Perth: George Bailey, the Australia batsman, inspected the middle in Perth. “It looks a bit like an Indian pitch,” he said. The gathered throng laughed. Bailey was in fact standing on a dusty building site.
His feet were planted where the drop-in wickets will go once the new Perth stadium is completed at a cost of more than £500 million [Dh3bn]. And when it is, in 2018, say goodbye to the WACA. One of the most iconic venues for cricket will be relegated to Perth’s second stadium. It will never hold Test matches again. It will never hold One Day Internationals again.
It will be a state ground, for relatively minor events involving Western Australia. England will not tread this way again beyond this tour, almost certainly. Those lucky enough to be in Perth earlier this week must consider themselves lucky. This is the last Ashes Test at arguably the best cricket ground in the world. One by one, they are all going.
A fitting landmark
The WACA wicket offers something for everyone: lightning fast scoring for the batsmen, equally ferocious conditions for the bowlers. What will the new Perth stadium produce? Money, mostly.
It will hold 60,000 fans. It will be corporate and brand friendly. Its Test matches will last five days. It will be everything the WACA is not. Bland, formulaic, non-descript. Look around from its middle and you might be anywhere. At the WACA, there is no alternative. If the ball up in the grille doesn’t remind you, the giant iconic concrete floodlight pylons will. Its passing is a travesty.
Yet, nobody questions the money these days. The government are right behind the new project, so are Cricket Australia. The people of Perth think a shiny new stadium is a fitting landmark for their growing city, too. They seem almost embarrassed by the WACA, its smallness, its awkwardly conflicting architecture, its lack of shade. It’s like the song says — they won’t know what they’ve got till it’s gone.
Joni Mitchell wrote of that forlorn realisation after arriving at night on her first trip to Hawaii. “When I woke up in the morning, I threw back the curtains and saw these beautiful green mountains in the distance,” she said. “Then, I looked down and there was a parking lot as far as the eye could see, and it broke my heart.”
Her song, Big Yellow Taxi, begins: “They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot.” And the WACA could be paradise. Paradise for cricket lovers, the way the Gabba in Brisbane used to be. The Gabba is a football stadium now. Australian Rules has taken it over, just as it has the Adelaide Oval. Cricket is its junior partner, the second thought.
There are references on the walls and in the naming of ends, but sit at the back of the stand and try to follow the action in the middle and it is plain which game has prime consideration.
The new Perth stadium will be home to two AFL teams: West Coast Eagles and Fremantle Dockers. Perth’s existing AFL ground, the Subiaco Oval, would also appear doomed by the project.
Accompanying Bailey on his promotional visit to the site last week was Terry Waldron, the state sports minister. “The WACA is the home of cricket in Western Australia, and that will continue,” he said.
Waldron is promising big Tests, one-day internationals, World Cup fixtures and Twenty20 competitions at the new ground.
In other words, if it matters it will be at our shiny arena, and the rest will be at the WACA. The old ground should implode on principle, rather than be treated so shabbily. It does not deserve this humiliation. The West Australian Cricket Association Ground, its full title, was officially opened in 1893 but its site has been home to cricket in the city since 1880. Don Bradman played here for the first time in 1932. Greg Chappell made a century on his debut, batting No 7, against England in 1970.
Floodlight towers
Doug Walters hit a century after tea in the Ashes Test of 1974, including a six off the last ball of the day, bowled by Bob Willis. A year later, Roy Fredericks, of the West Indies, hit a Test century off 71 balls.
It is the site of Javed Miandad’s infamous confrontation with Dennis Lillee in 1981, where Merv Hughes took 13 wickets in a Test match against the West Indies, where Curtley Ambrose collected seven wickets for one run, where Glenn McGrath finished with eight for 24 against Pakistan in 2004, where Adam Gilchrist made a Test century in 57 balls against England in 2006 (the second fastest in history), where South Africa chased down 414 to win in 2008. It has, in other words, lived. History is in its pores.
The 70-metre floodlight towers are a comparatively recent addition, from 1986, but have only added to its presence. They are visible from every quarter of the city. They remind each visitor that Perth is home to the mighty WACA and the best of cricket.
In February 2009, England began a Test match at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium in Antigua which was abandoned after 10 balls due to the disgraceful state of the outfield.
The teams decamped to the mothballed Recreation Ground — where Andy Roberts was the groundsman, where Richards had made the fastest Test century in history in 1986 and Brian Lara hit 400 not out in 2004.
It played beautifully, producing a great Test, saved by the West Indies after a defiant last-wicket stand. Everyone agreed that great Test cricket deserved such a venue, not the soulless new build out by the airport.
The Olympic Stadium in London was a big hole off the A12 and then it was the magical place where Great Britain won three track and field gold medals in one night.
Bayern Munich forged a treble, and the greatest club side in Europe at the Allianz-Arena. Chelsea became the first London club to win the Champions League there, too.
Brilliant and iconic
Yet Munich’s new stadium is brilliant and iconic, despite its modernity. It is not another soulless bowl, it has personality, it has drama.
The new Australian cricket grounds do not. The locals are very proud of the rebuilt Adelaide Oval, but it is not a patch on what stood before; the same with the old Gabba and its unlovely hill and ramshackle Brisbane Lions club. All gone.
The WACA is not customer-friendly, either, we are told. There is too much inescapable sunlight, the drinks are warm, members seats cannot be reserved, the food is poor. These are quibbles, though, not cause for desertion.
It will be two years before Test cricket comes west again, and by then it will be the WACA’s swansong. The next time an England team play Test cricket in Perth they will stand where Bailey stood last week, on a drop-in pitch designed to please the chief executive and keep a 60,000 crowd at the bar for five days. And it will make perfect financial sense. But at what real cost?
— Daily Mail
