The Sentimental Cricket-Lover

You know, I still remember going to the Adelaide Oval for the first time in my life with my Dad during the 95/96 Summer season. I hated cricket prior to that. Well, maybe hate's too strong a word. But I certainly didn't really enjoy it.

That all changed at the Adelaide Oval, though. Dad decided that we should have a father-daughter outing, do something together and head off to the cricket. Oh no, not the cricket! I thought as I tried to come up with excuses not to go along. But we ended up going. It was an international One Dayer, with Australia playing Sri Lanka and for some reason, suddenly the whole game made sense. Even though the day involved sitting on the frightfully rear-end numbing concrete steps that used to grace the lower grassed areas (and are now under seating, thankfully) and we lost the match (only just - oh the agony of Shane Warne holing out in a stupid shot when he could have gotten us over the line!), it was brilliant.

Over the coming summers, we would go to at least one day of every variety of the game - Test cricket, One Day Internationals, Sheffield Shield, ING State cricket one day games, Australia A one dayers against the touring international teams, State sides vs touring international teams... Sometimes just Dad and I, sometimes with friends, once even to an Ashes Test with a whole lot of kids from my school. It was at the Adelaide Oval that I got autographs from Shoaib Akhtar, Darren Lehmann, Wasim Akram, Inzimam Ul-Haq and some other players (Shoaib Akhtar was the nicest of them all ~ he got Inzi's autograph for me!).

The best ever game we went to was the first-ever Australian One Day International match played under lights at the oval. Dad and I were literally the last people through the gates and the whole place was packed. We finally managed to find a spot to squish in on the grass on the hill next to the Bradman Stand. That had to be the most electric (no pun intended) game of cricket I've ever been to. Perhaps it was because there were so many people there. Perhaps it was because we all had such a brilliant time. Perhaps it was the newness of everything. It also helped that we beat New Zealand in the most nail-biting kind of way. We were cruising, and then wickets tumbled... It was literally down to the last over. I still remember Andy Bichel guiding the first delivery he faced down to the boundary for four. You could taste the relief. And the smell of lawn, beer, sweat, cigarettes... (and feel it, too, after so many Mexican waves where people chucked their beer cups up in the air, full, half-full or empty).

When we moved to New South Wales, we only managed to get to the SCG once for a Redbacks vs Blues Sheffield Shield match, and it rained for the majority of the day. We were the only Redbacks supporters there, but I got Brett Lee and Mark Waugh's autographs on a copy of a Harpers & Queen magazine. The SCG itself felt empty, soulless, dismal. Perhaps it was the rain.

But we went to an Australia A match, again against Sri Lanka, at the Adelaide Oval when we were back there in 2003. The day was rather cool and there was the odd spot of rain, but again there was the joy of being at the cricket, seeing Sri Lanka being thrashed twice by Australia A (it took less than half the overs for the game to be finished, so they generously played another match), and that old feeling of being home.