I must have done better than I thought last week because my boss gave me a reserved ticket to a cricket match at MCG on Friday. I have never been to a cricket match before, let alone a cricket match in the famous MCG. I gladly accepted the ticket, even though I know next to nothing about cricket. The match was an One Day International between Australia and Sri Lanka. Not that it matters because any excuse to get me out of the office will do just fine.
I am not a big fan of cricket and always assume that cricket games are boring you only go there to drink with your friends, get yourself drunk and yell out your frustration over the players performance occasionally.
I didn't expect things were that bad when I first got there at about 2:30pm. I don't think I have ever seen an emptier stadium. There were about 1,000 people and looked very insignificant in a stadium that can hold up to 90,000 people (some said 100,000). I could see some cricket fanatics blowing trumpets and drumming on the other side of the field but in the area where my friend and I sat, it was all quiet. It was more like going to a park full of old folks in the morning. Everyone just sat there quietly and many of them came alone and had no one to talk to anyway.
It got cold (it was the last day of summer) after a while and I was dead bored. I went to get some coffee to keep myself warm and awake. Things improved a lot after our second friend arrived. The sun finally stayed out to warm us up. We consumed healthy amount of beer (man, beer is expensive at MCG) and spent most of the time talking office politics and IT stuff. We, at least I, didn't pay too much attention to the game.
At about 6pm everyone started to leave and I was also ready to go home. Just when I was gathering my stuff, my friends told me that it was just a dinner break and the game will start again 45 minutes later and will finish at about 8 or 9pm.
Stay here for another 3 hours? I don't think so.
I said goodbye to my friends and took the tram home, just in time to catch the beautiful sunset.