It is a four-hour direct and anywhere between 6 and 11 hours hopping flight from Melbourne to Perth, from a fashionable Victoria to a remote, slightly hostile Western Australia. The two cities are a gaping 2700 km apart, which means 640 km more than Delhi and Kochi are. In fact, so out of the circuit Perth is for Indian tourists that even Tourism Australia is not too interested in promoting the venue in India, or so said one of its Mumbai-based representatives before the start of the World Cup. Yet, India plays two matches here and stays for the longest period of 11 days at this out-of-the-way venue.
Though the first match was played on turf wickets at WACA way back in 1894, the difficulties encountered in transporting teams to Western Australia were so many that the ground could not join Australia’s main cricketing community for many years. Even with the building of a transcontinental railway, the trip from the eastern states took several days. It was only after flights were introduced to and from Western Australia in the 70s that WACA drew in overseas or even inter-State teams.
Add to all this remoteness, the fact that India is playing much smaller and hopefully uneventful matches here and you would wonder what the fourth pillar of Indian cricket - its fan base — will look like when India meets UAE at the WACA on Saturday and how much quieter the stands would be as compared to Melbourne or even Adelaide for that matter.
Whereas MCG was colonised by 86,000 voluble Indians, and Adelaide palpitated with 41,000, not more than 10,000 Indians, (a very robust estimate), are expected at the WACA where the ball flies faster than news or noise from the stands, and seldom in favour of visiting teams.
By Australian data, in recent times Perth has seen a wealth boom and grown at fever pitch but it’s always been a cricketing venue where outsiders hate to tread. It’s a pacers heaven, especially if they are of Australian decent and it does little for spin doctors. WACA’s capacity is much lesser than MCG or the SCG, which is more homely for the Indian team because the maximum number of Indians in Australia live there. If Melbourne had a 95,000 capacity, Perth is a much smaller ground with only 24,500 seats and only a small portion of Perth’s population is Indian.
Ask the Swami Army what the plan for Perth is, and their leader Rajul Sharma tells you expectedly that “nothing special is organised for this game. Even our drummer is taking a break. He works Sundays and most of our members will join us for the WI game”. However, as compared to UAE, the match against West Indies is expected to attract more numbers. “The WI game is a sell out and we are expecting a lot more Swami Army members to join us for this game. We have organised another march similar to Adelaide and Melbourne for the WI game,” Sharma said.
By the looks of it, a good Indian fan population might not really be there even for the West Indies match. The flying cost (tickets from Melbourne to Perth selling at $300 and more) are steep and the venue not really tourist oriented. According to reports, most Indians from outside of Australia who have stayed over after the India matches against Pakistan and South Africa will combine support and pleasure to maximum advantage and flock to the more picturesque and weather friendly venues of Hamilton and Auckland in New Zealand. “We will have decent presence in NZ and will be back in full strength for quarters, semis and hopefully the Final,” Sharma reconfirmed.