There have been some unforgettable roars when the MCG has been full for a significant game of cricket.
The sound 93,013 made when England‘s now coach Brendon McCullum had his stumps rattled by their current Ashes tormentor Mitchell Starc off the third ball of the 2015 World Cup final will live long in the memory.
That was trumped by the 90,293 that watched India play Pakistan in the 2022 T20 World Cup. The MCG shook to its foundations when Babar Azam was trapped lbw by Arshdeep Singh. The roar when R Ashwin hit the winning runs could be heard kilometres away.
There were more people in the MCG on this Boxing Day to watch a dead-rubber Ashes Test than either of those previous occasions, as 94,199 piled in to break the MCG’s single-day record for a cricket match.
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Yet the roars did not match or exceed those previous days. Comically, the loudest roar was reserved for Scott Boland. It was comical because it wasn’t for any of his three wickets. It was instead for his lone boundary, batting for a second time in the day as a nightwatching opener and successfully surviving the last over of the day after 20 wickets had fallen in the previous 74.1, the most on an opening day of Test cricket in Australia since 1951.
It is hard to make sense of what the record crowd had watched. Maybe it was that the series was over, and that any single moment didn’t have the Ashes riding on it. But more likely it was because of the surface.
Wickets were precious in those two World Cup white-ball games. They weren’t here. They came and went like the Melbourne trams and trains that had ferried so many of the 94,199 to the ground, in a procession, one after the next.
The crowd was so anaesthetised to the whole spectacle that at 5.28pm, after 19 wickets had fallen, a lone spectator could be heard yelling “Boring!” when Gus Atkinson played a textbook forward to defence to Michael Neser.
Earlier in the morning, there had been a glint in the eye of both Cricket Australia CEO, Todd Greenberg, and Melbourne Cricket Club boss, Stuart Fox, that was even brighter in the cold and gloom.
At 9.15am, they mused about the possibility of record-breaking crowds for the day and the week as queues of MCC members snaked around them in Yarra Park outside the colossal MCG.
The glint may have been replaced by tears at stumps, given the carnage. CA is already counting a cost in the vicinity of AUD$5 million (US$3.3 million) for the two-day Test in Perth after 17 wickets fell on day one there. Who knows what they might lose here if this ends before stumps on day two?
There had been jokes at Jolimont that they couldn’t insure the losses in Perth against bad batting. They can’t be insured against curating either.
There is an overwhelming sense this MCG pitch has done too much. Curator Matt Page will likely cop some grief. That will be unfair given he has so many credits in the bank after turning the MCG from one of the worst surfaces in Australia in 2017-18 to one of the best now.
Australia were all over England with the new ball Getty Images and Cricket Australia
Fox noted Page’s unblemished record in recent years before play.
“I think the pitch debate, we’ve produced a great pitch for the last seven years,” Fox said. “We’ve had the best possible ratings, and I don’t think it’s going to be any different today. I think you’ll get a bit of movement early. And we have had challenging conditions leading up to the Test, so that makes it even harder for Matthew Page, so we’re looking forward to it. Obviously gets hotter, and hopefully we get a bit more pace throughout the Test.”
The weather was a factor. Melbourne experienced 14mm of rain last weekend and a cool spell more-akin to spring-time than in the days immediately after the summer solstice.
Page had said on Tuesday that the pitch had 10mm of grass on it, but he was aiming to reproduce something very similar to the five-day epic he conjured last year when Australia and India duked it out in front of record crowds. But that pitch got a shave to 7-8mm.
This one did not. Australia knew what was coming, having left their spinner out after seeing the “furry” surface had not had a haircut by Christmas Day.
The record crowd instead got to watch a match that looked more like a Sheffield Shield encounter at this venue. Where the game accelerated through day one at warp speed, with the ball zipping everywhere and Shield heroes Neser and Boland dominating with unplayable spells.
There was some questionable batting at times. Two of Australia’s top six were strangled down leg. Travis Head chopped on trying an ambitious cut shot to a ball that did not deviate a lot. Cameron Green ran himself out in crazy circumstances to gift England a wicket after an excellent half-century stand with Neser to resurrect the innings. Mitchell Starc holed out to mid-off.
But the sight of two modern greats in Steven Smith and Joe Root being made to look silly should give a decent clue as to how the surface played. Smith was bowled by Josh Tongue through the gate by a ball that deviated 11cm from a length fuller than five metres. Tongue admitted afterwards that he did not know it would nip in that far so Smith probably stood no chance. Neser later tied Root in knots with a string of unplayable legcutters before he finally nicked one for a 15-ball duck.
“We want cricket wickets that have a balance between bat and ball,” Greenberg had said in the morning. “We’ve got enormous faith in the venue, in the team here, in the people, the experts and like all of us, players, administrators, we’re all held accountable, and we’re all held accountable to our performances. And this is another big performance over the next five days, which I hope it does go five days.”
It’s the hope that kills you, which has been a theme for England’s fans this Ashes series. It might now apply to CA too.
This Ashes series is at least adhering to a fundamental economic model, even if the cricket is anything but fundamental. The supply of days of play is short and demand for watching it is at an all-time high.
But are the roars iconic and memorable because the moments are precious? They weren’t this Boxing Day. They all just melded into one crazy day.
