This year it’s different. Although the Test match between Australia and South Africa starts on Wednesday,the tricks that my father’s worsening dementia play on his mind mean that the significance of the week is,for the first time in his life,completely passing him by.
I was eight when we first went together to the SCG for the infamous 7th test of the 1970-71 Ashes series. I went to see my hero,Doug Walters. He was out for one and I distinctly recall a man near us loftily pronounce that he would never play Test cricket again. I was heartbroken. But the day also saw ferocious bouncers (in an age before helmets),blood on the pitch and the England team staging a walk off.
We sat on the notorious hill. Full cans of beer were thrown around like hand grenades. Squads of police officers vainly tried to break up fist fights. All good family entertainment,really.
While we may like to think that the hill was full of so many Oscar Wildes making clever quips like the famous Yabba taunting Douglas Jardine during the Bodyline tour of 1932-33,the truth is rather different. Years before anyone had ever come up with the expression,this was drunken,shirtless and racist toxic masculinity.
On the pitch,the annual Test match became not just a celebration of sport but also a measure of extraordinary change in Australian society.
By the next Ashes tour in 1974-5 the old conservative certainties of the Australia of Bradman and Robert Menzies were fast losing their grip. Gough Whitlam was Prime Minister,Australia’s captain was the swaggering rebel Ian Chappell,who unleashed Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson,shirts unbuttoned,long hair flowing,to tear into the English batsmen with a relentless animal energy.