Cricket fans donning pink shirts and dresses huddled under trees outside the SCG, desperately hoping to avoid the rain.
Inside the venue, spectators retreated to the undercrofts of the Victor Trumper Stand as puddles formed around the pitch square. A quartet of miserable security staff stood by the boundary rope, shivering in the cold.
It’s become an all-too-familiar sight for the New Year’s Test. The Pink Day, one of the most celebrated occasions on Sydney’s sporting calendar, has once again been tarnished by miserable weather.
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The New South Wales capital, for whatever reason, is peppered by rain during the first week of the calendar year every summer. Six of the past seven Tests at the SCG have been interrupted by rain, with four of those matches ending as draws.
In 2016, only 11 overs were bowled during the middle three days of the New Year’s Test against the West Indies, a particularly dire affair.
As revealed by cricket statistician Ric Finlay, 25 days of Test cricket have been washed out in Sydney, comfortably the most for Australian venues.
According to ABC meteorologist Thomas Saunders, 64 per cent of Test cricket days in Sydney have seen rain over the past eight years.
Rain has almost become customary for the annual event – even the SCG covers have their own advertising, with a large NRMA Insurance logo plastered over the tarp.
Last summer, the late Shane Warne called for Sydney to be stripped of the New Year’s Test altogether because of the city’s inclement weather, suggesting the SCG should host the season opener instead.
“It’s better weather then than it is in the first week of January,” Warne said on Fox Cricket.
“It just seems to always rain in the Test match. It’s such a beautiful venue, such a beautiful city that imagine if the tourists, and any opposition team, came here to Sydney and had 10 days on the harbour and loosening up, getting ready and then play the first Test in Sydney rather than the fourth Test always in the New Year, maybe it’s time for a change.
“I know Australia won’t want to lose that first Test match in Brisbane, but it hasn’t been that well attended the Brisbane Test match either. Whereas maybe Brisbane could be the New Year Test match and Sydney could be the first one.”
Some of Sydney’s cricket fans might welcome a change in scheduling. The New Year’s Test has become synonymous with dead rubbers, matches where the outcome is irrelevant because the series has already been decided.
The SCG has hosted 16 dead rubbers since 2000 – no other venue in world cricket has hosted more than 10.
However, Cricket Australia chief executive Nick Hockley quickly rubbished any suggestions the SCG Test should be moved from its traditional timeslot.
“It’s an iconic event on the sporting calendar, people plan their entire holidays around it. We saw over 30,000 people come out yesterday,” Hockley told SEN on Thursday.
“Particularly now with the pink Test in its 15th year and the positive impact. There is so much going on around the ground but obviously we all want to see as much play as possible.”
Sadly, installing a roof isn’t a viable solution either.
“A roof on the SCG is physically impossible because it’s an old stadium and you really need to reconstruct the whole stadium to make provision for a roof,” Venues NSW chairman Tony Shepherd told CODE Sports this week.
“We’re so used to it given Sydney’s unpredictable weather. It’s not the end of the world.
“You just put up with it in Sydney, that’s the way it goes. We just put up with it, work around it.”
The third and final Test between Australia and South Africa looks destined to end as a draw; 57 overs were lost to rain and bad light across the first two days, while the third day could be abandoned altogether.
Usman Khawaja was stranded overnight on 195, agonisingly short of a maiden Test double century. Unfortunately for the Queenslander, it might be in Australia’s best interest to declare.
The last Australian opener to score a double century at the SCG was Sid Barnes in 1946.
