Final farewell to the WACA — England’s theatre of nightmares

PERTH: The WACA ground, where the third Ashes Test will be played this week, has been described as ramshackle, frozen in time, evocative and a veritable graveyard for visiting teams.

The minimalist venue on the edges of Perth’s CBD is hosting its 44th and final Test match from Thursday before future games are switched to the swanky new 60,000-capacity Perth Stadium across the Swan River.

The lead-up to the Ashes Test has conjured enduring memories of iconic cricketers and their daring deeds in its open-air theatre.It ranges from Adam Gilchrist’s 57-ball hundred pyrotechnics to Curtly Ambrose’s spell of seven for one, Doug Walters hooking the final ball from Bob Willis for six to complete a century in a session and button-down shirted Dennis Lillee thundering in to bowl with the wind at his back.

The WACA Ground once boasted it was the fastest pitch in the world until a relaid wicket in the late 1980s slowed it down a tad.West Australian Test great Justin Langer recalls facing Pakistan’s express bowler Shoaib Akhtar on a flyer of a WACA pitch in 2004.

“Ricky Ponting and I were just laughing our heads off, because we could have got a single every ball given how far Moin Khan, the wicketkeeper, was standing back,” Langer said.“I was very happy letting the captain take the strike. When you’re batting at the end with the sea breeze behind the bowler, you feel alive.”

To visiting English teams, the WACA is a nightmare as history bears out.England last won a Test in Perth in 1978 and touring Ashes sides have lost the last seven encounters there, and heavily.

It’s little wonder one English journalist describes the WACA as England’s Ashes necropolis, the cruellest of grounds, a theatre of nightmares. But there will be some sadness to see the back of a ground first used as a Test venue in 1970.