Your author has been expanding cultural horizons recently. We talk, of course, of attending the Australia vs South Africa test match, held in our quaint little one-stadium sporting backwater during that niche little period of the year when our AFL Overlords allow the herd a brief period of sporting variation.
It was quite good, actually. Your author does enjoy occasionally partaking in the adventure that is live cricket, and has only been restricted in recently years by a bitter feud with the ALF over the usage, priorities and current direction of Adelaide Oval. Taking a stand for what one believes in is, of course, very important. Principles. Emotions. Stubbornness. Those sorts of things. Although in fairness, while it may be principles, emotions and stubbornness for your author, for the AFL it was Tuesday. C’est la vie.
Live cricket is an experience. By cricket we of course mean Test Cricket, as any over variation is a simple attention disorder and will not be tolerated within the snobbish purity of this article. T20 is not cricket. You have been warned.
Attending a test is significant activity that can be worn as a badge of honour and provides a massive exposure to the senses. In the middle of the ground, eleven of a nation’s best challenge the other team’s current pair, all the while guided with ethics and impartial dignity by two men in tastefully respectable white coats. Surrounding all, the boundary rope, just beyond the start of the broadcast cameras, the colour-coded ground officials and then the fans themselves.
These days even the fans have become icons in their own right. The Adelaide test was graced by The Richies, a group of fashion co-ordinated supporters who also managed to supplement the occasion with a trio of trumpets with which they provided an occasional and appropriate fanfare.
Marvellous. The powers that be acknowledge the sense of occasion this participation by the fans brings to the game. A promotional video for the upcoming Australia Day game made active use of some of the more well-known fan groups within the country with the strong implication that dressing up for the cricket was a ‘good thing’. The organisers want you at the games so you can take part in the occasion. They want you to fill the stands. They want you to clap and cheer. They want you to watch bright youngsters make a debut with the bat before they disappear from the test side for fifteen years in order to first develop a better collection of niggling injuries. The want you to be there because test cricket is, quite literally, a world class occasion.
It also has lots of drunk people.
By slight coincidence, the same weekend also experienced Schoolies. For those who have passed puberty, this is an event where entitled ex-Year-12 students all take Mummy and Daddy’s money and congeal themselves somewhere nominally cool – or at least somewhere that isn’t their own suburb – and, in a ritual almost universally mocked by anyone 19 and older, reward themselves at successfully passing one of life’s milestones.
In South Australia, the current traditional location is Victor Harbour, for only mildly logical reasons given that at other times of the year the town is known for retirees, fairy penguins and having only slightly more nightlife than Mike Baird’s inner city Sydney. The word ‘current’ is used deliberately, as the tradition of Schoolies is perhaps only a generation old and has not always been a given. Australians of a mildly more experienced generation, such as your author, may recall having no such experience at the end of their secondary education and having made do with a drunken party in the backyard of whoever had the most understanding parents, or failing that, of whoever had parents who were going to be away for the weekend. These parties were brief, loud and had little lasting repercussions beyond the next hangover-filled morning.
Also, being surrounded by what was still effectively a significant part of the social circle rather than several thousand strangers, these parties had the self-regulating effect that no one ever did anything that stupid. In short, this generation was much better behaved, much more mature, no they weren’t free-for-alls of snogging everything that moved, no your author didn’t get lucky that night, yes your author is that old and get off my lawn.
Over in the eastern states, house parties seemed to be replaced by the convention of the more financially comfortable families allowing their eldest plus some of their more trusted classmates to travel north and make use of the family investment apartment on the Gold Coast. This eastern states ritual gradually grew, encouraged for reasons your author is largely speculating over but probably involved the phrase ‘let’s go, heaps of drunk chicks’ and the casual ethics of the local tourism industry when it came to taking dollars off irresponsible teenagers. The event gained credibility with such media as National Youth Network Triple J (a.k.a. the one with the 40-year-old presenters) who managed to mutate the tone of their discussion from ‘if you do go, at least be careful’ type safety warning into an ‘attendance is your legal right’ call to arms.
Either way, jealous spite at missed experiences and speculative blame not withstanding, there is one thing we can basically take as read at any Schoolies event.
There are lots of drunk people.
Just like the cricket.
The parallels continue. There are a lot of police. St John’s Ambulance teams walk the area, as do volunteers handing out lollies and other casual refreshments. There is the nominal central idea that there is an organised piece of entertainment taking place that people are nominally there to see, but basically there are a lot of drunk people.
So, is this a good thing?
There is the accepted meme that, ‘No-one goes to the cricket to actually watch cricket’. A modern stadium still needs to pay the bills and is completely supportive of the concept that patrons may wish to engage in a few casual purchases of alcohol-related products. Your author here holds to the theory that Western Civilisation was actually built on alcohol, a theory that probably says more about the low quality of historical drinking water than it does about the benefits of small beer, but when it comes to ale it is normally best not to let too many facts get in the way of a good excuse. People like drinking. Drinking is fun.
Sometimes.
At other times? During this test, there was a difficult time for the bowlers late in the afternoon, as they stuck with the old ball. Then the new ball became due, was instantly taken, the quicks were brought back on from both ends, and several sharp, somewhat tense, overs followed as the South Africans tried to regain that wicket-destroying magic that had done them so well earlier in the series. As a cricket watcher it was exciting stuff.
For everyone else it was the time when they decided to get a Mexican Wave going.
Now.
Not, say, a few overs previously when there was dull spin from both ends being used for the sole purpose of resting the strike bowlers and getting to the new ball as quickly as possible?
No, doing a wave then would actually involve understanding the game slightly beyond Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi!
Was it a cringe-worthy display of yob culture or a valid part of the modern game? Or maybe more importantly, from a spectator point of view, just what is Test Cricket? Is it Schoolies for Adults? A once-a-year chance to get away from the toil of home and work life and reap the reward one feels entitled to? To party for the sake of partying, to start early, power through the middle sessions before staggering into the nearest pub afterwards to keep going, safe in the knowledge that knowledge is the least thing to worry about at this moment? We older and less childish idiot types mock the culture of Schoolies (P.S. – get off my lawn) yet not only endorse but encourage ‘Going to the Cricket’.
It is an open question, but one that does reflect on what actually is Australian Culture and what is our real attitude to Wowserism. If we are to condemn the acts of drunken teens should we not also condemn the same acts by drunken adults? Is Schoolies the evolution of the spoilt entitled snowflake generation demanding what is rightfully theirs, or is it instead just the natural drip-down effect of a society that deep down, respects that every once in a while people like to go out and just have a good time? Thousands of people do go to the cricket, but those same thousands of people also go back to work on Monday. We may like our irresponsible moments of fun, but we can still maintain our work ethics.
Your author went to the test on the Friday.
On debut, Peter Handscomb made 54.
