Day 133 : I don’t like cricket ….

Though nobody believes me but our timing to arrive in Brisbane during the Ashes first test is by complete coincidence. Myself and Paul are huge cricket fans and hearing that the truck was being shipped out of Brisbane just after day 5 of the cricket was greeted by excessive excitement. London to the Ashes in 133 days, a thousand pieces of the puzzle to get us here but seeing the Ashes in Australia is an uber treat. We don’t get many days off so what better way to spend a day than settling in at the GABBA and enjoying our cricketing heroes battle it out.

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The past three days we have been listening to the cricket on the radio in the fire engine, well trying to. Now for all those crew who have ridden in Martha, you’ll know it is proper noisey. It’s a rattly old truck, we need the windows open as it has no air con and the off-road tryes all combine to create a wierd buzzing noise. It is now mandatory to say “pardon?” at least 10 times per conversation. For those who have been on for a while, it seems our hearing has been damaged completely. Barham in particular gets annoyed with me (which obviously only encourages) as I feel the need to say “excuse me?” pretty much before he starts speaking. As Chairman of Trustees for our charity, will Barham get sued for the damage done to all of the crew’s hearing ?

England have long suffered heavy defeats in Australia and especially at the GABBA, it seems like this occasion was going to be no different. We had tickets to day 4 by which point we were on the end of an absolute smashing.  Before the cricket we had an interview lined up with Channel 9, an early start on our day off (we were in Brisbane Botanical Gardens miced up by 7am) but it was certainty worth it. What we didn’t know was that it was a satelittle link up to Sydney which quickly made me a touch nervous as we needed to speak to camera with an ear piece so we could hear the presenters in Sydney. To make matters worse the chap who was on before us was the cricket legend Mark Taylor. We knew, and he knew, that Australia were so on top, it wasn’t even funny but he was very humble in his country’s domination of ours. What a lovely chap.

New skills number 1020 : speaking live on tele to someone you can’t see. Myself (along with the rest of the crew) all have habbits that you really shouldn’t do on tele. I just concentrate on the big three which are touching my nose, swaying and constantly adjusting myself.  Barham had to try extra hard not to point all the time and mention badgers. It took the guys on the Today Show no time to mention the fire that was the cricket which of course we had no come back to as frankly we agreed. However… fast foward to the end of day and England were breaking record after record by completely dismantling the Australian bowling attack. The once frail backbone of English cricket was replaced by one of strength and confidence. Alas, our day off turned into an absolute beauty !!!

It was by complete chance our timing to be here for the cricket but what timing. I don’t like cricket, I love it !

Steve

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A little reminder of our Ashes Predicator.

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