Imran Can

GH with an update

Who says can you can’t fight City Hall? Updating today’s earlier post about the plight of Et Al subscriber Luke Brown, who was detained at the Junction Oval gate at today’s Sheffield Shield final and told he could not wear his Free Imran Khan T-shirt, we have news from a Cricket Australia spokesman: ‘Given the widespread concern for Imran Khan’s welfare in the cricket community, we believe this is a humanitarian matter and will act accordingly.’ Justly so. Fight the power!

Actually, today was a lovely day, as long as it lasted. I spent most of its twenty-eight tense overs with the community of watchers who cling to the fence, enjoying the rarity of cricket near enough to hear and seemingly close enough to touch. In lots of ways, the experience of first-class cricket at Junction Oval is nearer the game I played last weekend to the game at Chinnaswamy Stadium this weekend, although the standards are at variance.

Listen!

From the boundary at St Kilda, you feel genuinely in the game. You hear the grunts and gasps, the footfall and glovesmack, the mutual gingering of a team in the field and the subtle steering of the umpires (‘A fraction away from you’). You’re reminded how much the quality of contact differs in the ear – middle, shoulder, inside edge, the thick muffle of bat and pad, the satisfying swift lethality of a nick followed by the soft slap of a well-held slip catch. And isn’t it funny how the intensity of an appeal is usually a guide to its outcome? Remember how the blind Wilfred Rhodes allegedly followed the game sonically?

But if you’ve played the game for a time at any level, you recognise the provenance of its sounds, don’t you?

Anyway, there was plenty of time to contemplate this in the afternoon as it absolutely chucked it down. But when I dragged myself damply home….what a time to receive a delivery that seems to have travelled half way round the world.

It’ll be getting its first outing tomorrow, and be worn with a certain swagger. Free Imran Khan!