The building where an altercation with a bouncer led to David Hookes' death © Cricinfo Ltd.

Opposite Melbourne's St Kilda beach, in a lane corner, with a departmental store on one side and a compact residence at the other is a prosaic two-storied building that is shut from all sides. Its grey tinge gives it a nondescript feel. It's a sort of building that might never meet your eye.

On the night of January 18, 2004, it was this building, formerly the Beaconsfield Hotel, that was the site of a tragic incident. David Hookes, the popular former Australia batsman, was celebrating Victoria's win over South Australia in a one-day game. There was little to celebrate after midnight: Hookes got into an altercation with a bouncer, fell to the ground, hit his head in the process, and went into cardiac arrest. He never recovered and was proclaimed dead the following day.

Continue reading "The demise of Hotel Beaconsfield "

	Ponny, the run-making machine © Siddhartha Vaidyanathan

In case you took Don Bradman out of the equation, who would be the greatest batsman cricket has known? One walk into the MCG and you can’t miss the veneration accorded to Bill Ponsford, a phenomenal run-making machine in his own right.

The statue of Ponsford outside Gate 1 captures the man: he’s finished with the shot, bat in one hand and taking off for the run. It’s almost as if the sculptor is saying: there was never a doubt he could score, let’s show everyone what came after.

Continue reading "Australia's original don"

	The 100,000th run was scored at the MCG on the fourth day of the first Test between Australia and India © Getty Images

There's a picture recalling the Prince of Wales' 1920 visit, accompanied by celebration and fanfare. The snapshot of the 1937 Ashes Test shows rows and rows of flags lining the ground, apart from a number of loudspeakers, indicating the popularity of public-address systems in cricket grounds at the time.

Continue reading "MCG of the old, and a missed half-century"

	Dean Jones was one of the first Australians to sport sunglasses on a cricket field © Cricinfo Ltd

If you want to hear something interesting, try and find Dean Jones. We know about him sweating and vomiting during his epic double-hundred in Madras in 1986 but there’s more to Deano apart from gritty centuries and the odd commentary gaffe.

Did you know Jones was one of the first Australian cricketers to wear sunglasses? “I first wore it in 1988,” Jones said. “I had been playing with them a little bit. I remember Allan Border said, ‘practise with them before using them’.”

In those days cricketers had to buy their own shades. “I remember wearing an Oakley but I wasn’t endorsing them. I wore it first in Perth where there was a good wind, blue skies, and a white ball and AB said, ‘Make sure you catch the first one. Otherwise you’re in trouble.’

“And I did catch the first one, then I took a specy [spectacular catch] diving on the boundary, then I copped one on the boundary and took two more. And I saw all the fielders wearing sunglasses. I didn’t really understand marketing then but when I went back home, I saw a group of kids playing with sunglasses. It zapped me a bit.”

There was one more first for Deano - “I was one of the first to wear an extra sweatband on the gloves” – and one each for Ian Healy and Steve Waugh too. “Healy got special fibre glass put in the bottom of his wicketkeeping gloves and Steve used bats with oval-shaped handles at the bottom of the grip. It helped for your hands to fit in, unlike the normal cylinder type equipment.”

	What are they all doing here when there are bargains to be plundered? © Getty Images

**

Watching Matthew Hayden and Phil Jaques is great but it’s even more fun chatting with Australians. This writer has been shocked ever since setting foot in Australia. Hadn’t this been the country that intimidated visitors? The land where foreign teams were given a hostile reception? A few Australians have found it strange too but seem to have an explanation. Firstly India aren’t starting their tour in Brisbane, a city where most tours begin and one whose media is given to a fiery approach. Secondly there’s been a change of government. It’s supposed to matter. Thirdly Melbourne is a city with a large Asian community, one that allows teams from the subcontinent to adapt quickly. And to add to it, Damien Fleming, the former Australian and Victorian swing bowler, thought it was an “Indian” pitch. Merry Christmas.

