It is like being washed down a drain. Once you are in the middle of the crowd there is no going back, and Michael — feeling as though he has no more substance or motive power than a chewing gum wrapper — is swept on to the turnstile where a man in a grey dustcoat takes his ticket and spins him into the dark, concrete caves of the ground where everybody still seems sleepy and slow from their New Year’s parties.
One long thoroughfare circles the entire ground. Occasional shouts, laughter and cries bounce sharply from wall to bare concrete wall, just above the constant, swirling hum of the crowd. Already, mid-morning, there are drunks propped up against the walls of this city-within-a-city, and the toilets are jammed with people. As Michael and the crowd flow by, the sour scent blows over them, mingling with the smells of pies, hotdogs and spilt beer. All around him people walk with small transistor radios pressed to their ears, and the static and crackle of a thousand tiny speakers floats on this dark, humming river.
It is only when he sees the white number 12 on the bare concrete wall, that he gathers the will and strength to break from the flow, stepping over the butts, empty cigarette packets and discarded food scraps that have already begun to carpet the walkway, and up into the glare of the hot, morning sun. It is almost like being born for it is only at this point that Michael comes alive. The cool, cavernous darkness is washed away by the glare of the sun and Michael narrows his eyes as he looks up. And then the moment that never ceases to take his breath away, that sudden wave — not even a wave, the swell under the heart that passes through him every time — as the bright-green expanse of the playing field is suddenly spread out before him. Every time, he lingers just that bit longer than the crowd will tolerate, and he hears the complaints behind him as he pauses at the top of the stairs and takes in the green wonder of the place. Here the world opens out. Here the world is wide again. Here, whatever it is that he rolls up into a red leather ball and hurls down a narrow pitch as fast as he possibly can, is released.
Michael stumbles out into the day and allows the crowd behind him to spill into the seats and the standing-room sections of the arena. He dwells on the playing field, the smooth, green wonder of the thing. It is smooth and green like the pop-up cardboard games of Test Cricket in the shops or the playing fields on the covers of books; as smooth and unreachable as the playing fields in dreams, yet only a few yards away. Here the world opens out, here the world is wide again. Here the small eyes of the street, the chattering houses, the eyebrows that are raised all around him whenever his practice ball snaps into the back fence and resounds around the neighbourhood like a rifle shot, fade into insignificance. He sits in the only place on earth to which he knows he can bring his dreams and be certain that the place will take them in.
The heat is everywhere. Soon the ground will fill, but not even the crowd will absorb the heat. The sun is already high, and the clear invisible heat that is all around them hits the concrete paving at Michael’s feet then rises up at him again because the sun hits you twice here. There is no breeze, no fresh air, just the same air, heated twice, moving round the ground, past the scoreboard, the shaded stand of the members, and back to the outer again. The trick is to forget the heat. When the white-hatted umpires and the players stroll out onto the wide green disc of the oval he concentrates on putting names to them all. The morning, the midday, the early afternoon all pass slowly.
Then, in the mid-afternoon heat, Michael takes his eyes off the game for a moment and everything becomes strangely quiet. Puzzled, he wonders how it is that so many people can make so little sound and so little movement. His eyes sweep the ground behind him, beside him, in front of him and back again, but he can neither see movement nor hear sound. It is a moment that needs explaining — that second that Michael’s eyes left the ground and were not watching the play. As much as he looks for the reason in the crowd it isn’t there. For in that second in which he took his eyes off the playing field, the cap of Joe Solomon fell from his head at the completion of a stroke, landed upon the stumps, and dislodged a bail. One bail, silently shifted from its groove at the top of the stump, fell — that’s all it takes. Quite possibly everybody in the ground saw this except Michael. Michael heard only the silence of the crowd and saw only its stillness. At the same time, the crowd had witnessed only Joe Solomon’s cap fall onto the stumps, but had no idea that it had collectively held its breath for a split second, become utterly still and silent and united in its breathlessness — only Michael saw that. The crowd, numbered later that day at 65,372 people, witnessed the fall of Joe Solomon’s cap with great alarm and sadness. And the silence that occasions the fall of Solomon’s cap and the subsequent dislodging of the bail, is a silence of deep concern. The eyes of the crowd move from the fallen cap — now lying on the ground as if having fallen in battle — to the Australian captain. He can, this crowd collectively knows, do one of two things: he can do the right thing, or he can do the wrong thing. And the crowd, in that overwhelming silence that so puzzles Michael because he has missed all of this, is holding its breath waiting to see what the Australian captain decides.
As Michael turns back to the playing field, now realising that the reason for this overwhelming silence is to be found out there, he hears the silence break. From the outer to the members, from the stalls to the dark, cool caverns of the numbered bays where even the drunks were quiet and still for that split second, the crowd is as one. And the one, crushing wave of sound it releases is as strange in Michael’s ears as the silence that preceded it. This is not a happy sound. This is not the sound of spontaneous celebration which erupts from the crowd whenever a wicket falls. These are boos. All around Michael, this crowd is booing and jeering, and it is only when he stands with the crowd and follows the eyes and outstretched arms of those around him, that he realises they are booing the Australian captain. He had two choices, and now Michael stands in silence and watches as the crowd tells him that he chose badly.
For the rest of the afternoon the Australian captain lost his first name, in the same way that Jardine and Larwood lost theirs. He was, in the mind of the crowd, no longer Richie Benaud or even Richie, as he might have been referred to in more affectionate moments. He had simply become Benaud — and he stayed that way all afternoon.
On the orange, gravel path that leads out of the railway station and down into the Old Wheat Road, the world becomes small again. The boos and hisses of the afternoon still swirl round in Michael’s head, just as, earlier that day, they had swirled round the vast, concrete stage of the MCG. Had he examined the faces in the crowd more thoroughly, he might well have seen variations of Mr Younger, Bruchner, Barlow and Webster — faces as familiar as those he sees daily in the street — all transformed by the moment. For that crowd had not only booed the Australian captain — they had done something far more serious — they had deprived him of his Christian name. They had denied him his citizenship for the afternoon, turned him into the other side, and turned the other side into theirs.
Michael is not someone who cares for the crowd. He doesn’t have the gift of getting on with the crowd, unlike his father. It is a gift that Michael doesn’t want. But today he saw and heard another crowd. That vast, concrete stadium they all shared that afternoon, it occurs to him as he strolls down the Old Wheat Road, is a place where the Bruchners and the Barlows and the Youngers and the Websters of this world can be bigger or smaller than they really are. And today when they rose from their seats as Joe Solomon’s cap had so carelessly fallen from his head, onto the stumps, to dislodge his off bail, they rose like a people whom the summer had opened up. The summer, the music, tin drums and those surnames and place names that spoke of faraway lands, had opened up something in this crowd to the extent that they could make the other side theirs.
Michael stops at the top end of his street and absorbs the sights and sounds of the houses preparing for the evening. The world is small again, everybody back inside their houses. But for a short time that day, the careless hat of Joe Solomon had moved this quiet suburban world in ways that it hadn’t counted on being moved when it woke up this morning. It had nudged their doors so that, even if they couldn’t be called open to whatever is out there in the great world, their doors were — for a short time at least while the Australian captain was deprived of his Christian name — ajar.