The Birth of Indoor Cricket

Australians practically wrote the book on how to do cricket right - from the backyard to summer afternoons at the 'G. But even in this sunburnt country, we still needed a Plan B for a rainy day. So we headed indoors to invent a whole new kind of game.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Six and out, one hand, one bounce, an afternoon at
the g where a guy tries to sell you a pie.
Australians practically wrote the book on how to do cricket right.
It's the summer sport we've loved for generations. But what
if it rains, Well, you just head indoors and invent
a whole new kind of game. Hey, I'm Tony Armstrong.

(00:34):
Welcome to the poolroom, where we celebrate the winners, losers
and the weird stuff between. Indoor cricket was an inventor

(01:00):
by Dennis Lilly, but it was that legend of the
outdoor version along with his keen business mate Graham Monahan,
who popularized it in the nineteen seventies. They trained juniors
at a centre in Perth where one Friday afternoon, bad
weather stopped play. Instead of heading back to the rooms
for a tinny and a bucket of hot chips, Lily says,

(01:22):
they took the nets and the game indoors and improvised
some rules. It was quick, it was exciting, and the
kids went wild for it. Lily and Monahan saw a
business opportunity and started promoting indoor cricket to draw players
to the club other venues called on. They started going

(01:43):
inside to build more of these strange pitches with nets
and artificial turf. More and more people joined. At its
peak in the eighties, some folks reckon four hundred thousand
people Australia wide were playing indoor cricket. The West Indian
team even came out for an exhibition match Perth Shopping Center,
with legendary players like Viv Richards and Clive Lloyd getting

(02:04):
around it. Indoor cricket was a hit now. If you're
not familiar with the rules, they're apparently based on an
old English pe drool. So eleven players became six or eight,
and instead of having two innings, each team gets one

(02:26):
with only sixteen overs each. There's all kinds of weird
scoring stuff too. Certain parts of the net give bonus runs,
players bat for a fixed four over, Partnership points are
deducted when you're dismissed, and every player gets to have
a go at both batting and bowling. So yeah, it's
still cricket, but it's been shaped by the indoor environment anyway.

(02:53):
With some proper boundaries in place, the sport was free
to become a nationwide phenomenon. Called Indoor Cricket Arenas or Ica,
which was founded in nineteen seventy nine by a couple
of guys called Michael Jones and Paul Hanna. It wasn't
long before hundreds of icas popped up and in nineteen
eighty four a national competition too. But the real action

(03:18):
began in nineteen ninety five when reps from cricketing nations Australia,
New Zealand, South Africa and England formed the World Indoor
Cricket Federation. It was official indoor cricket was an international sport.
Now with international sport comes international competition, something Australian cricketers

(03:43):
notoriously put their whole ass into. An indoor cricket was
no different. Since its second year in operation, Australia's fielded
a men's team and a women's team. Sorry, it turns
out most puns are cricket puns. So the first tournament
we headed to England where our chaps played three rounds,

(04:04):
lost none and then smashed New Zealand in the final.
We repeated this effort at the next tournament in nineteen
ninety eight, played five, won five, polverized New Zealand one
hundred and forty one runs to thirty five, and then
we just kind of carried on like that. Since nineteen

(04:26):
ninety five, eleven Men's and ten Women's International Cricket World
Cups have been played at the top level. They've taken
players to host nations like Sri Lanka, South Africa and
the UAE, and well, there's no friendly way to put this.
Australia has won them all. Every single tournament. We can

(04:47):
barely even manage to lose a match. In the most
recent Cup, played in twenty twenty two, the men's team
played ten matches, winning nine and the women's team won
all twelve of theirs. Why are we so good? Is
it the way we were forced to let our dad
relive his glory days as a fast bowler every Christmas?
Or is it just so ingrained in us, the need

(05:07):
to get a piece of willow and whack a ball
with it. Whatever it is, we've taken a sport, fortraed
it a little bit and made it our own. Indoor
cricket is still a thing, which Google tells me is
something people ask a lot. Yes, people are still playing
indoor cricket and loving it. In fact, about one hundred

(05:29):
and sixty thousand people still play regularly in Australia in
hundreds of indoor centers across the country. Incidentally, Graham Monahan's
not one of them. Actually, no one knows exactly where
he got to, but on weeknights in suburban courts Australia wide,
his legacy remains undefeated. You've been listening to an iHeart

(06:04):
production the pool room with me, Tony Armstrong. Catch you
next time.