**

It’s always interesting to observe the crowd on the first day of the series. Lahore in 2006 was loud, Antigua was more carnival, and Lord’s, earlier this year, was as quiet as a church. Melbourne was tough to describe but vibrant is probably the word. There was fancy dress, beer (lots of it) and sunshine. There were Mexican waves (which are actually banned), streakers (banned again) and lots of cheering for the visiting side (not banned but strange). Many, it seems, came here craving for a contest and went back in good cheer. Neville Cardus is supposed to have hoped for Victor Trumper doing well in an Australian defeat. Many in the crowd might have had a similar sentiment here.

**

	Merv Hughes takes part in a promotional event for alcohol control © Cricinfo Ltd

Imagine crossing hemispheres, gaining five-and-a-half hours and landing in a city with exactly the same weather as the one you've taken off from. It produces a strange sort of jet-lag. You've moved but it feels you really haven't. Melbourne's sister cities include Osaka, Tianjin, Milan, Boston and St Petersburg but somebody needs to add Bangalore to that list.

It's winter in one city and (supposedly) summer in the other. It was raining when I boarded and raining when I landed: that same windy, chilly, pitter-patter. Occasionally the sun would come out and suddenly you sweated under the jacket. Hardly had you tucked it into your bag than the wind started to sting. A home away from home. And that's where the similarity ends.

**

Continue reading "Bangalore - Melbourne's sister city?"

After all the hassles and hardships that went into the staging of the Galle Test match, the end result has been a triumph. Never mind what happens on the final day of the series, the impact is already abundantly clear from looking around the ground and the town itself. There is an air of renewal in the streets, even one of optimism. Perhaps it's a temporary glow, fuelled by the sense of occasion, but somehow I think not. The region has been put back on the map this week, and this time for the right reasons.

Vast swathes of Galle still look tired, as well they might after the devastation that the tsunami brought about, three years ago this week. The bus station behind the ground, which felt the fullest impact of the waves, has been particularly slow to recover. But the local economy has been vibrant this week, fuelled in no small part by 4000 England fans who've packed the bars and beach resorts, and lined the pockets of the innumerable tuk-tuk drivers who buzz around in anticipation of a windfall.

Continue reading "Galle's cricket windfall"

	It was almost like Test cricket had never been away © Getty Images

After all the angst and uncertainty, it was as if we'd never been away. Up until the moment that the first ball was bowled, the doubts still lingered about the readiness of the venue, but after three traumatic years, nothing was going to prevent this comeback from being completed. International cricket is back in Galle, and on the evidence of a brief but eventful day's play, it won't be departing again in a hurry.

It was, quite simply, a blisteringly hot day. Some forecasters claimed it was 97% humidity, but it was hard to spot the 3% of Matthew Hoggard's brow that wasn't drenched in sweat. But for the punters around the stands, the heat was nothing but a blessing - most of them had feared this would turn into a sub-tropical Glastonbury, but the brutal conditions did away with all the mud and ensured that the duckboards upon which their chairs were perched didn't sink below the boundary boards.

Continue reading "Galle completes its comeback"

He's better known now for his dulcet early-morning tones on Test Match Special, but there was a time, a couple of decades ago, when Jonathan Agnew was a firebrand fast bowler with international aspirations. In a famous outburst on the England A tour to Sri Lanka in 1986, Aggers' fieriness became all too literal:

"It's ****ing red hot on the field, and when you come off it's ****ing red hot in the dressing-room, and then, what do you get for lunch, ****ing red hot curry!"

What Agnew failed to mention was the life-enhancing magnificence of the said curries - if, of course, they are anything like the ones we've been fed in the press-box during the course of the first two Tests. Great steaming vats of chicken and fish with deceptively mellifluous aromas, they pack the sort of punch that Ricky Hatton lacked in Las Vegas, and reduce me to tears of admiration on a daily basis.

Continue reading "Cooking the senses at the SSC"

	Surrey's cricket aid has helped rehouse victims of the Asian tsunami © Andrew Miller

In less than three weeks' time, Sri Lanka will commemorate the third anniversary of the worst natural disaster ever to hit the island's shores. On Boxing Day 2004, more than 35,000 lives were lost and a further half-a-million people were left homeless when a gigantic earthquake off the coast of Indonesia sent waves of up to 30 metres crashing into the country. The devastation was apocalyptic, particularly along the Southern and Eastern coastlines, but in the years since, many lives have been pieced back together, often with aid from overseas.

