With famous names such as Senna, Prost, Rosberg and Mansell spewing fumes and rubber around the East parkland,  Pssst well recalls those first heady days when a beer at the Stag hotel on Rundle Street also came with screaming engines and a view of the track. Adelaide then seemed a frontier town – dangerous, if not lawless.

It wasn't long before the rough edges were knocked off and the spectacle diminished. First to go was that free view from the Stag, as brown shade cloth went up around the pub. Tickets that once got you into prime viewing spots inside the track suddenly cost extra and everything cost more. Over the journey, even the city's glittering European-style casino was turned into a trashy  Las Vegas-style beer barn, with the redeeming qualities of the two-up ring abandoned as tradition proved no match for turnover.

So it was for the grand prix, with bigger money to be made in Melbourne. By 1995, not even Damon Hill's win, or a free Bon Jovi concert, could hide the fact that South Australia had lost something big.

Strangely enough, the opposite is true of Test cricket at the revamped Adelaide Oval.

Here, sport has taken something small and refined and turned it into something far grander. Formerly one of the most picturesque Test venues in the world, the Adelaide Oval is now more glass and steel than picnic and parkland. And no compromised view to the cathedral can really disguise the ground's conversion to a wannabe MCG.

With its huge cooling fans blowing on day one, the new facilities were undeniably impressive, but also somewhat garish. The oval retains some of its charm, but not its relaxed atmosphere. Once free to roam, the fans in all sections are now  herded into reserved seats. "No-go" areas predominate.

Where once a glimpse of green through the wrought iron of the Victor Richardson gates would signal the start of the day on the hill, now there's a plastic seat and a reverberating public address system. The hospitality areas are bigger and bolder, but noisier and pushier.

Still, the cricket remains close. Close enough for one local Indian fan to regale Pssst with his close encounter with Ashwin Ravichandran - it seems banter ensued when the sidelined spinner misfielded during a practice session. Adelaide Oval, and indeed the city, is still small enough for the action to come to you. The same fan runs a restaurant where he photographed the late Phillip Hughes dropping by to enjoy his weekly vegetarian curry when resident in North Adelaide. There were no item numbers on the restaurant menu, but it would not have surprised to find that particular dish being immortalised this week. As the commemorations for Hughes tolled on, the local tabloid printed a glossy No. 63 for the punters to wave and the Australians also marked the moments that mattered to them - Michael Clarke waving his bat in the air at 37, David Warner at 63, then his ton. Steven Smith did likewise and pointed to the 408 marked on the outfield.

Indeed so predominant was applause at any hint of numbers associated with Hughes that it came as no surprise to find that one misguided fan had apparently souveniered the sponsored picket No. 408 on the fence running around the ground.

On day two the fence paling wasn't the only thing missing – cricket itself was rarely seen.

It rained throughout the day, while ground staff kept SACA members off the sauce by offering free red frogs and water. On  the big screen MC James Sherry assailed all ears with a  pre-recorded Peter Siddle playing  "paper rock scissors"  with kids in the crowd. Sherry earned his dough, but it was the sort of mind numbing "entertainment" that  has long ruined the art of sporting conversation at  Docklands but  which had rarely been a feature of Test cricket at Adelaide.   Lest we forget that Melbourne's    stadium/dome  was not that long ago considered  state of the art. As it's aged the volume has gone up.

Down at the Stag hotel, the brown shade cloth that obscured the view of the Adelaide grand prix is long gone and the pub has reinvented itself as a steak joint.  A tender, but tiny, slab of meat can cost up to  $100 - unless you pay for a membership that will buy you a "discount".

Time passes and the world moves on. It's a numbers game. Footy wins and cricket has lost something. Everything gets a little shinier ...  but it will cost you.

THE WATCHMAN

1 minute to midnight for... reporters referring to Daniel Ricciardo's smile. We've done it once or twice in Sunday's paper, but from next year it's time to find other superlatives for F1's next big thing.

NUMBERS UP

125 million people saw the #putoutyourbats tweet by Sydney's Paul Taylor designed to celebrate the life of cricketer Phillip Hughes. At one stage it was trending in 544 cities in 14 countries.

LOCAL HERO

Ballarat soccer fans are gearing up to be big on Bahrain in the lead up to the Asian Cup. The Bahrain national team will use the regional city as a training base from December 28 and will host a "friendly" on January 4. Expect Bahrain to be Ballarat's local heroes for their first Asian Cup match in Melbourne against Iran on January 11.

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