{"id":727182,"date":"2026-06-10T10:21:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T10:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/727182\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T10:21:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T10:21:21","slug":"why-everyone-wants-a-seat-at-bay-13-of-the-melbourne-cricket-ground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/727182\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Everyone wants a seat at Bay 13 of the Melbourne Cricket Ground"},"content":{"rendered":"

If Day 1 was a sprint, Day 2 was more a deep breath. I woke up feeling like I\u2019d spent twenty-four hours in a highlight reel. The suitcase drama, Konstas\u2019s innings, the crowd, the art exhibition, a chat with the Cricket Australia CEO \u2013 my brain felt full and my legs were sore. I\u2019d seen enough chaos. Today, I just wanted to sit with the game, not chase it. So, I slowed down.<\/p>\n

The play had already begun by the time I entered the ground, and for the first time on this trip, I didn\u2019t mind missing a few overs. As I entered the stands, I heard the crowd roar at a boundary, and all the aches I came to the ground with evaporated instantly. Upon taking my seat, I noticed the Indian players wearing black armbands. That symbolism only meant one thing \u2013 someone important had passed away. A quick Google revealed it was the late Dr Manmohan Singh, ex-prime minister of India. God bless his soul.<\/p>\n

While it wasn\u2019t the best news to start my day with, the armbands only made me appreciate the culture of the sport even more. Let me tell you how. Cricket, as a sport, is a world of its own. Sure, there are the occasional politics and rumours that link the world outside with the game, but on a day-to-day basis, there\u2019s so much happening within the game \u2013 from updates about players to sponsor drama \u2013 that it\u2019s easy to get caught up in it all and forget to look beyond it. That\u2019s why gestures like the black armband honouring a national leader of the past show that after all is said and done, the players haven\u2019t lost sight of the fact this is just a game, and there\u2019s an entire world that exists outside of it and functions independently of them.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tShow Full Article<\/p>\n

Like I said, Day 2 became all about the atmosphere, the spirit, the ambience of the ground. I stepped back and took it all in. I don\u2019t remember much about the play, but that\u2019s not to say it wasn\u2019t memorable. It\u2019s just that the match took a back seat as I decided to simply exist in the beauty of everything that was happening around me.<\/p>\n

It was a beautiful sunlit day, so I took a stroll around the stadium during lunch and checked out the legendary statues all around the ground. There\u2019s something about those walks in between overs and innings that remind you cricket isn\u2019t just about what\u2019s happening on the pitch. It\u2019s everything around it. The rituals, the people, the memory. Those sixteen statues, standing silently as the crowds pass by, are living proof. They show that what brings people back year after year isn\u2019t just runs or wickets. It\u2019s culture. And cricket, more than most sports, knows how to hold onto it.<\/p>\n

For those who aren\u2019t well-versed in the lore of these statues, look at the list below; if a name catches your eye, maybe read up on them a little. They\u2019re all great men and women who deserve every ounce of attention we can pay them.<\/p>\n

Legends enshrined in bronze<\/p>\n

Sir Donald Bradman (cricket)
\nShane Warne (cricket)
\nDennis Lillee (cricket)
\nBill Ponsford (cricket)
\nKeith Miller (cricket)
\nNeil Harvey (cricket)
\nShirley Strickland (athletics)
\nBetty Cuthbert (athletics)
\nRon Barassi (Australian Rules Football)
\nLeigh Matthews (Australian Rules Football)
\nDick Reynolds (Australian Rules Football)
\nHaydn Bunton Sr (Australian Rules Football)
\nNorm Smith (Australian Rules Football)
\nJohn Coleman (Australian Rules Football)
\nJim Stynes (Australian Rules Football)
\nKevin Bartlett (Australian Rules Football)<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be honest, I didn\u2019t know the stories behind many of them until I found myself wandering past their bronzed likenesses. There\u2019s something about seeing them up close, out there in the open air, that nudges you into curiosity. And once you start reading, it\u2019s hard not to get drawn in. These aren\u2019t just names; they\u2019re chapters in Australia\u2019s sporting history, quietly waiting for someone to stop and take notice.<\/p>\n

Also read: Partition wounds live on in the body, speech, humour of a 93-year-old<\/a><\/p>\n

The magic of the stadium<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the beauty of showing up in person. The TV gives you the angles, the stats, the analysis. But the stadium gives you everything else \u2013 the pause, the wandering, the side stories that sneak up on you while you\u2019re looking for coffee or stretching your legs. You stumble upon greatness, sometimes literally. And in moments like that, the game almost becomes secondary because you realise that the sport isn\u2019t only played on the field. It\u2019s lived in the footsteps around it.<\/p>\n

At one point, I wandered in the stadium to a Shane Warne Legacy Health Check clinic, a small stall with a self-serve style health check machine and a life-size cut-out of Shane Warne in his classic hat-tipping pose. His family and close associates have set it up as a small but powerful way to carry forward his legacy, turning a public health message into something personal. Observing the atmosphere around the stall with hundreds of fans queuing up to check their heart rate and other health metrics, I realised how uniquely Australian the whole concept is. Dignified, yet playful, just like Warney.<\/p>\n

Inside the stadium, the crowd did a Mexican wave. I too jumped up with the rest, arms in the air, cheering like a kid at recess. After the final session, I walked out of the stadium with a sense of fulfillment about the day. Unlike the day before, there was no drama today \u2013 just good cricket and some space to think. But Melbourne, as always, wasn\u2019t done with me yet.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This excerpt from \u2018My Summer of Cricket\u2019 by Nikhil Kulkarni has been published with permission from Hembury Books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If Day 1 was a sprint, Day 2 was more a deep breath. I woke up feeling like…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":727183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,647,85,125237],"class_list":["post-727182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-melbourne","tag-sports","tag-test-match"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=727182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/727183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=727182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=727182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=727182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}