One such project has been initiated by Surrey County Cricket Club. Six months after the disaster, Surrey held a Tsunami Relief match at The Oval, between an Asian XI and the Rest of the World. Stars such as Brian Lara and Sachin Tendulkar took part in the event and helped to raise £1 million. This week, in the break between the first and second Tests, a party of British journalists got a chance to see just how effectively that money had been used.

The village of Magonna lies approximately an hour and a half south of Colombo. It is accessible from the coast road, via a long and bumpy dirt track that winds through rice plantations and coconut groves, before opening out into a wide open plain that, until last year, was nothing more than bushland. It is here that the Surrey Cricket Village has been created. It is a haven of 45 new-built houses, perched on a hilltop and providing sturdy shelter for some of the worst affected survivors. Each of the residents lost not only their homes and livelihoods, but at least three members of their immediate family.

Continue reading "Surrey's cricket gift to tsunami victims"

	The Corridor of Uncertainty, doesn't shirk from the big issues © Andrew Miller

In the weeks since Duncan Fletcher's autobiography hit the bookshelves, every pundit and his dog has taken the chance to dissect the revelations within and, in turn, assess his impact on English cricket over the past seven years. But few publications have summed up the debate as pithily as the one which appeared in the stands of the Asgiriya stadium this afternoon. "Duncan Fletcher," splashed the headline on The Corridor of Uncertainty, the official unofficial England cricket fanzine. "Genius or T***?"

As it happens, the latter opinion came out on top in a ruthlessly scientific study, by 31 points to 20, but you'll have to pop over to Kandy and buy your own copy to examine the working. They are readily available, at 400 rupees each, from the blond bloke with the ethnic man-bag and the faded England Test shirt, as once owned by Matthew Hoggard. He is Andy Clark, the mag's founder, editor and publisher, and a fixture of the England touring contingent for nigh on a decade.

Continue reading "The official unofficial England fanzine"

It's fair to say I hadn't a clue where I was when I awoke on Friday morning. I knew the name of my hotel, but that's about it, having arrived under the cover of darkness following a busy day of pre-match build-up at both the ground and the team hotel. I vaguely remembered a long, winding, never-ending journey from Kandy town centre to what felt like the highest peak in the land, but that was about it.

I've since discovered I really was in the middle of nowhere, which goes some way towards explaining my disorientation. You see, living and working in Kandy is a bit like living and working on an upturned octopus. Most of the action takes place right in the middle in the town itself, a bustling focal-point with a welcome air of tranquility thanks to that glorious lake at the base of innumerable hills and hummocks. Most of the sleeping, on the other hand, takes place up, up, up and away.

It makes perfect sense. The cool mountainous air, the stunning panoramas, the karmic seclusion. It's what every human being in their right minds would want at the end of a hard day's chiselling at the workplace. And hence the only hotels worth frequenting are as far removed from each other as is humanly possible.

Going down is the easy bit. Your tuk-tuk arrives at 8.30am, and off you go, freewheeling recklessly through the hamlets and roadworks and the inevitable dozing dogs. The bumps and jolts are part of the ride, as you whizz towards your workplace with fragments of scenery popping into view at every hairpin corner. It's exhilarating to tell the truth, although not without its perils - one colleague told me yesterday how a similar journey in India had resulted in an emergency operation after the boneshaking dislodged a previously unnoticed kidney stone.

Getting home at night is the trickier part. For starters it's invariably darker, but that's the least of one's troubles. It's the poor tuk-tuks that are the problems. Two-stroke engines are designed to power chainsaws, not scrambler motorcycles, and the sensation you get as you scrape your way up a 2-in-1 gradient is rather like clinging to the coat-tails of an apoplectic hornet. The oil-curdling whine of the engine has to be heard to be believed, and the speed rarely exceeds a stiff jog.

In the end you find yourself clinging to the handrail in front of you, not out of fear, but in the vain belief that by doing so you might help in some way to pull the contraption along with you. It's utterly exhausting, which is perhaps another reason for the positioning of these hotels. By the time you finally reach them, you never fail to have a good night's sleep.