One consequence of sport’s commercialisation is that teams are becoming increasingly detached from the communities that originally spawned them.
The multimillionaires of City and United are as Manchester as a Chinese-made bed spread while Harry O’Brien’s barista skills and yoga would get him beat up if he stumbled into the actual suburb of Collingwood.
So you can imagine my surprise to discover that in the very same year St Kilda announced it would be playing a ‘home’ game in New Zealand, there is still one team that perfectly encapsulates the community it nominally represents.
Even more bizarre, instead of being a quaint suburban cricket team or semi-professional VFL club, this rare beast is a part of that most commercial of sporting creations, the KFC Twenty20 Big Bash League.
The Perth Scorchers are an almost perfect microcosm of the West Australian capital in the 21st Century.
Like the new BHP headquarters that looms over the Perth CBD, Western Australia is dominated by the mining industry.
The Scorchers are sponsored by an iron ore company and their garish orange uniforms are reminiscent of the high-vis clothing worn by the fly-in, fly-out mine workers commonly seen at Perth’s overcrowded airport.
Fly-in, fly-out is also a good way to define a significant portion of the Scorchers’ list. Herschelle Gibbs, Alfonso Thomas, Tim Armstrong and Simon Katich temporarily base themselves in WA to earn T20 big bucks before flying back to their homes in Sydney and South Africa.
Finally, anyone who has suffered through Perth’s recent week long heatwave of temperatures above 37 degrees will know how relevant the word “scorcher” is to WA in the summer.
It was still 30 degrees at 6pm when the Melbourne Renegades fielded WACA on Saturday. The competition leaders visibly wilted in the heat as Shaun Marsh unleashed a score of 85 from 52 balls that reminded national selectors of his talent.
In 2010 a record domestic Twenty20 crowd of 43,125 people went to the MCG to see Victoria defeat Tasmania by nine wickets. Victoria was wearing its state colours of navy blue emblazoned with the iconic Big V.
The recent Twenty20 fixture at the same ground on December 21 featured the kermit-green Melbourne Stars playing the fabulously magenta Sydney Sixers in front 14,260 spectators.
The Sydney Thunder- which I keep confusing with the Aussie male stripping company, the Thunder from Down Under, who are currently popular in Las Vegas – has a similarly paltry fan-base, averaging 6000 spectators in the 80,00 plus seat Telstra Stadium.
Contrast this to WA where the Warriors have morphed into the Scorchers but still sell out the WACA, the most onomatopoeic name for a Twenty20 venue in the world.
When Cricket Australia’s fiendishly-pony tailed marketers were focus grouping a Perth T20 team, I doubt their vision included cashed-up bogans and the resource sector.
Their mission statement probably included annoying buzzwords like “vibrant”, “digital” and “Gen Y”.
One of the appeals of sport is its unpredictability. Few people would have expected a West Australian cricket team of any description to make a final last year. Even less would have the foreseen a Twenty20 franchise genuinely reflect its home town.
It’s something the BBL mavens should contemplate when NSW and Victorian crowds grow weary of contributing to Shane Warne and Chris Gayle’s superannuation funds.
In the mean time I will continue to be a proud supporter of the Perth Scorchers; a team for a town and a town for a team.
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