Even at times when the only ones stirring were newspaper pressmen, shady characters with malice aforethought and resilient night club stragglers, it was impossible to nod off for even a ball.
The time difference between Perth and the east Caribbean is 13 hours but the third Test between Australia and India at the WACA over the last four nights was so riveting you didn’t have to be an insomniac to be engrossed in Sportsmax’s live television coverage, although the occasional cup of coffee helped.
The balance swung one way and then the next throughout on a fair, excellent pitch so that the result was never certain until the last wicket fell.
There were spirited performances on both sides, not least from a trio of young Indian fast bowlers, and not an incident to rekindle the controversy and acrimony, involving accusations and counter-accusations of a lack of sportsmanship and racial slurs, that had marred the previous Test in Sydney.
For a host of reasons, the outcome, a thoroughly deserved Indian victory, was universally welcomed.
It would be carrying it a bit too far to state that the large crowds that turned out each day – over 16,000 on three, over 12,000 on the other – were rooting for the opposition.
Australians, after all, are fiercely proud of their sporting accomplishments. But, if their usually partisan media is a guide, they felt the defeat was a humbling experience much needed by a mighty team that had become arrogant and self-centred in its unprecedented success.
Letters to newspapers and callers to radio phone-in programmes reflected the sentiments of several eminent sportsmen, not cricketers alone, who, in the words of John Bertrand, the winning America’s Cup captain of 1983, called for the “moral compass to be returned” to Australian cricket.
The feeling was widespread that it had been pointing in the wrong direction for some time. There was a view that ‘sledging’ – or, as former captain Steve Waugh described it, “mental disintegration” – had reached unacceptable levels and that opponents were not treated with due respect.
In that regard, cricketers everywhere have been put on notice by their public.
Ricky Ponting, Australia’s captain, and some of his senior players,acknowledged that they were shocked by the general furore that followed the Sydney troubles.
There may be a touch more humility in future, from any team that becomes too full of itself. Perth has been a good start.
Already there is evidence that match referees who were previously relaxed in their attitude to seemingly minor on-field offences will now take a harder line.
Roshan Mahanama, the former Sri Lankan batsman and one of the newest referees, fined Brenton Parchment, the West Indies opener, for running into South Africa bowler Dale Steyn and Steyn for mouthing off to Marlon Samuels during the recent third Test in Durban. No one in the tv commentary boxes or the press centre had noticed anything amiss on their usually sensitive radars.
Once such vigilance is maintained, behaviour on the field can be kept in check.
While good has come from Sydney’s bad in one respect, not so in another.
Nothing justified the International Cricket Council (ICC) decision to bow to India’s demand and dismiss the most senior umpire on its Emirates Elite Panel, Steve Bucknor, from the following Test.
This was in spite of the ICC’s playing conditions for the series, signed by both teams, that stated:”Neither team has a right to object to an umpire’s appointment.”
Yet this is precisely what the Board of Control for Cricket In India (BCCI) did and precisely what the ICC ignored.
ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed explained, as if it could be properly explained, that it needed to “alleviate some of the tension” and “one way of doing that is by bringing in a new umpiring team”.
It was, he added, “a diplomatic approach”. More to the point was his admission that if India abandoned the tour, there would be “a fairly comprehensive contractural dispute” between two of the ICC’s most significant members.
So, it was a matter of expediency over principle.
Bucknor and his colleague, Mark Benson, made glaring mistakes in Sydney. They affected India most and may even have contributed to their defeat in the closing minutes.
It wasn’t the first time and won’t be the last in Test cricket. Indeed, Bucknor’s replacement, Billy Bowden, himself mistakenly gave Australia’s Andrew Symonds out lbw off the inside edge at a tense stage on the final day in Perth.
Yet the ICC bowed to the dictates of one of its members and changed an appointed umpire.
That it set a dangerous precedent was a self-evident truth noted by, among a multitude of others, West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) president Julian Hunte in a letter to ICC president Ray Mali.
‘There is no question that even the best umpires make mistakes,” he noted. “They are human and there are circumstances which may affect their judgment. What worries us is whether the action of the ICC in the case of Mr. Bucknor might create even more problems for the ICC and International Cricket down the line.”
Every other member of the ICC, even India, should also worry. The potential for controversy and chaos are clear. Any team aggrieved at flawed umpiring in future can and, no doubt will, refer to the Bucknor case in demanding a change.
One of the episode’s most surprising aspects was the lack of solidarity among the Elite Panel.
There was no way any self-respecting trade union would allow one of its members to be so shabbily treated without taking industrial action in response.
Yet Bowden duly turned up at the WACA, perhaps not appreciating that he or any one of his colleagues could be next.
They have already been neutered in several areas that were once their preserve. It is time the umpires strike back.