Tuesday, July 30, 2002 Cricket boards, in common with governments and secret intelligence agencies, tend not to call press conferences when they are sitting on information that has the potential to fracture society and flabbergast its citizens. So it's quite likely you haven't heard the news: the South Australian Cricket Association is considering selling the naming rights to the Adelaide Oval.

That's right, the SACA is taking us for suckers. The Adelaide Oval will be the Adelaide Oval no more. As the scene of Test cricket's most heated afternoon, when Harold Larwood sconed Bert Oldfield 70 years ago, it could suitably be rebranded the Band-Aid Stadium. Or perhaps the Virgin Arena, a nod to Mark Waugh's princely century on debut.

More likely, we will be stuck with something crasser still. The rights will get snapped up by some plodding insurance firm, some squadron of bent accountants, and the ground beautiful enough to move grown men to tears will be named after a company that bores people to tears.

Of all the acts of administrative idiocy in the commercial age, few can have been so barbarically blasphemous, so recklessly unsentimental. It is enough, to paraphrase the latest Weet-Bix ad, to make nine out of ten Australian cricketers choke on their breakfast.

"I believe this is the most appalling administrative decision in the history of sport," a Sydney Morning Herald letter-writer penned in apoplexy on November 19, 1999. He was talking about the ACB's move to pension off the fuddy-duddy Sheffield Shield in favour of the ultra-groovy Pura Milk Cup. That decision reeked of an oily sleaziness but, ultimately, concerned an item of silverware. And while one can feel affection for a cup or trophy or shield, a cricket ground is a part of one's soul. It is no accident that Wisden Cricket Monthly runs a highly popular Loveliest Ground Competition but, at the time of writing, has no plans to instigate a similar search for Cricket's Loveliest Jug.

The race to flog off Adelaide's heart and soul to the highest bidder has been triggered by a stalled $57m upgrade to the ground. The renovations are seen as crucial to the chances of keeping the national academy - recently jazzed up and restyled as a "centre of excellence" - in Adelaide. Apparently the State Government agreed to help out. Now it has changed its mind. Says the South Australian treasurer Kevin Foley: "The Labor Party's priorities aren't grandstands - they are hospitals and schools." Says the SACA president Ian McLachlan: "Selling the naming rights to the ground or particular parts of the oval is definitely something we are thinking about ... If someone buys the naming rights to the ground it isn't forever."

This is the same Ian McLachlan who hails from a wealthy South Australian family of graziers and property owners. The same Ian McLachlan who was a free-flowing batsman in the 1960s and was once named 12th man for Australia at Adelaide, fielding for several hours when Alan Davidson tore a hamstring. It is the same Ian McLachlan who became president of the National Farmers Federation. The same Ian McLachlan who was elected as a Liberal MP in 1990 and touted by many as a future prime minister.

It was not to be. Despite serving as a defence minister for one term McLachlan's eight-year stint in federal politics was generally uneventful. His greatest claim to fame was the Hindmarsh Island Bridge fiasco, when his staff inadvertently photocopied and distributed secret letters about Aboriginal spiritual beliefs which had been placed in an enveloped marked: "To Be Read By Women Only."

Alan Ramsey, the venomous political columnist, once said of him: "I always thought him a throwback to an earlier time when the ruling class was there by right of birth. Ian McLachlan just never seemed comfortable in a parliamentary democracy." More recently Don Watson, the speechwriter of former Labour prime minister Paul Keating, wrote evocatively of a parliamentary session in which things did not go McLachlan's way. "McLachlan," said Watson, "looked at Keating ... with outraged eyes, as if thinking that the last time he saw something like that he'd shot it."

Now McLachlan has unpacked his rifle, dusted it off and is taking aim at Australia's - and the world's - most picturesque setting for cricket.

He is following a burgeoning trend. Last week Sydney's Olympic stadium and Melbourne's Colonial Stadium, co-host of the midwinter one-day series, became the Telstra Stadium and Telstra Dome respectively. Fans of the Geelong Football Club have watched Kardinia Park turn into Shell Stadium, then Baytec Stadium and now Skilled Stadium. And it is only a couple of weeks since Adelaide's rival sporting venue, Football Park, sold its name to an insurance group for $5m.

The difference is that none of those grounds boast Adelaide's charm. Watching white-clad figures glide across the Adelaide Oval is an almost religious experience. There is the spire of St Peter's Cathedral. The distant Mt Lofty Ranges. The massive old scoreboard. The grassy picnic banks. The short square boundaries. The ochre-roofed stands. If there is one sporting venue in the world that should change neither its name nor its spots, it is the Adelaide Oval.

That is why the people of Adelaide - not, traditionally, a rebellious lot - must rise in protest. In recent months demonstrators have flocked to the town of Woomera, 500km to Adelaide's north, where asylum-seekers are being kept in allegedly inhumane conditions. They are fighting a worthy cause, but a lost one - Australia's government is not listening.

Now, before it is too late, is the time to head south and wage a more winnable war. They must join forces with the gentle cricket-going folk of fair, mild-mannered Adelaide. They must chain their bodies to the sun-dappled fig-trees that adorn the ground's northern end. Bolt their ankles to the Victor Richardson Gates. Bang on the roof of the Bradman Stand. Whatever it takes.

Three years ago a great national institution, the Sheffield Shield, was forever sullied for the sake of a few million grubby dollars. Let's not make the same mistake twice.

Chris Ryan is a former managing editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly and a former Darwin correspondent of the Melbourne Age.

More Chris Ryan
Twenty years of hurt

Keeping the faith

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