Perth fans bemoan new stadium’s shady dealings

Cricket Australia and Optus Stadium have made a bit of a mess of what should’ve been an easy sell to cricket lovers.

Half of Optus Stadium is baked in sunshine towards the end of a day’s play during the recent Sheffield Shield match between WA and NSW. Picture: AAP

Between them, Cricket Australia and Optus Stadium have made a bit of a mess of what should’ve been as easy as, well, selling cricket to cricket lovers.

The main criticism, or a leading knock at least, of the WACA was its lack of shade. The main charge levelled at the new Perth stadium … is its lack of shade.

Not so much its lack of shade, as lack of available shade, but more about that later.

The shade debacle coincided with a contretemps that all began when the stadium was busy spruiking its culinary delights (such as hot dogs) on social media.

These delicacies would be available at the stadium’s “first ever International Test”.

Of the sundry crimes against the language contained within those four words, including redundancy, tautology and capital-ology, the gravest sin is placing “International” and “Test” in ­adjoining (sunbaked) seats.

When this was pointed out by Twitter users, the venue retorted that it had hosted a “Sheffield Shield Test match a couple of weeks ago”. So there.

That it later apologised should be congratulated. But the take-home was that the new Optus Stadium doesn’t really do cricket.

But CA does do cricket. Just not as well as it would like, nor as well as many of us would like.

The organisation that declared “It’s Your Game” as its theme this summer has been widely criticised for closing the new stadium’s undercover top tier.

That hasn’t been well-received by the punters for two main reasons: Today’s forecast is 38C and a selling point of the stadium was it had more shade than the WACA.

“I’ve travelled interstate with my kids to come to the Perth Test,” one fan posted on Twitter.

“Am very disappointed that we couldn’t buy tickets in the shaded area. Not very fan- or family-friendly Cricket Australia!”

And local ire has been stoked by the fact the new stadium was built with WA tax dollars when the state’s diminishing GST share has many Sandgropers talking of secession.

Many begrudgingly farewelled the WACA on a guarantee of shade. So throw a sense of betrayal into the discontent.

Closing the top tiers was a matter of money: CA did the same on day five in Adelaide. About 20,000 are expected today, a turnout that could have been accommodated by the WACA, which has been relegated to hosting second-tier Tests.

Optus Stadium boss Mike McKenna predicts a match attendance of 70,000, which appears on the low side next to Adelaide’s 112,000 last week.

Especially given the hype around the new venue and its 60,000 capacity.

Perhaps cricket’s shift across the Swan River is like Adelaide’s shift to day/night — not really all about attendances after all.

Although 70,000, would be an increase on recent, non-Ashes, seasons at the WACA.

As leading statistician Ric Finlay says, before the Australian innings win over England last year drew 91,955, the years before that were 45,365 (South Africa) and 40,288 (New Zealand).

India’s most recent Test in Perth in 2011-12 drew 49,502.

No matter, today staff will give away free sunscreen as they’ve done at the WACA for years.

“Many of our fans prefer to sit in the sun and come prepared to do that,” a CA spokesman told the ABC. “There are still plenty of seats available for sale on level one and three which will enjoy shade for a majority of the day.”

CA might be under attack for the same issue — for the opposite reason — tomorrow, when it’s expected to rain.