A vast plethora of news sources report on the titanic thumping the PM’s XI gave the touring English yesterday.
If Cricket ACT was not run by rude, unprofessional incompetents (earlier story and evidence) we could have brought you pictures during the day of the colour and movement in the crowd.
As it was Che and I did get a pair of tickets and attended in a non-reporting capacity from which I shall share some observations.
1) The buses actually worked rather well at getting us to and from the ground for $3 each way. It helps that we were meeting in Civic and going back there at the end of the day but it certainly beat trying to get a taxi.
2) It was amazing that so many people could get so profoundly drunk (the beer was expensive at $5 for a plastic cup but cool), despite rationing through the second innings, without any major agro.
3) Most of us in the crowd that I saw did indeed get astonishingly drunk. I now have an enourmous respect for the Barmy Army members planning to do this for five days in a row, five times through the course of the series.
4) The organisation of the food was pathetic. After standing in a non-moving queue for a long period of time eventually the hungry cricket fan would be told that what he wanted was no longer available, asking what they still had would get him a panicked stare, eventually get something and asking for sauce on it would lead to the discovery that they were out of sauce and didn’t know when it would be arriving. When trying to keep 10,000 drunks happy and healthy in the hot sun it might be a good idea to make it easy for them to get food in their stomach.
5) Finally, the colour and costumes in the crowd were a riot (I’m so very sorry we couldn’t share it with you), and the cricket itself was only marred by the miserable capitulation of the hopeless poms.
[Oh, I nearly forgot, the lunch break entertainment was not entertaining. It was boring and confusing. I don’t mind seeing the kiddies running around but could we not have 10 different games (including netball) going on at the same time with no commentary at all? Fortunately I’d brought a book]