It was a 7am start at Perth Stadium. A special chance to chat with pitch curator Isaac McDonald before a memorable walk into the middle to inspect the wicket ahead of a day of Ashes cricket.
Only this is Sunday and the wicket is already redundant. Australia wrapped up the opening Test against England with eight wickets to spare barely 13 hours earlier.
The private breakfast date for members of the Western Australian Cricket Association (WACA) was a bellwether for a rather stunned city where the words “it’s a disaster” were getting a regular airing.
After an eight-year wait for a first Ashes Test at the new stadium in Burswood, with plans to dominate the precinct across five days and redefine Perth’s cricket identity beyond the former glory of the WACA Ground across the Swan River — it was all over within six sessions after the shortest Test between Australia and England in 104 years.
At least those WACA members — some of them Perth residents of England’s Barmy Army — could swiftly return to their regular routines. The real sympathy should be spared for the England fans who took a 18,000-mile round trip to see their side toss away its best chance for a first Ashes win Down Under in 16 attempts, including a maddening loss of nine wickets in a session on Saturday afternoon.
In the end, the first Test extended for less time than it takes to fly direct from London to Perth. As Gary Field, an England fan in Perth, told The Athletic: “The amount of money you paid out to then see what ultimately happened… it feels like there’s almost a dereliction of duty from the people you’ve paid to see perform.”
A city of lost souls trying to find something to do on what was supposed to be day three of the opening Ashes Test. Cricket zombies, if you will.
Those descriptions were repeated by independent England supporters as if they had all shared the same conversations over the previous 12 hours. Maybe it was group therapy.
What to do with the spare days was a hot topic. Hanging around Perth’s central business district was one option. The Globe on Wellington Street was the Barmy Army’s self-declared HQ for the first Test and remained clogged with England fans throughout the mythical third day’s play.
Despondent members of the Barmy Army at The Globe in Perth on what would have been day three of the Test (Michael Bailey/The Athletic)
Music from the Vietnamese Spring Fest stage in neighbouring Forrest Place drifted on the breeze, but there were fewer England shirts there by comparison.
One chosen destination was picturesque Fremantle, although tourist ferries from Perth to the historical port were soon fully booked. Once you did make it there, you encountered problems such as The National Hotel selling out of fish and chips.
None of these things were likely to improve the mood of England fans who had invested time and money in their trip to Western Australia, and wanted just a little more from their team in return.
“For me, Bazball has reached the end of the line,” said England supporter Martyn Ranns from his table at The National. His trip from Lymm, Cheshire with six friends had been in the works since the spring. One of those friends, Stewart, was still suffering with “a combination of furious and upset” to talk about his previous 48 hours.
Martyn Ranns (right, in the red) and his friends at their table at The National (courtesy of Martyn Ranns)
“After lunch (Saturday) was a complete shambles. The way the defeat played out was just devastating for everybody. The body language, hands on hips, hands behind heads…
“We’ve been looking forward to this and planning this for a while. We’ve got four spare days now because you have to book things in. You can’t just keep it flexible. There are too many people here!
“You know Test matches these days are unlikely to go to a fifth day, but you certainly don’t expect them to be over in two. We all support our team but the performance was amateur.
“For a lot of people, this is a once-in-a-lifetime trip. They’ve spent a lot of money to come and do this and everyone’s so deflated.”
Ranns at least has the consolation of a road trip to Sydney before catching the third Test in Adelaide. He knows others taking in the entire series and already fretting over everything being decided before Christmas at the Adelaide Oval.
Dave Williamson consoles himself with a strawberry milkshake in a Perth cafe (Michael Bailey/The Athletic)
For others, Perth was their sole Test.
“I’ve got a bucket list of all sorts of things I want to do in my life, and this was one of them,” said Dave Williamson from Grimsby, who flew out to Perth two days before the Test match and will fly back to the UK seven days later. “Even in England I’ve never been to the full five days of a Test match, so the idea of sitting on my own watching the game was something I’d always wanted to do.
