Speaker 1: Six and out, one hand, one bounce, an afternoon at
Speaker 1: the g where a guy tries to sell you a pie.
Speaker 1: Australians practically wrote the book on how to do cricket right.
Speaker 1: It's the summer sport we've loved for generations. But what
Speaker 1: if it rains, Well, you just head indoors and invent
Speaker 1: a whole new kind of game. Hey, I'm Tony Armstrong.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the poolroom, where we celebrate the winners, losers
Speaker 1: and the weird stuff between. Indoor cricket was an inventor
Speaker 1: by Dennis Lilly, but it was that legend of the
Speaker 1: outdoor version along with his keen business mate Graham Monahan,
Speaker 1: who popularized it in the nineteen seventies. They trained juniors
Speaker 1: at a centre in Perth where one Friday afternoon, bad
Speaker 1: weather stopped play. Instead of heading back to the rooms
Speaker 1: for a tinny and a bucket of hot chips, Lily says,
Speaker 1: they took the nets and the game indoors and improvised
Speaker 1: some rules. It was quick, it was exciting, and the
Speaker 1: kids went wild for it. Lily and Monahan saw a
Speaker 1: business opportunity and started promoting indoor cricket to draw players
Speaker 1: to the club other venues called on. They started going
Speaker 1: inside to build more of these strange pitches with nets
Speaker 1: and artificial turf. More and more people joined. At its
Speaker 1: peak in the eighties, some folks reckon four hundred thousand
Speaker 1: people Australia wide were playing indoor cricket. The West Indian
Speaker 1: team even came out for an exhibition match Perth Shopping Center,
Speaker 1: with legendary players like Viv Richards and Clive Lloyd getting
Speaker 1: around it. Indoor cricket was a hit now. If you're
Speaker 1: not familiar with the rules, they're apparently based on an
Speaker 1: old English pe drool. So eleven players became six or eight,
Speaker 1: and instead of having two innings, each team gets one
Speaker 1: with only sixteen overs each. There's all kinds of weird
Speaker 1: scoring stuff too. Certain parts of the net give bonus runs,
Speaker 1: players bat for a fixed four over, Partnership points are
Speaker 1: deducted when you're dismissed, and every player gets to have
Speaker 1: a go at both batting and bowling. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: still cricket, but it's been shaped by the indoor environment anyway.
Speaker 1: With some proper boundaries in place, the sport was free
Speaker 1: to become a nationwide phenomenon. Called Indoor Cricket Arenas or Ica,
Speaker 1: which was founded in nineteen seventy nine by a couple
Speaker 1: of guys called Michael Jones and Paul Hanna. It wasn't
Speaker 1: long before hundreds of icas popped up and in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four a national competition too. But the real action
Speaker 1: began in nineteen ninety five when reps from cricketing nations Australia,
Speaker 1: New Zealand, South Africa and England formed the World Indoor
Speaker 1: Cricket Federation. It was official indoor cricket was an international sport.
Speaker 1: Now with international sport comes international competition, something Australian cricketers
Speaker 1: notoriously put their whole ass into. An indoor cricket was
Speaker 1: no different. Since its second year in operation, Australia's fielded
Speaker 1: a men's team and a women's team. Sorry, it turns
Speaker 1: out most puns are cricket puns. So the first tournament
Speaker 1: we headed to England where our chaps played three rounds,
Speaker 1: lost none and then smashed New Zealand in the final.
Speaker 1: We repeated this effort at the next tournament in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight, played five, won five, polverized New Zealand one
Speaker 1: hundred and forty one runs to thirty five, and then
Speaker 1: we just kind of carried on like that. Since nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety five, eleven Men's and ten Women's International Cricket World
Speaker 1: Cups have been played at the top level. They've taken
Speaker 1: players to host nations like Sri Lanka, South Africa and
Speaker 1: the UAE, and well, there's no friendly way to put this.
Speaker 1: Australia has won them all. Every single tournament. We can
Speaker 1: barely even manage to lose a match. In the most
Speaker 1: recent Cup, played in twenty twenty two, the men's team
Speaker 1: played ten matches, winning nine and the women's team won
Speaker 1: all twelve of theirs. Why are we so good? Is
Speaker 1: it the way we were forced to let our dad
Speaker 1: relive his glory days as a fast bowler every Christmas?
Speaker 1: Or is it just so ingrained in us, the need
Speaker 1: to get a piece of willow and whack a ball
Speaker 1: with it. Whatever it is, we've taken a sport, fortraed
Speaker 1: it a little bit and made it our own. Indoor
Speaker 1: cricket is still a thing, which Google tells me is
Speaker 1: something people ask a lot. Yes, people are still playing
Speaker 1: indoor cricket and loving it. In fact, about one hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty thousand people still play regularly in Australia in
Speaker 1: hundreds of indoor centers across the country. Incidentally, Graham Monahan's
Speaker 1: not one of them. Actually, no one knows exactly where
Speaker 1: he got to, but on weeknights in suburban courts Australia wide,
Speaker 1: his legacy remains undefeated. You've been listening to an iHeart
Speaker 1: production the pool room with me, Tony Armstrong. Catch you
Speaker 1: next time.