The first test match of the Australian cricket season started in Perth on Thursday.  The Aussies are playing South Africa, two team in the middle of a rebuilding process.  Ever since South Africa returned to test cricket I have found matches between these sides to be compelling, played with an aggression and a refusal to back down that, until recently, just wasn’t seen in England teams.  Because this game is in Perth, 3 hours behind Sydney, the coverage here starts in the afternoon and continues well into the evening.  I didn’t catch any of the game on Thursday, though Australia had a good day, bowling the Proteas out for 242 and adding 100+ unbeaten for their first wicket.  My plan for Friday evening was to find a bar showing the cricket.  Nick had suggested that the suburb of Paddington, a 30 minute walk from Darlinghurst, might be a good place to find one and also a fun place to spend a Friday evening.  Leaving the B&B I finally bumped into Nolan, who owns the place and his girlfriend and they confirmed that Paddington would be worth a visit.

Paddington was, as promised, full of bars and restaurants and was alive with people out to enjoy a Friday evening.  Many of the bars were too trendy to have sport on TV but looked fun and were full of Sydney’s young professionals, dressed for a night out.  A really fun place.

I did find a bar with the cricket on and bought myself a beer.  I had to call home, to discuss a development in my ongoing dispute with the firm I have left and that call took a while.  When I returned to the bar a slightly inebriated Aussie, Mick, introduced himself to me and suggested I join him and his friend Jules, who were watching the game from a sofa in the corner of the bar.  Mick left soon after but Jules and I got talking about cricket.  Blokes aren’t normally good at conversations with strangers but sport is often a catalyst.  Jules, it turned out, was a member of the Sydney Cricket Ground and was a real cricket enthusiast.  We talked about the game, the current Australian side, the brilliance and transformation of Ricky Ponting, why it’s great that in Ben Stokes the Aussies have an Englishman to love/hate in the way they do Stuart Broad, the emergence of Bangladesh, the malicious influence of the BCCI on the game and on.

Once play finished for the day our conversation moved on, too.  Jules is an investment banker and we discussed the economy, Brexit and Trump.  He talked about Thomas Piketty, the controversial French economist, whose book Capital in the 21st Century discusses inequality in the modern economic system.  Piketty is a name frequently discussed at home, when my wife and eldest son (an economics student) discuss the economy (which they do more frequently than most!)  I don’t often find myself in conversations about “maximising utility” at midnight on a Friday.  In fact the only other person I know who would use that phrase is my eldest son.  During this conversation another of Jules’ friends, a TV reporter joined us, apparently straight from the studio.  By the time we finished, another 2 hours had passed and I decided to call it a day, grabbing a pork char siu bun for dinner on the walk home.  An evening that started with the frustrations of my work issues turned into a really good night, though a slightly more alcoholic one than planned.

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