Exiled WA back to being a cricket backwater

What would the pioneering patriots have made of this week’s sombre news — that on the 50th anniversary of the first Test in WA, Perth would this summer feature no international cricket?

Perth’s plush Optus Stadium is set to remain silent over the course of the summer

The two-year campaign to bring international cricket to Perth is one of the game’s great grassroots initiatives.

It was led by two civic giants, Perth mayor Sir Thomas Wardle and West Australian premier Sir David Brand.

Wardle galvanised prominent citizens, including through his personal news sheet Tom’s Weekly, and flew to London to petition the Marylebone Cricket Club directly. Brand chaired the citizens’ committee whose fundraising caravan visited 40 rural towns along a 10,000km route.

Thousands of donations were received towards the cost of scaling the WACA Ground up for a Test match, as great at $50,000, as little as $1. Some farmers paid in bushels of barley. A nine-year-old brood mare was auctioned. One cricket association built a house, and donated the sale proceeds.

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When local divinity Garth McKenzie bowled the first ball on December 11, 1970, to England’s Geoff Boycott, every West Australian could feel connected to the occasion — a match providing Ian Redpath with his highest Test score and Greg Chappell with a Test century on debut.

Usually straight-laced, Wisden gushed: the “perfectly organised” match was “an outstandingly successful promotion” by “the enthusiastic people of Western Australia”.

What would those patriots have made of this week’s sombre news — that on the 50th anniversary of their success, Perth would this summer feature no international cricket?

Perth was set to be the season’s gateway. The Australian team, coached by another local divinity in Justin Langer, left for England on its charter flight in August with the intention of returning the same way, serving its COVID quarantine at the Crown Promenade in Burswood.

Greg Chappell on his way to a century on debut in Perth’s first Test match in 1970

Cricket officialdom co-operated closely with WA Health and the WA Police to arrive at a robust model. But political attitudes soured after Elijah Taylor’s quarantine breach in the AFL, and Cricket Australia was informed that returning Australian players would not be allowed to train at the WACA during their plague penance, which put paid to plans for India using the city as its tour’s jumping-off point.

Having passed up this first chance, Perth found the tight itinerary precluded a second chance — it was too hard to draw cricket back from the eastern seaboard.

Times have changed, eh? Perth’s mayor is now a media noisemaker who makes George Grljusich sound like a cosmopolitan aesthete, while WA’s Premier has turned the avoidance of risk into performance art — risk to his approval ratings, anyway. Here’s a funny thing. This week a year ago, Mark McGowan was in India, as part of a trade delegation talking up WA as a destination, accompanied by Adam Gilchrist.

“We know India loves their cricket and Gilly is a living legend over there, so he will be a major asset in promoting WA,” said McGowan.

But promoting the great state of Western Australia doesn’t play half as well as sealing it off from the rest of the country, and the world. So, as far as cricket is concerned, McGowan’s people find themselves where they were circa 1969.

Inflexibility about the hard border had already cost Western Australia an opportunity to host the AFL grand final — and frankly, with its proud football heritage and plush facility, Perth was a far more logical location than Brisbane. Twice, then, the Rockingham Hadrian appears to have snatched sporting failure from the jaws of victory.

If the BBL chooses not to hub in Perth — and it is still far from a done deal — then it might be a quiet old cricket season west of Eucla. Even if first-grade games at the WACA sound awesome.

Last week’s release of the 2020-21 schedule concludes an unhappy winter for cricket, which has suffered first mover’s disadvantage in trying to facilitate the resumption of international sport in Australia. At times Virat Kohli’s team has looked like the Flying Dutchman, doomed to sail forever on viral seas.

On one side has been the Board of Control for Cricket in India, accustomed at all events to getting its way, and understandably disinclined to accept quarantine arrangements that precluded full-scale training ahead of this toughest of all tours. On the other, with public health officials understandably terrified of error, cricket has found no sympathy among state leaders, now accustomed to preening like rock gods.

After Western Australia, South Australia, with its arbitrary training restrictions, then Queensland, with its slow walking obduracy, let cricket a not-so-merry dance.

Queensland had actually coped well with accommodating the White Ferns for their short-form series with Australia in September. While their games were held at Allan Border Field, the Queensland Bulls went to Redlands, the Queensland Fire and Brisbane Heat (women’s) to University of Queensland — good co-operative facilities utilisation. Every indication had been given that the same model could be replicated for men’s cricket.

But with an election coming on, it was no time for leadership from Annastacia “Queensland-hospitals-are-for-Queensland-people” Palaszczuk — just the feeblest kind of followership. The Gabba can count itself fortunate to have a Test at all.

It’s been the burghers of NSW who have come to the game’s aid in its hour of need — somewhat ironic given CA’s regular muttered complaints about that state’s sway in cricket’s federal structure, and its board’s bizarre initial resistance to the nomination for membership of former NSW premier Mike Baird.

What stands out about the response in Sydney, indeed, has been the refreshing enthusiasm for cricket at every level: political, administrative, commercial and bureaucratic.

Such has been the negativity surrounding cricket this year that one had almost forgotten what it was like to hear excitement about the prospect of its return. Here were people treating our national game like something to be celebrated, not a kind of compliance nuisance or logistical imposition. And you know what? It was bloody great.

In the meantime, another great cricket state languishes, perhaps contemplating a new form of international cricket: WA versus Australia.