Australia versus the World

Went to see the cricket on the weekend. It was days 2 and 3 of Australia vs the ICC World XI. Needless to say, Australia ended up winning by quite a margin.

Saturday (Aus v World XI, Day 2)

I bought tickets to some nosebleed seats in the Walters stand a few months prior. They turned out to be pretty damn good seats. The crowd in that section was fairly lively too. This was an important point - after all, it's half the reason you go to the cricket. If you just want to watch the game, stay at home and watch it on TV.

Ben	Trav, Nick, Josh and Dom

In front of us were a fairly large group of mates, probably close to middle-aged, most of whom were wearing coloured sombreros. Behind us were a bunch of Scotsmen. Beer is a beautiful thing, it is the source of much entertainment in terms of crowd behaviour. As you may have guessed, the crowd behaviour deteriorated throughout the day. The Scots behind us kept yelling out amusing anti-Australian comments and chants. One that stuck in my mind was "GO URUGUAY!" - a reference that most Soccer fans would get. One of the guys in front of us got taken away by security (not exactly sure why), and his friends followed him out. As they were on their way out I noticed that they didn't take their sombreros. I said to one of them "are you going to take your sombreros?" and they replied "nah, you can have them." So I ended up with I'd say 11 sombreros nicely stacked on top of each other on my head.

Gotta love the beer snake

Oh, and then there was the game. Ahh, twas a good day's play, in terms of value for money. At the start of the day I had jokingly predicted that 14 wickets would fall... so what happens? 15 fall. Yep, 15 wickets in an entire day. That's the SCG for ya. No particularly great batting performances as the spinners pretty much dominated. Warne was great as usual, and MacGill was absolutely brilliant. Anyway, seeing 15 wickets in a single day is good stuff, especially when a majority of them are the opposition's. The weather was fairly good too. Not too hot, which was good since we were in an unshaded area.

A World XI appeal

Simon Jones makes an appearance

After the game I started to notice how heavy those damn sombreros were. There were 11 giant straw hats on my head after all. Josh and some random took one whilst leaving the ground. Afterwards, Nick, Trav and I walked back to Central while the others went an alternate route to their destination. On the way to grabbing some dinner, some tall buff guy walked up to us and asked us how much the sombreros were. I said they were free and gave him one. I think Nick was just glad that the guy didn't beat us up. We met up with Matt and caught the train to Chatswood. A chick on the train took a picture of Matt and Nick with the sombreros. She seemed quite amused.

We parted ways with Nick after some obscenely priced drinks at the Chelsea and headed off to the Great Northern where we gave away some sombreros, played some pool, ate some bloody good wedges, and watched Australia lose to New Zealand in the rugby league. We proceeded to walk back to Matt's, having a phone call with Kellie on the way back. I'm not sure if she actually said anything, just laughed a whole lot. We got back to Matt's with only 4 sombreros remaining. I'd say I did a good job in offloading those. All in all a good day was had.

Sunday (Aus v World XI, Day 3)

We ended up getting seats in the same section but a bit further back - ultra nose bleed. It was still good though, and this time nobody was directly in front of us. The crowd was a lot more rowdy this time too - probably restless from the lack of play. The main entertainment today was the small football being thrown around - and at "the Germans" in particular. I think they were actually English, but got the name because they were all in German outfits. There were also two other main groups, the "Lunatiks" with orange shirts with that name on it, and the pink hats (pretty self-explanatory), who clapped at every girl who walked by. Towards the end of the day, a majority of the Lunatiks got taken away.

Heavy cloud cover meant play was reduced for the day. It also meant I got a sunburn on my forehead because I wasn't wearing my hat (since sunscreen + forehead = eye burn). The first over from Murali was amusing, after every delivery a section of the crowd yelled "NO BALL!" In the end, the rest of the Australian wickets and the two World XI openers fell. We left early because of the bad light, and ended up missing a few overs, which we caught on the TV at Liz's. Dinner was had at a nice little Indonesian noddle bar. Afterwards, we hung out at the Regent on Anzac Parade for a while, then we started to drive back to Stanwell Park. As we got near we realised that we could catch the 7:45 from Stanwell Park station to Wollongong, so Dave's dad hit the gas. We got there just in time (literally), and Ashton and I headed home. That was some good driving.

In summation, it was quite a good weekend. I was very tired by the end of it, but it was well worth the money and the travel.

Addendum: What the hell was with that lady that tried to put her arm around me at Central station on Saturday morning? That was some weird crap.