Australia's Field of Dreams

Chamari Senanayake in Melbourne

The Melbourne Cricket Grounds (MCG) is world famous for its enormous size, capacity and the significance of the sporting and social events held there. Sri Lankan cricket teams have played at MCG a few times and almost all other international cricket teams have played there too. It is the largest stadium in the Southern Hemisphere and among the largest in the world.

The MCG is within 15 minutes' walking distance of the Melbourne City Centre and has two nearby railways

 stations and tramway and bus links with all suburbs. The surrounding parkland accommodates over 6,000 vehicles. The MCG arena has a total of approximately 20,290 square meters in area and measures 174 x 149 meters in length, from fence to fence. The volume of the MCG is said to be 1.7 million cubic meters.

The ground holds 96 sprinklers and the fall of the ground is 1%. The grass is a mixture of couch and rye grass. It is grown outside the stadium and brought in. The MCG has two electronic video screen vision boards, located on Level 4 at either end of the new northern stand. Next to them are the grand stands, and they alone cost AU $ 140,000 to built.

There are a number of security and surveillance cameras around the venue. These are used for protection of property and assets and for crowd control on event days. On an event day the surveillance cameras are controlled by the Victoria Police in the upper levels of the Olympic Stand and are used to detect inappropriate behavior in the crowd.

The Melbourne Cricket Club (MCC) has a long history. It was founded in November 1838 and the selected ground was a land previously used by the Victoria Police for its horses. Governor LaTrobe agreed to grant the ground, selected out of three choices, for the Melbourne Cricket Club.

The first cricket match was played between the MCC and a military team on the Old Mint site in William Street, Melbourne. Australians believe that no major stadium in the world is better situated than the MCG to promote sport and to serve the community through easy access and superior spectator facilities.

The MCC really started something in January 1856 when it challenged any team in the Australian colonies to a serious game of cricket. Sydney publican William Tunks accepted the challenge on behalf of NSW, which played at the MCG on March 27 and won the game.

Having launched regular inter-colonial cricket, the MCC's next initiative was in the international sphere. With the club's encouragement their caterers, Messrs Spiers and Pond, invited an English cricket team to tour Australia. On New Year's Day 1862, H.H. Stephenson's XI played a Melbourne and Districts XVIII before a crowd of more than 25,000.

This was just a year after the very first 'Melbourne Cup' was held at Flemington race grounds, along with its boost of popularity for sports in Victoria. The England captain said the ground was better than any in England and there was no cricket pavilion in the world to compare with the MCG's first public grandstand, a 200-metre temporary structure built in 1854 to seat 6000 people.

The Sri Lankan team first played a Test match against Australia in 1995 at the MCG and a crowd of 105,388 witnessed the match on that day. Since then Sri Lanka also has played 12 one day internationals at the stadium

 and has won three of them.

The MCG has held over 100 Test matches there and Sir Don Bradman had a total score of 1671 at MCG with a highest score of 270. Denis Lillee has taken 82 wickets there while the highest score achieved by a team at MCG was in 2004/2005, 8/344 by a World XI against Asian XI.

Following the completion of an AU$430 million redevelopment of the northern side of the stadium between 2002 and 2006 - involving the demolition of the Pavilion, Ponsford and Olympic Stands - the present capacity (including seating and standing room) of the MCG is over 100,000. Until October 2002, the capacity of the ground was 96,308.

The largest crowd to attend the MCG for a sporting match was for an Australian Rules Football match held in 1970 between Carlton and Collingwood football clubs. The crowd numbered 121, 696. It is estimated that the MCG has an annual income of AU $ 94 million.

As at end of 2006, the MCG had approximately 58,600 Full Members and 37,100 Restricted Members. The waiting list was more than 160,000 people and growing annually by about 10,000.

In current circumstances Restricted Membership could be offered 12-15 years after nomination. This is believed to be the world's longest waiting list. Surprisingly, women were first admitted to membership only in 1984.

The MCG has been given Australia's highest heritage honour - inclusion on the National Heritage List - in recognition of its outstanding significance to the nation.

(The writer was the Vice President- International (University Wide)for 2004 at the Deakin University Student Association for Burwood, Toorak, Waterfront, Geelong, Warnambool and Distance Campuses, Melbourne, Australia.)

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