What happened to Virat Kohli’s nameplate during 2011-12 series? At Adelaide Oval, century-old scoreboard tells glorious cricketing tales

“The old lady doesn’t miss a beat!” Simon Crompton is referring to the 100-year-old Adelaide Oval scoreboard that still functions at the refurbished stadium. “That’s what we call her: old lady.”The only scoreboard in the world that has bulbs that light up to point out the fielder who has taken a blinder, dropped a catch or stopped a ball. Crompton and his five-man team’s hard work is mind-boggling: from being able to identify the fielders based on their gait to shuffling up and down four flights of stairs to change the names in the board, cramped in a space that is barely three-foot wide and seven-foot tall.
But before we detail his painstaking work, the glorious stories about the cricketers from Don Bradman, Keith Miller, Joel Garner or what happened to Virat Kohli’s nameplate after the 2011-12 series in Australia is perhaps the best place to start.
It begins with a 12-year-old Simon who had just walked from church into the Oval along with his parents to watch a game. As he sat and looked up, he saw Ian Chappell drop his pants and “moon” Bradman who was at the ground. It was the time when Chappell was the Australian captain and was warring with the establishment figure Bradman over player wages and such. “My father immediately covered my eyes!”
Simon became friends with the Test cricketer Rodney Hogg, a “mad fast bowler”, and through him entered the world of cricketers. “I remember walking to a hotel and every Australian player from Allan Border to others sitting in rapt attention around a handsome man. It was the flamboyant all-rounder Keith Miller, telling stories about his friendship with the royal family in England, and other stories from his cricketing tours. Unfortunately, I can’t share those colourful tales,” Simon says with a laugh,
Simon Crompton with his grand children. (Express photo Sriram Veera)
“You understand, don’t you? Will tell you this one time though, decades after he retired and when he was in his 70s, Keith came to a Test match. Probably, against Pakan. Keith loved his drinks, mingled socially with the club members, and thought it best to stay here overnight. So, right through that Test, there was actually a caravan inside the ground, not far from the scoreboard, where he would wear off long nights at the bar and sleep off. The next morning, a change of clothes, and he was at the cricket! For no other cricketer, I can imagine the authorities doing that at Adelaide Oval.”
Through Hogg, Simon became the designated driver of the West Indian pacer Joel Garner when he came to play for South Australia in the Sheffield Shield cricket.
“Hoggy told me that he can’t go out with Joel; his marriage would end!” Simon laughs. “And I found out why, as Joel loved to party all night. Many nights. Forget the women, even the cops were in love with him. The only time Joel ever drove the car, we were stopped the cops who saw him as he rolled down the window, and mumbled out, ‘Oh Mr Garner! Carry on please!’ No breath analyser, nothing! Joel came to Australia recently and came to visit me. It felt good. No parties this time, though!”
Simon is still in awe of that great West Indies team. “I know Australia won 16 Tests in a row under Steve Waugh and were a tough-as-nails team under Chappell earlier, but no team came close to the aura, swagger, style, and personas of that West Indies team. They were quite something.”
He gets a vantage point via a small opening at the scoreboard to peer through his binoculars. But it’s not an easy job; whether the cricket, not just international but domestic too, is interesting or not, he has to watch every ball, keep flicking the bulb switch to light up the fielder’s name.
Crompton doesn’t trust anyone with the job of recognising the fielder. “I don’t look at their faces so much, I watch their gait.”
He does furious homework and shows his notes about the current Indians. Nitish Reddy has an identifiable gait? “Yes of course. With some Indians, I look at the soles of the shoes, there is a flash of a logo or something. Or the tattoos if any. You can’t rely on numbers on the back as a jumper or a wrong jersey can also be worn. So, I focus on the gait. I watch their training closely, watch YouTube videos of visiting teams these days, spot little things, keep it in memory.”
Even the change of scores of batsmen is counter-intuitive. “If Kohli hits a four on 47, I am not changing them to 51. But actually, I am doing 15. You see, from where we sit, it’s all in the reverse. 47 is what the spectators see, so every number we are calculating in reverse!”
It’s a tiring job that the youngsters find difficult to do. “I have had many young people try out, but give up quickly. We are all old men right now manning her.”
He isn’t sure how long he will carry on and what will happen once he leaves. “I will do the next year’s Ashes for sure. After that, I am not sure. I will be 63 then, and frankly, it’s going to be difficult to find someone to handle it. Perhaps, we might have to stop lighting up the fielders, that kind of focus and concentration on every ball, all day for five days is not going to be easy.”
Perhaps, Simon’s love affair with cricket was almost destined, considering the cricket-tragic father, who had retired as a domestic umpire. “There was this one time when he was driving my mother and my newborn ser from the hospital back home. He was crossing the Oval when he spotted a South Australia game was on. He stopped the car, saying he would check the score and come back. The match must have been interesting as he wanted to see the full game. But my mother had to breast-feed the ba and it wasn’t legal to do it in cars and in public in those days. So, he actually takes her to a corner of the hill, in the stands, and as the ba is being fed, he continues to see Bill Lawry-led Victoria team vs SA,” Simon shakes his head and laughs. “He would have loved to see this Indian team packed with such superstars like Virat Kohli.”
For the Australian home public, Kohli first hit arc lights in the 2011-12 tour here, the series where he flipped the middle finger at the crowd rallying against him in Sydney.
Simon cues up a tale about Kohli from the last Test at Adelaide. “All through that game, there was enough drama and heat between him and the Australian players. Relentless sledging from both sides; in particular a couple of Aussie players and him. I watched it all closely through my binoculars. It was the last Test of the series and Australia retained the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.

“At the end of it, the Australian players came over to scoreboard space to celebrate with a few drinks and sing their team song of ‘Under the Southern Cross’. I left them alone. A few hours later, when I returned, I saw the nameplate of Kohli away from the rest of the pile, at a dance, and let’s say, a bit roughed up!”
The old lady never misses a beat, indeed.