Of pitch invasions, Sachin and Graeme

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Melbourne Cricket Ground

TWO hours before the start of SA’s World Cup match against India at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) on Sunday, 17 men stormed the pitch.

Sixteen of them wore dark grey pants, day-glo green shirts and canary yellow caps. The 17th sweated under a collar and tie, and carried a walkie talkie. He played the part of perpetrator in a simulated pitch invasion.

Once the 16 were satisfied they could have subdued the infiltrator if push had come to shove, they retreated back beyond the boundary from whence they came. A minute later, they repeated the drill. And again; one more time with feeling.

That Melbourne carefulness - or was it the International Cricket Council’s (ICC)? - was again apparent during the match when a couple of tournament volunteers walked in the moat between the boundary and the crowd. The barrier holding back the spectators was taller than the two women, but each time the bowler neared his delivery stride they paused and sank to their haunches.

It’s that kind of place, Melbourne. From 7pm on Saturday to 7am on Sunday, the streets heaved with hundreds of thousands of revellers taking in “White Night”, or “Australia’s most celebrated cultural event”: a citywide smorgasbord of dance, light shows, art, music and film. By 10am on Sunday, those same streets looked like they did on any other Sunday morning - sleepy, quiet and clean.

But there was nothing sleepy or quiet about the roads that lead to the MCG. Hours before the first ball was bowled, a trickle of blue-shirted munchkins were already making their way towards the vast concrete bowl. They swelled to a stream and then into a river that roared with shouts of “India!” and was accompanied by the rhythmic thrum of drums as the minutes and metres melted away.

The swell rose in Federation Square, across Flinders Street from Melbourne’s Victorian jewelry box of a railway station, and followed a real river - the Yarra - a kilometre and more to the east, where the MCG sat like the Emerald City of Oz.

As the stadium loomed, the munchkin march gathered buzz and brouhaha. When the odd South African supporter gleamed greenly out of the blue, they were swallowed into the happy madness with good humour.

Something like silence descended when India lost an early wicket, but the volume leapt several notches when the big screen flashed footage of ICC chief executive Dave Richardson sitting at a table talking to an Elvis impersonator all got up in a purple shirt, aviator shades, big hair and bigger sideburns. He turned out to be Sachin Tendulkar.

Graeme Smith, too, was spotted - in the stands surrounded by a tour group. No-one cheered his presence, but the anonymity fitted him as well as the SA shirt he wore once more.