What goes round comes round. A tile of two cities.

 

It was good to hear the Barmy Army's trumpeter at the Gabba this time though his tunes seemed to have had a boots and saddles effect on Mitchell Johnson. I had my binoculars with me on the Sunday of the 1st Ashes Test at Brisbane back in November 2010. The Gestapoesque Australian Gabba Ground Authorities (Gaggas) overlooked them in their searches. Probably because of the massive queues they were causing. Four year's previously they had almost prevented us from seeing Harmison's opening gambit.

I'd been looking at the cracks in the pitch along with the likes of Shane Warne. There wasn't a lot of on field activity as the Aussie Children were not playing their equivalent of Kwik Cricket. Could be that they were at sledging class. Even Duncan Fletcher was having to find his own entertainment on his lap top. Perhaps he was airbrushing out the events of the morning by pushing Strauss' hook over the boundary and moving Bell's bat a little so that he got an edge onto his pad.

The ground staff who seemed to be under pressure were pointing out the cracks to a couple of policemen who were peering. Maybe they were thinking they had come across a place where they could stash the trumpets, bugles and other instruments of mass destruction that they had removed from the fans. Michael Atherton was standing by the stumps at our end. His pockets seemed to be bulging. Despite the lack of instruments The Barmies started up the theme tune from 'The Great Escape'.

Athers put his hands in his pockets, and with trousers slightly raised he strutted off down the pitch following the lines of the cracks. You don't think so surely! I know he has form but I thought that he was filling in for the absentee little Aussie cricketers, not filling in the cracks.

The bloke on the gate who missed my binoculars didn't miss the ice bricks in my cold bag. I'd read about the Gaggas not allowing in backpacks. That morning's Lady Gagga told me that I was very fortunate as my eskie, as they call them Down Under was 'only just small enough'. Obviously the Aussie children were not so lucky. I watched our two Cs, Collingwood and Cook enter the arena. They were only just behind the eleven Aussie Cs (Colonials) who were cheered on by the twenty odd Aussie B's who shared the stadium with us Brits' or PBs as they lovingly call us.

The security people at the Adelaide Oval were more human. They still searched your bags but they didn't look on us as potential violent thugs. On the Sunday Lunchtime of the 2006 Test Match I'd been to the market up the road to buy some pressies. I'd bought a fired tile that depicted Ponting getting out at Brisbane. As I offered my bag for the search, the guy came across the tile. 'What's that, mate?' he asked. 'That's something that I will look at longingly and savour', I replied. 'That's Ponting getting out.' Take a good look', he said, 'You won't see that again'.

Unlike The Gabba who were taking things away, outside the Oval they were giving out free thongs (Flip flops in Up Above lingo) with a bottle opener attached to the sole. I packed them away carefully in case I made it a hat-trick of Gabba Tests . If the 2013 Gaggas tried to ban them I'd planned to say it was for my carpal tunnel syndrome.