Sometimes the old ways are the best.
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The scoreboard at the Manuka Oval may be hot and cramped for the six people perspiring in its innards to keep the numbers ticking over correctly.
Operating it is, without doubt, hard labour - not least because of the roar of the two mechanical fans inside and the thousands of human fans outside who might make it hard to hear yourself think.
Ten-foot-long name boards for players have to be painted the moment the team selection is made public. White paint is rolled on to the black board with stencils. This is not high-tech stuff.
On the day, they have to be hauled into place as wickets fall. The operators can't see the scores on the face of the board so they are working blind.
But it is charming and, in the view of those who labour inside, indispensable.
"There's too much history to do with this board and also with the game of cricket," according to Robert Tunningley, who runs the interior show as the Scoreboard Supervisor.
Part of the charm of cricket - like, he says, baseball - is the sense of history embodied in the old grounds and the old ways.
And the Manuka board has seen some history. It was moved as a discard from the Melbourne Cricket Ground in 1983 when the MCG went digital and modern.
As the original scoreboard in Melbourne from 1907, it kept score for Don Bradman, registered the medal tally at the 1956 Olympic Games and witnessed visits of both the Pope and the Queen.
Its official title now is the Jack Fingleton Scoreboard, after the Australian opening batsman who went on to become a political journalist in Parliament House.
Working the scoreboard isn't easy. When wickets fall, there's a scramble. "It'll be pretty crazy," said Mr Tunningley. The names are on boards but the numbers - the scores - are on rollers so that's much easier. Behind the face of the board, inside the structure, there is a series of metal chains and handles to move the score along.
Six men operate the whole contraption - two on the fall of wickets, one on the bowling figures, one on the batsmen's and runs totals, one on overs and the sixth as a spare for toilet break cover and when the action gets particularly frantic.
How hot does it get inside? "We don't keep a thermometer because we don't like to know," said Mr Tunningley.
But there is a fridge downstairs, though not for alcoholic drinks which are ruled out on health-and-safety grounds - getting to the main cabin inside the scoreboard demands steep stairs and a head for heights.
And alcohol impaired scoreboard operators would not be good when so many people are watching, including players who alter their game according to the state of play as displayed.
There were ructions five years ago when a safety audit was done by the ACT government. One of the operators, Brian Richings, and three of his mates called it a day.
"Obviously we weren't allowed to drink alcohol," Mr Richings said at the time. "We're quite OK with that but we had to sign in and out of the scoreboard room whenever we went to do so, and we had to do a 'working at heights' course."
This coming Test is a chance for the Canberra ground to showcase itself as a bit different and a bit special to perhaps hundreds of millions of people.
Two years ago, for example, the third Test against India at Ranchi had 383 million viewers - Sri Lanka in Canberra won't get that but it does give a sense of the magnitude of people who will see the Jack Fingleton Scoreboard at the Manuka Oval in Canberra.
They will not see the behind-the-scenes hard work - the duck paddling frantically to move smoothly over the surface.
The most challenging time comes, according to Mr Tunningley, when batting orders change unannounced. The operators look through the portholes to check that the batsman emerging is the one on the team-sheet. If not, they reorganise quickly.
A digital scoreboard requires just one operator, and that's the way nearly all the big time cricket grounds have gone. Only the Adelaide Oval retains a manual board - major Tests in Perth have moved to the Optus Stadium which has a digital replica of the WACA's manual board.
A replica. It looks similar but it's not the same. It is not authentic. It is not true tradition.
The Jack Fingleton Scoreboard is.