Ground zero now, but what a WACA

It was against New Zealand at the WACA Ground. In cricket as in other endeavours, Perth always has that sense of being a place a little apart in its own land, and not all of globalism's and technology's best efforts quite span the gap even now.

An instance: More than 80 players have played 300-plus AFL games, but only one playing out of Perth. The tyranny of distance militates against longevity.

Perth's isolation and concordant parochialism is not imaginary, even if West Australians demur. It is the most remote city of its size in the world. When Adam Gilchrist, recently of NSW, first appeared for WA, he was booed - because he was not Tim Zoehrer. It is them, not us. One day, seven West Australians appeared for Australia at the WACA, a red-letter day except in the West Australian, which objected that it should have been nine.

At the WACA, the sky is big, the light white and blinding, the shade minimal. These are West Australian rather than exclusively WACA qualities, of course, but they are concentrated there, as if under a magnifying glass.

On a hot day in Brisbane, you boil. On a hot day at the WACA, you bake. Banks of plastic seats become impossible to sit on. On England's last tour here, journalists had to cool down their laptops in a fridge. Clustered in a strip of shade, the by then very Barmy Army sang, "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas".

The ground even has its own legendary wind, the Fremantle Doctor, a kind of reverse sirocco, blowing in from the ocean rather than off the desert, bringing in its swirls not insanity but outswingers.

The style of cricket at the WACA has a parallel wild west atmospheric. Everything is amped up. Bowlers go back to the sightscreens. The shiny ball flies, off the shiny pitch, but also off the bat. Shiny slips stand halfway to the fence. Everything happening is fast and furious.

Think back: in the first WACA Test, Greg Chappell's debut hundred, its denouement not screened in greater Australia because it was ABC news time; already it was a Test venue lost in time.

Dennis Lillee's 8-29 by way of hurtling introduction to the World XI, indeed the world, the next year. Doug Walters' insouciant last-ball six to make a century in a session, celebrated with a session. Roy Fredericks' 71-ball hundred, Gilchrist's 57-ball hundred, innings that took on lives of their own. Glenn McGrath parlaying his 300th Test wicket into a hat-trick, including Brian Lara's scalp. No workaday hat-tricks here.

There was the day Curtly Ambrose took 7-1. The day Ian Brayshaw, father of James, took 10-fer in a Sheffield Shield game. The day WA defended 77 from Queensland, Viv Richards et al, in a one-day final: thanks DK. The day Mark Waugh hit Dan Vettori on the roof. The day in a shield game Chris Matthews hit Ray Bright out of the ground (admittedly, between two grandstands). The day in a club finale that Bayswater-Morley put on 177 for the 10th wicket to win.

Bigger, bolder, brasher: the very name WACA has a bit of giddy-up to it. Pitches elsewhere crack like a spider web. At the WACA, the cracks are so big that Tony Greig once stood a bat up in one.

Nine of Australia's 24 Test wins at the WACA have been by an innings. So have three of their 11 defeats, all by the West Indies. This is no place for half-measures. You don't bat a second time here. The meek can inherit some other earth, over there. England haven't won there since the shadows of World Series. Oddly enough, though, it is one of few grounds in Australia where India have won.

Outpost madness never seems far away. One day, Lillee tried to use an aluminium bat, but was baulked. After that match, umpire Tom Brooks suddenly retired, his nerve shot. A couple of years later, Lillee and Pakistani firebrand Javed Miandad came almost to blows. Lillee was always spoiling for action, and still is. As an improbable WACA president for a while, he was an unconvincing and unconvinced gamekeeper.

The gloves were forever shaking loose at the WACA, even before they got to the bars. One night during World Series, Pakistan tailender Sikander Bakht was Mankaded by Alan Hurst, only for the Pakistanis to retaliate minutes later by appealing for "handled ball" against Australian opener Andrew Hilditch as he returned it to the bowler. He had to go.

At the WACA, even the lulls and longueurs were off the scale. New Zealand's Mark Greatbatch batted for 11 hours there to save a Test match. Mike Veletta batted for 13 hours to shut down a shield final. Against Zimbabwe, Matthew Hayden made a towering 380, momentarily a world record. Around that time, the WACA pitch, laid with different clay, lost its express service mojo, since recovered. But distantly, a bell tolled.

It took faraway Perth 15 years of agitation to get a Test match. For 15 or so, it has been imperilled. Every other mainland ground was redeveloped, the WACA not much more than touched up. You can protest the homogeneity of the other grounds, but not the amenity. The WACA has its charm, but it is ragtag, like a country racecourse. Without other sports resident, and when a planned commercial/residential complement fell through, it was doomed. Perth was not so far outside modern Australian reality after all.

So the WACA has a last Ashes hurrah before it becomes ... boutique? Hardly. A boutique is where you get your hair coiffed, not parted, the WACA's business. But the truth is that it will have to please itself. Across the river, the new all-sport, all-season, all-purpose, all-round stadium sits, ready to receive, a windbreak against the Fremantle Doctor and the past.

The Perth Test will be less singular, but never again quite so away.