Gainsford's earliest recollections of watching Tests at the SCG are of "sitting on the hill and baking in the hot sun" as his heroes went about their business.

"We'd turn up with our foam eskies from the country, they were pretty fragile those things," the 71-year-old says. "My dad took me and I just rolled on through the years.

"Our family would always go to Manly in January for the holidays. We'd go to the Seaside Championships [Manly tennis tournament], then we'd go to the Test match. We were a sporting family but our main aim was to go to the Test match."

For Gainsford, who played for Backwater Cricket Club in Narromine before retiring aged 50, the annual reunion with fellow fans is as important as the action on the ground.

"On day three, there's a group of old country cricketers that meet up in what was the old MA Noble Stand," Gainsford says. "That's been a bit of a ritual, nothing arranged. You'd just renew old friendships and see where their lives have taken them after cricket."

Gainsford is one of the thousands of cricket pilgrims who make the annual, sometimes arduous journey to the SCG, which has hosted Test match cricket since 1882.

It is a time to catch up with old acquaintances, continue family traditions, or just sit back and enjoy the tussle between bat and ball.

Novacastrian Denis Broad has been going to the Sydney Test since the infamous John Snow incident on the boundary fence when the Englishman was roughed up by a spectator in 1971. The brawl arose after the England fast-bowler felled Australia's tail-end batsman Terry Jenner with a bouncer. Jenner was taken to hospital with a gash to his head.

Back then, Broad's travelling contingent to the SCG was generally made up of fellow Newcastle cricket officials. This summer, the 66-year-old accountant, who spent 42 years playing for the Hamilton-Wickham Cricket Club before retiring aged 58, will be the only one making the two-hour journey south.

"A group of us used to go every year, but this is the first on my own," Broad says. "The majority have passed away now, so it will be a bit different.

"You always run into people you know, you see a lot of old faces, that's one of the reasons I go," he says. "It's sort of my holiday. I use it as a two-week break over Christmas and the New Year. It's an ideal opportunity to go to the Test."

Griffith-based Gordon Browne is uniquely placed. The 75-year-old lives closer to Melbourne than Sydney, but as a former NSW Country Cricket board member and a life member, he really has no choice.

"Melbourne is closer, we can get there in six hours easy, but having my contact with NSW cricket, I like to go there," he says.

Browne, who has gone to just about every Sydney Test since 1991, and his wife Ruth will drive "just two hours" to Cootamundra; from there it's a five-hour train to Central.

"I'm a guest of NSW Cricket on day one, then I'll have to look for tickets," Browne says. "I'm pretty much a regular. You come out of the members during a break and it's marvellous who you run into. It's always a great occasion."

Michael Walker, 67, knows a thing or two about great moments at the old ground.

The semi-retired businessman from Forbes always sits somewhere different – "sometimes the Ladies Stand" – but normally in front of the Members.

From there, he's seen it all ever since the West Indies toured in 1975-76.

"I remember it was Michael Holding's first Test [in Sydney] and he thought he got Ian Chappell out very early and Ian Chappell wouldn't walk," Walker fondly recalls. "It upset Holding like you wouldn't believe."

Walker loves the theatre of it all.

He is also fond of rattling off the great names; Chappell, Lillee, Thomson, Botham, Garner, Marshall, Richards, Tendulkar, Khan, Lara, Warne, McGrath, Langer, Ponting, the lot of them.

"I have seem them all play," he says. "There's been some wonderful, terrific cricketers."

It is a tradition that also remains strong among a younger generation of spectators.

"It's always locked in, the Sydney Test match," Bathurst-based Peter Clarke, 35, says. "It's a great time of year where everyone's a bit quieter with work and it's a chance to catch up with friends."