THE GABBA, VIV, THE FART AND THE STAMPEDE
The first international sporting event I attended had Viv Richards, Malcolm Marshall, Border, a woman trying to kiss Geoff Lawson and a fart. This is a short extract from my memoir, Twelve Summers. I hear it’s not a bad Xmas present.
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For the week of my 13th birthday, we went to visit family friends in Brisbane. Their kids, who were in their late teens, took me to the Gabba to watch a one-dayer between the West Indies and Australia. This was huge. I’d never seen a live game of first class cricket before. I was a TV guy – an observer, not a participant. I didn’t know how to behave at the ground. Would there be a code of behaviour that everyone else knew and I’d have to learn? As it turned out, there wasn’t much to it. Our little group was just like everyone else except we weren’t swearing or drinking. The only concession we made to fit in was to have a Four’n Twenty pie.
That day, there were 22,012 people at the ground – about the population of Cairns (my home town). Clive Lloyd won the toss and sent Australia in. Graeme Wood, Andrew Hilditch and Kepler Wessels all made starts – albeit slow ones – before getting out.
Border came in to bat and was promptly hit in the ‘groin’ by one of Viv Richards’ darting off spinners. Border spent quite a bit of time lying on the ground while Lloyd made fun of him by doing a 10-count as if the Australian skipper was a felled boxer. Moments later, Border was run-out with a direct hit by Lloyd, proving there’s no such thing as justice. Simon O’Donnell, Steve Rixon and Craig McDermott were also run-out in Australia’s disappointing 191. Even I knew run-outs were a sign of bad communication, and when a team had one after another, it pointed to a deeper problem.
My friends and I sat on the hill, facing the wicket side-on, which allowed me to make a discerning judgement about who was bowling fastest. As far as I could tell, Malcolm Marshall was the quickest, followed by Michael Holding and then Joel Garner. But there must’ve only been a handful of us in the area who gave a damn about the cricket. A lot of beer cans were being thrown and at one stage, a woman in a bikini tried to kiss Geoff Lawson, who was fielding on the fence. If she’d known her cricket, she’d have known teetotaller Lawson was probably the last person willing to fool around in the middle of a One Day International.
When the Windies came out to bat, Craig McDermott, still a teenager, gave us some hope by bowling Richie Richardson and Larry Gomes in his first over. I wrote in my cricket diary that McDermott wasn’t as quick as Marshall, but he probably gave Holding a run for his money. Still, any hope for an Australian miracle was snuffed out by Viv Richards and Clive Lloyd, who mauled Australia’s total in 37 overs with five wickets to spare. Viv was dynamic, hitting six fours and a six in his 49. McDermott would have bowled to him at around 150 km/h, but there was never any thought of the king calling for a helmet. The guy behind me said that Viv was ‘fearless’, but I’d read Viv’s player profile about 50 times and knew he did fear something. He feared being ‘taken for granted’.
After the game finished, we exited via the 40-metre underpass that led out onto Vulture Street. Hundreds of us were jammed in as we shuffled through the low ceilinged passageway, all talking excitedly about Viv, and Marshall, and the shortcomings of Australian cricket. Then someone farted. Multiple XXXXs and at least two beef and burgundy pies would have stewed in his gut for quite some time to produce an odour this rank. And instead of the fart obediently floating through the crowd before making a dignified exit, it just hung there like the Goodyear Blimp. People started grumbling and pulling their shirts up over their noses. A woman behind me leaned over and dry retched. Meanwhile, the people up the front were still taking their sweet time getting onto the street, so the rest of us started yelling at them to move quicker, but they didn’t. Or wouldn’t. Soon, there was pushing and shoving as the middle section of the crowd stampeded toward the exit. Some people fell over, others were run over. I managed to duck into the slipstream of some guy carrying a large esky, who was weaving his way through the throng. But even after I arrived onto the street and the into bliss of fresh air, I could still smell the fart all over me. It was in my clothes, my hair, my nostrils. If I came across that particular scent now, 36 years later, I’m certain I’d recognise it. It smelled like mid-80s Australian cricket. It smelled like defeat.