“I came here in January and fell in love with the place, fell in love with Rottnest Island. My big problem is I promised my wife I wouldn’t go back there without her. Instead I got to see the quokkas that performed for England yesterday.
“It is the beauty of live sport. You don’t know what to expect. I want to see the action there and then, and it was unbelievable. But then, I don’t think a sports team has left me so sad and dejected as England did last night. Walking back to the hotel was a demoralising experience.”
Martin Love’s 60th birthday present to himself was travelling from Eastleigh for the first Test, so there was little hiding how much he was looking forward to his Ashes experience.
“I’d been looking forward to this for probably 50 years and yeah… it was a bit of a blow, wasn’t it? Two days!” said Love.
Martin Love at Perth Stadium (courtesy of Martin Love)
His consolations were getting to play on the WACA — and take a catch — in a Barmy Army charity game, while the Test’s early conclusion will give him more time to track down a friend he met in the Perth suburb of Gosnells in 1993 but with whom he has since lost contact.
Spending nine days in Bali before returning to his own bed in Eastleigh will also be a welcome stop.
“I’m slowly getting over it,” added Love. “Coming out of the ground yesterday there were a lot of cocky Australians giving us stick, which was fair enough as we gave a fair bit to them the day before.
“I love it when Bazball comes off but I’m a bit of a traditionalist and you’ve just got to play the conditions and the situation. A Test match is not two days! It was like two ODIs, the way England batted.
“I’m not worried about losing. I’m more gutted I don’t now get to go to the ground with the Barmies for two more days. That experience with all the singing and atmosphere was fantastic. I’d have loved it to have been for longer.”
England supporters watch their team fight back on the first day (Darrian Traynor/Getty Images)
Field’s trip to Perth was part of a post-retirement jaunt around Asia, including his first visit to Australia.
“For me, it’s the number of people we’ve spoken to,” he said. “My friend in Thailand has very little money and he’s been planning this for a year, saving furiously, and had we known in advance what was going to happen, you don’t need three nights extra in a hotel. That becomes wasted money.
“I met a lovely guy in his mid 70s with his son last night. They’d come from Nottingham and scrambled the money together. They lost their wife and mother respectively last year, and the son had said, ‘You’ve never done it Dad, you need cheering up, let’s plan for this in 2025’, and they were just desolate they’d seen England bat for less than 70 overs.
“Other people had friends coming out to join them from England for days three, four and five. I know there’s an element of gamble with that now. We don’t go into it blind. But it’s all about entertainment and with that, you expect something back in return.
“The retort would be we must realise we can’t predict sport, we can’t suggest they’re not trying, and how would we feel if we’d won in two days? But it’s the lack of recognition from the England senior management or players. People have saved for years. The players all rushed to congratulate Travis Head but not one came over to where the Barmy Army was congregated to acknowledge us.”
Rob, Jennifer and Glenis Sanderson outside Perth Stadium on Saturday night (Michael Bailey/The Athletic)
Things were rawer still for Jennifer Sanderson, wandering around Perth Stadium on Saturday night alongside her parents, Rob and Glenis, just hours after Australia had completed their victory.
The trio flew out from Yorkshire on the Wednesday and will take in the Great Ocean Road, Adelaide and Sydney before returning to the UK in under three weeks’ time — but Perth will be their only Ashes cricket after Jennifer saw her attempts to take in the 2021 series scuppered by Covid.
“The main bit is the England team tries to force a result,” said Jennifer. “They had a calamitous half hour and then the belief went. But you want a result. You don’t want a five-day draw because you’ve got that entertainment factor and that courage. Travis Head stood up and did it for the Aussies.”
Rob, 72, an avid watcher of Test cricket since he was young, added: “I can remember when it was straight bats all morning and you’d be lucky to get 40 runs before lunch. Very slow. It’s a different game today, and I prefer an exciting game.”
In fact, there was another exciting game on Saturday night, this time at the WACA Ground as Perth Scorchers beat Adelaide Strikers by one run in the WBBL domestic T20 — a game deliberately scheduled to form part of Perth’s West Test festival. Albeit not conclude it.
