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Cricket enjoys a status among most Australians that makes it the envy of other sports, especially the football codes.
In many South American and European countries football, or “the beautiful game”, might be the only team sport that people talk about.
But in Australia, especially during summer, cricket is still king.
On ABC Radio National the other day, one caller said he was calling from Balfes Creek in Queensland, near Charters Towers (I know it was at least in Queensland).
The caller was the driver of a group attending a wedding and he had gotten them lost, losing about six hours. But at least they had the cricket to listen to!
You get these calls all the time on ABC Radio during cricket broadcasts, from all over Australia. Not necessarily from people getting lost, but calling from remote parts of the country.
One day when I was listening, the Australian Antarctic research station called in to say how much they were enjoying the transmission of the Test.
It must be deeply reassuring for Cricket Australia that the national game can still penetrate the consciousness of average Australians everywhere so deeply.
Despite our growing sophistication and diversification as sporting connoisseurs, if you were to travel around the country about 10 years ago and pull into some remote pub, one of the few fellow patrons might ask you, “what do you think of the footy?”
You might nervously reply, “Which footy do you mean?”
Today when you travel around the country and pull into a remote pub and one of the few patrons there asks you, “what do you think of the footy?”, you might have more confidence to reply – “which footy would you like to talk about?”
But there’s no such hesitation with the cricket.
Whether you come from Darwin or Hobart, Geraldton or Ballina, Cape York or Port Lincoln, Charleville or Kalgoorlie, you just get right into the nitty-gritty.
In my 45 years of following cricket, I began listening to Radio Australia broadcasts in Papua New Guinea when my family was living there.
But it was different during the winter months. On any particular Saturday, the national broadcaster might feel necessary to switch between a VFL or NSWRL match of the day, and maybe again, and perhaps a rugby international as well.
No such problems during the summer. You had the Test match, plus updates from Sheffield Shield games.
But whatever variation it was, it was cricket only.
I’ve listened to the cricket on the radio in PNG and many country towns, from Cairns in far north Queensland right down to Portland in far south Victoria and deep into western New South Wales past Wagga Wagga.
In 2010/11, I even followed the Ashes while enjoying Xmas-New Year in Dubai, although Australia was getting thrashed back then.
I even rowed surf boats for a number seasons in the late-’70s and early-’80s and you couldn’t walk along a metropolitan or country beach, in New South Wales or interstate, without hearing a radio blaring from almost every tent or umbrella, tuned in to the cricket.
Now that football (soccer) has switched from winter to summer, cricket is being faced with competition it isn’t used to and is decidedly uncomfortable about.
If competition is a good thing, then hopefully it will bring the best out of both sports.
Cricket is changing, and there is a wide range of opinion whether the changes are better or worse for Australian cricket.
The Big Bash League, based on the hurly-burly, hit and giggle, over in three hours version of Twenty20 cricket, has yet to embrace the majority of the public on an ongoing basis.
Do the farmers working the soil for their next planting in Central Australia – or the fishermen in their boats at the top and bottom of the country – listen to the BBL with the same affection and enthusiasm as they do the Tests?
It’s reassuring reading the history books, to see photos and read stories that tie in cricket and people and the land, such as Thomas E. Spencer’s How McDougall Topped the Score.
What the future holds, and cricket’s place in it, is a little unsettling at this point in time.
But right now, we can rejoice in cricket’s place in the hearts and minds of Australia right across the country as soon as the cicadas start their annual humming.
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