for the Colonials was sundries with 30, of which 27 were byes. Let us also check the names of the team members. Among the British we have Warburton, Lynn, Gooden, Morcom, Gosse, Robinson, Lungley, Joyner, Colyer, Green, and Scott. Among the Colonials are Bright, Giles, Featherstone, King, Cole, Spiller, Pickering, Davenport, James and Ayers.3 How many might be your ancestors? How many of your ancestors perhaps played in South Australia’s first representative match when twenty-two of its men took on W.G. Grace’s All England Eleven at the end of March 1874? I will not list all the names. Suffice to say they made 63 and 82 to be defeated by the eleven who made 108 and 3-38. The most spectacular feat in the match, however, was the performance of Alex Crooks who caught out W.G. for 6, and was perhaps then a victim of the Peter Principle of his day by being promoted too readily beyond the level of his competence. Crooks had opened the batting in the first innings and was out for 0 but might have celebrated his catch too hard for he was listed absent ill 0’ in the second innings. Whatever skill Crooks had as a cricketer it put him in contact with the social elite of the South Australian Cricketing Association, particularly after he became the SACA's treasurer later the same year, a position he held until he resigned in 1885 before his career collapsed as a result of a financial scandal. He turned out to be aptly named. In 1879 Crooks was employed as an accountant by the newly established Commercial Bank of South Australia and a year later became manager. The bank expanded rapidly but Adelaide’s business community was shocked in February 1886 when the bank suspended trading and three days later Crooks was arrested for engaging in speculative lending to prominent businessmen and later charged with embezzling £5000. Defended by fellow SACA member (and future) premier Charles Kingston, Crooks pleaded guilty and was sentenced to eight years hard labour at Yatala prison.4 Let us look at another early international match. 10 November 1882 and the English team led by the Hon. Ivo Bligh landed at Glenelg on the P&O steamer Peshawar ten days late. The players rushed to their city hotels to change and then went to the Oval to start play against a South Australian Fifteen. The match was well contested for two days but then Bligh was instructed by Melbourne Cricket Club secretary Ben Wardill to gather his team together, and reboard his ship for Melbourne. Not only was the SACA committee offended by the rushed departure, a banquet was cancelled, and worse still, ‘the gentlemen members of the team, who had been elected honorary members of the Adelaide Club, were unable to use the facilities’.5 The oval was used a lot for club cricket in its early years and in the 1876-77 season all club cricket was programmed on the oval and the adjacent Neutral Ground or what became known as the No 2 ground. Two years later when the Neutral Ground was in a poor state matches were played simultaneously on the main oval with pitches prepared to the north and south of the centre of the ground with a boundary across the middle. Although there was a regular criticism of the practice, the half-ground matches continued until 1899 when local grounds were established by the district-based clubs. However, the last A grade matches continued to be played on the divided ground until 1919. Later several club games would be played on the full oval each season but with the increase of first-class matches from 1970 club cricket has been sparsely rationed although it is made available for finals.6 10 November 1877 saw the first first-class match begin on South Australian soil. It came about indirectly following an invitation by the Queen and Albert Association of Port Adelaide to the Launceston Cricket Club to inaugurate their new ground at Alberton. After the game the SACA arranged a new match against the SA team. After the home side scored 182 the Tasmanians were dismissed for 72 in what was supposed to be a timeless match. The following day an irregular occurrence was the selection of a new pitch despite the fact that it had played well until late on the first day. The Tasmanians were then put out again for 97 which gave the South Australians a comprehensive win by an innings and 13 runs. John Bevan captured 14 for 59 in his only game for the colony. It is hard to know how much this match set back the cause of Tasmanian cricket but they did not play at Adelaide Oval again in a first-class match until March 1936 when Don Bradman took 369 off their attack and their subsequent defeat by an innings and 349 runs set them back for another quarter of a century. On 7 March 1878 St Peter’s College and Prince Alfred College met on the oval in the first intercollegiate game and as the Advertiser reported it was103 degrees in the shade and 151 degrees in the open. Saints made 84 of which 10 were wides but Princes wilted to be out for 37 in a game played in a single afternoon. From then on matches moved to late November or early December. Saints bowlers did their share of wilting when future Test stars Joe Darling made 252 against them in 1886, Clem Hill topped that with 360 retired six years later (358 is sometimes mentioned), and future state player Charles Dolling weighed in with 311 in 1904. Matches had become timeless when Keith Gogler recorded Saints highest individual score of 205 in 1940 but the seven day marathon of 1941 was the end of such games. Nearly all matches between the schools were played on the oval up to that time but the last at the ground was in 1954 when Saints’ Ian McLachlan was well and truly man of the match with 142 not out and 11 wickets for 138.