W A Day

It’s all going on right in front of me as preparations hot up:

I can see many, many toilets for a start. They are the red cubicles all lined up on the bottom left of the first picture. Do they really need that many? Nobody will find themselves caught short or need to find a bush on W A Day!

The other thing that strikes me is how hot the weather forecast is for the weekend. Last year, the event was scheduled for the middle of winter, when it had to be postponed because the ground was waterlogged.

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Saturday.

In addition to all this, there is a big event at the stadium: the first Ashes Test between England and Australia. I’m not a cricket fan, but I feel sorry for the English team having to play in the hot sun. Apparently it was an exciting day yesterday, according to this report in the British newspaper The Observer 

Awaking from an anxious sleep at 5am this morning, I turned on the television. TNT were showing the clattering fall of the first seven England wickets. Crawley, 0, Root, 0, and so on. I groaned and looked at the BBC cricket website. Go back to bed, the commentator instructed me. So I did just that. When I awoke an hour or so later, Australia were batting. England had been bowled out for a paltry 172. All our hopes and expectations of this hotly anticipated Ashes series seemed to have been overblown.

Then began one of the most thrilling passages of cricket of recent times. Four fast bowlers unleashed an unrelenting barrage of hostility, the likes of which I had never seen from England. The Aussies, jubilant only hours earlier, staggered, losing four wickets. In came England’s talisman, Ben Stokes, and five more came and went, leaving Australia on 123-9. This already marvellous Test match could be over by Sunday, possibly even by the close tomorrow.