“It was a clusterf*** frankly,” said Ben Yearsley, who took his own perfect record watching England in Australia to five defeats out of five at Perth Stadium. “We were genuinely optimistic at lunch.”
His travelling companion for the week, solely based around the Perth Test, Rob Hudson, added: “And now we end the day celebrating a Perth Scorchers win as a consolation. They were good, but we’re bewildered. I’ve never seen anything like it.
Rob Hudson and Ben Yearsley outside the WACA on Saturday night after watching the Scorchers (Michael Bailey/The Athletic)
“This afternoon was just like hell. In a few weeks we might think this was short but very memorable. At the moment we’re wondering what just happened to us. We keep having Aussies coming up to us saying ‘two days, two days’ but they did get bowled out in a session which contributed to that.
“I mean, we’ve got a nice place in Cottesloe and it’s about -4 degrees at home, so we’re OK really. I don’t think our wives are going to be too pitiful.”
Perth Stadium was a sorry sight on Sunday morning.
Fan activities, including a DJ booth dressed up as an oversized red telephone box, were fenced off while a giant inflatable replica of the famous Ashes urn was a puddle of deflation.
The DJ booth dressed up as an oversized red telephone box (Michael Bailey/The Athletic)
There was some cricket. A small patch of green saw a couple of boys spend a few minutes playing better shots than England managed on Saturday afternoon.
And there was some life a short walk away from the stadium. The WA Day Festival, part of the West Test schedule, featured rides, stalls, music stages and a maze at nearby Burswood Park. For some of those involved, the Sunday without a Test cricket distraction was actually busier than the Saturday. But maybe that was for other reasons.
A few things still felt a little off. Seven Sport’s branded area with deck chairs and a big screen promised to show the “summer of cricket live”. At this point, it was showing an episode of TV show, The Voice.
Seven Sport’s branded area streams The Voice (Michael Bailey/The Athletic)
The shortened Test was arguably the worst case scenario for the WACA, Perth Stadium’s owners Venues Live, and the Western Australian government, who had upped their financial outlay to bring the first match of this Ashes and future Test series to Perth.
A final attendance of 51,531 took in the first day’s play in Perth. Another 49,983 followed on day two. The total of 101,514 was a Test record for Perth Stadium, despite seeing four days’ play against India in 2024.
However, ticket sales indicated a similar crowd to Saturday on Sunday, and another high turnout on day four — all of which will now be refunded at a significant loss, reportedly hitting AU$3 million ($1.9m, £1.5m) according to the Australian Associated Press, and without taking into account revenue from food, drinks, partnerships and merchandise.
Perth Stadium had installed nine additional, 20ft refrigerated shipping containers under the stadium seating to account for one of the biggest events since the venue opening in 2018 — including more than two tonnes of lamb shoulder, 150,000 food items and 6,000 bottles of wine.
As much as possible of that perishable food will now be donated to OzHarvest, an Australian food bank charity. That happens after any event at Perth Stadium, only this time the donation will far outstrip anything seen before.
It was also a terrible start to a crucial Ashes series for Cricket Australia, who are among the organisations that take the financial hit. The governing body reported a loss of AU$11.3m at its annual general meeting in October, with the expectation of red turning to black with England’s tour thrown into the following year’s accounting. Further shortened Test matches in this Ashes series will only add to the financial pressure.
The scene at Perth Stadium on what would have been day three (Michael Bailey/The Athletic)
Some England supporters have been left feeling out of pocket too, at least in terms of what they expected to get in return for their outlay. But not everyone.
It’s Sunday night at Darren’s Small Bar in Burswood. There has been no cricket but the joint has still been flushed for the night by England supporters, hosted by the Barmy Army’s Perth Supporters group and raising more than AU$1,000 for the WA Cricket Foundation and the English youth cricket charity, Chance to Shine.
By the end of the night, the streets are filled with the hopeful chant that England are going to win the Ashes series 4-1.
Whether they will be there, or not.