My four days at the SCG were magnificent. The weather, the crowds, and the cricket all conspired to make the Test match a spectacle and a feast for the lover of the game. But some, it seemed, were out there to ruin everyone else’s enjoyment.
It had nothing to do with the match. As we fans bathed in the Sydney sun, so too did Test cricket, as its capacity for allowing greatness to flourish was borne out in the performances of Michael Clarke, Ricky Ponting, Mike Hussey, Ben Hilfenhaus and Sachin Tendulkar.
But I noticed something else, as I sat in the Bronze seating of O’Reilly, Bradman and Messenger concourse. Never at any sporting event have I seen such pedantic and industrious security personnel, doing everything possible to keep the crowd as confined in their activities as possible.
Nobody would question the need for crowd control at large sporting events, and those who would ought be directed to see a European football crowd when things go awry. However there must be some common sense, and some recognition of what is genuinely harmful and dangerous, and what is merely nitpicking.
Of course the primary gripe of most cricket watchers, especially those in the outer, have with security guards and beach balls. The crowd knock around the beach balls, then inevitably someone swipes a bit too hard and it ends up on the field. The security guard, simply doing his job, picks up the ball and pops it. The crowd boos and there is great mirth, especially when another beach ball suddenly appears out of the ether moments later.
There’s even greater hilarity if a boundary-riding fieldsman gets there first and hurls it back over the fence, just as James Pattinson did on day one of this test to deafening acclaim.
However it seems this pantomime, which has been a regular feature of many a cricketing summer, is being quashed by the hyper-vigilance of those in fluro shirts. They’re not just popping them on the field anymore, they’re walking through the aisles to grab them. They’re snatching them out of the air. They’re even searching the bags of perpetrators, scouring their belongings to see if there might be another dreaded inflatable stowed away for later on.
It’s as if they’re all Liverpool fans, and remember bitterly Darren Bent’s goal for Sunderland in the Premier League a couple of years ago.
I’ll admit that a time usually comes in the day when the beach balls can become a little annoying, especially if some zealot decides to embrace rough play and opt for the spike. But the amount of attention paid to them is extraordinary. Beach balls are not, and do not result in, crowd violence. They’re simply a bit of fun, more popular I suspect because of the security guard’s involvement in the ritual.
Then there’s the beer snake, where a group of fans collect plastic beer cups and put them together into a long, bending stack. The attention paid to the beer snake by the SCG staff was baffling. At one stage on day three, a generously proportioned security guard caused patrons in the row in front of me great discomfort when he trudged past them in order to retrieve an embryonic beer snake. It could not have had more than a dozen cups in its figure and yet it was confiscated at such great effort.
Wherever a couple of cups were put together, they were snuffed out. The point came when the crowd ceased their rowdy condemnation, instead laughing in amazement at the silliness of the scene. It prompted one fellow behind me to scoff “You’re just not allowed to have fun anymore.”
While the events and quality of this match confounded those who predict Test cricket’s demise, Cricket Australia and the ground authorities do not help their cause with such draconian practices.
Fans at any sporting event need to feel secure. They need to be free from ill-mannered, ill-tempered louts. However, these genuine problem patrons are not addressed by sniffing out beach balls and confiscating beer cups. Security guards should confine their activities to resolving genuine problems. If there are none, they should leave well enough alone.
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