Why the wild WACA is the greatest Test venue: Dennis Lillee, Terry Alderman and a history of conflict

THE odd Tests out at the WACA are the ones without drama - controversy and conflict are ever present, writes Robert Craddock of his favourite Test ground.

The glory of the WACA extends beyond it’s famed bouncy deck.

THERE are days when you walk into the WACA when you feel like you have burst through the doors of a wild west saloon.

Danger lurks. Beady eyed fast bowlers swan around like gun slingers who will back themselves to beat anyone on the draw.

It always seems hot and bright. People move slowly yet things happen quickly. Tempers fray in the heat. Flies are everywhere. The crowd gets restless. They want action and controversy and the WACA Test almost always delivers.

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Even the very name of the place — the WACA — suggests something unhinged.

The odd Tests out at the WACA are the ones without drama. Controversy and conflict are the staple elements.

Unlike other grounds such as the Gabba, the WACA never sold its soul by removing its grass hills for concrete and seats and bless its greeny soul for that.

Dennis Lillee’s aggression was well suited to the white hot WACA atmosphere.

It is the most un-English venue and you’d think the English would turn their nose up it. Quite the opposite.

“This place,’’ said Steve Brenkley, correspondent for London’s Independent newspaper, “is what a cricket ground should be. It’s rough and raw but its real. The game breathes at places like this.’’

And sometimes it breathes fire.

Dennis Lillee breathed it when he once kicked fiesty Pakistani Javed Minded in the pads.

Terry Alderman breathed it when he dislocated his shoulder after he crash tackled a drunken English spectator.

It’s seen ball-tampering (Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan), aluminium bat-throwing (Dennis Lillee), broken jaws (Geoff Lawson), famously quick centuries (West Indian Roy Fredricks and Adam Gilchrist) and crazy collapses.

Terry Alderman comes off second best in his altercation with a pitch invader.

I love the WACA. For more than two decades it has been my favourite Test ground in the world by some margin which is why for me there is some sadness that from 2018 any Test expected to draw more than 60,000 (probably one in three) will be moved to the soon to be constructed stadium at Burswood.

Much of the WACAs appeal is the springboard wicket which generates action cricket.

You simply could not love it as much if the wicket was a featherbed in the same way that you couldn’t put Dirty Harry on a pedestal if his magnum was a water pistol.

But it’s more than that. Part of my love for it is the ground’s old world charm including its ancient old-fashioned manual operated scoreboard on the hill. Sit under it and you can hear the scoreboard operators chattering inside.

Geoff Lawson is not the only man to wear scars after a WACA Test.

Close your eyes and you half expect the next batsman to come out wearing spiky green batting gloves.

Some of the WACA’s traditions have nothing to do with cricket.

When players finish the day’s play and a few of them take the 50m walk across the road to the Gloucester Park trots they are taking the same journey that West Indian great Wes Hall and Australia’s Peter Burge took half a century before for a few bets and beers before they tried to dismantle each other the next day.

Quirky? Or course. This is the WACA, the land of surprises.