Jeff Thomson trudges off the 'G in 1982.
We've all wagged school for what seemed at the time a worthy cause, and there was surely none more worthy to a sports-obsessed 13-year-old than the first day of an Ashes series.
It was just on 35 years ago that I persuaded my parents that more important matters were at stake than school, and settled down with my trusty cricket scorebook to record, ball by ball, the first Test of the 1978-79 series at the Gabba.
Seldom have I invested as much emotional capital in a contest as that one. Australia, torn apart by the World Series Cricket schism, was very much the underdog against the old English pros.
The imbalance of experience was typified by their captain Mike Brearley, up against our novice skipper Graham Yallop. But, having cast adrift the Packer rebels in my affections, I loved the precocious youngsters who had taken their place, batsmen such as Kim Hughes, Graeme Wood, Peter Toohey and Rick Darling, and a fiery fast bowler making his Test debut called Rodney Hogg.
Hopes were sky-high. And within 60 minutes had been turned to dust, Australia a pathetic 6-26, Gary Cosier's run-out from the fourth ball triggering a farcical collapse, until Hogg and wicketkeeper John Maclean, also in his first Test, managed to drag our score just past the three-figure mark.
It was that sort of series. A 5-1 belting, Australia skittled for 111 in the last innings in Sydney needing only 200 to win, beaten by 200 in Adelaide after having had England 5-27 on the first morning. The title of Yallop's subsequent book, Lambs to the Slaughter, pretty much said it all.
In hindsight, it was good preparation for some of the disappointments to follow. I cried in 1981 when Ian Botham then Bob Willis at Headingley staged one of the most incredible turnarounds Test cricket has seen, the Ashes snatched from our grasp. I cried again in the outer at the MCG as Allan Border and Jeff Thomson's last-wicket miracle fell three runs short in 1982. Watched in helplessness in 1985 as David Gower, Mike Gatting and Tim Robinson plastered us all over England, and looked on embarrassed at our 1986-87 capitulation on home soil.
Which made Australia's memorable triumph in England in 1989 all the sweeter. Suddenly, it was our blokes, Mark Taylor, Steve Waugh, Geoff Marsh and Dean Jones doing the plastering, Terry Alderman's swing bowling next to unplayable, 4-0 the emphatic score line.
Ditto the momentous series win for Australia in the West Indies in 1995, having been ritually humiliated and in some cases literally beaten up on by a then cricket powerhouse pretty much ever since the WSC split. There's nothing like being starved of success to whet the appetite for victory. And to re-establish a connection with our national team that for even some of the most diehard cricket tragics appeared to have waned alarmingly for too long.
As noteworthy as the hostility of our pace attack in Friday afternoon's carving-up of the England batting line-up was, it was more noteworthy to see the spontaneous rallying around a Test team that has not only struggled to win admirers, but at times been the subject of outright scorn and derision going beyond mere performance.
All of which was still on show when our top order threatened to cave in again on Thursday.
But the belated fightback was led by two of the most popular targets of that contempt, Brad Haddin and Mitch Johnson, the attitudes towards either remarkably different by the end of the second day.
Perhaps their admirable digging-in that led to such a stunning turnaround may prove a pivotal moment in recent Australian cricket history.
Haddin increasingly is freeing himself from the rather large shadow cast by Adam Gilchrist's heroics. Even Johnson's fiercest critics have begun to acknowledge that, harnessed just a little more effectively, his sheer pace and bounce has the potential to wreak the havoc that Jeff Thomson did nearly four decades ago.
Nathan Lyon has halted the procession of spinners in and out of the side since Shane Warne's retirement. David Warner's pugnacious approach is winning friends. And a popular thumbs-up for the oft-maligned Shane Watson might be the most definitive sign that we're seeing things differently.
We seemed to fall out of love with the Australian Test team even while it was still winning. And it was convenient to tar the successors to Warne, McGrath, the Waughs, Hayden and co. with the same brush of abrasiveness and arrogance minus the success.
But we'd been spoilt by an exceptional era. Perhaps it's simply taken this relatively long winter which followed it, not to mention some hubris on the part of our opponent, to re-stoke the patriotic fires.
They certainly more than flickered again on Friday afternoon, around Australian offices, schools, clubs, parks and backyards. We're back on the bandwagon. And if that leads to a spate of absenteeism over the next couple of days … well, you know what Bob Hawke said.
