Ben Stokes did not bother dressing his words up after England wrapped up the fourth Test inside 852 deliveries. “Being brutally honest, that’s not really what you want,” he admitted, still half in disbelief that a Boxing Day Test could end before most people had polished off their leftovers. England won by an innings and change, but cricket was the poorer for the brevity.
Key facts first. Thirty-six wickets fell in less than two days. No batter from either side reached 50 – something Australia had not witnessed since 1932. It was the second two-day finish of the series and only the fourth such match ever played in Australia. A crowd of 90,000 had booked for day three; all will now receive refunds, leaving Cricket Australia to swallow several million dollars in lost takings.
The pitch – 10 mm of green top left on by curator Matt Page – was the talking point. Seam movement never relented, yet nobody argued it was unsafe. Just unrelenting. Stokes, never shy of a straight line, suggested an international double standard had been exposed. “But I’m pretty sure if that was somewhere else in the world, there’d be hell on,” he said. “Not the best thing for games that should be played over five days.” Asked whether he was hinting at the sub-continent, he parried with a smile: “It’s your words, not mine.”
He will make his feelings clear in the official paperwork. When quizzed on how the report might read, the answer was quick. “It won’t be the best,” Stokes noted, before stressing that his players had simply adapted better. “You can’t change it once you start the game and you’ve just got to play what’s in front of you,” he added. England’s four-man seam attack found the right lengths quicker, Australia’s less so, and that was effectively that.
Steven Smith chose a softer line, even if he could not pretend the surface was balanced. “Obviously, it was a tricky one,” the Australian captain said. “Thirty-six wickets over two days, it probably offered just a little bit too much.” Smith praised last year’s strip – eight millimetres of grass, five-day match, last-session drama – and suggested the groundsman may simply have overshot. “Maybe if you took it from 10 to eight, it would have been a nice, challenging wicket, maybe a little bit more even,” he said. “But groundsmen are always learning and yeah, he’ll probably take something from that, no doubt.”
Why so much grass? Melbourne endured a cool, damp build-up, and Page, wary of previous Tests that died on slow, tired surfaces, gambled on leaving the thatch. He produced lively pitches at the Gabba in 2022 and the last two Shield games here, so the risk was hardly reckless. It just went too far this time.
The historical angle is stark. The last series to host two two-day Tests came back in 1912, when pitches were more mud heap than manicure. Modern television schedules, ticket pricing and player workloads make that sort of brevity feel almost absurd now. The ICC’s pitch and outfield monitoring process allows match referees to rate surfaces from “very good” down to “poor”; anything labelled “poor” can attract demerit points. The MCG already sits on one demerit point after a lifeless draw in 2017. Another would be uncomfortable for a venue that hosts the sport’s biggest annual attendance.
Behind the headlines, several players spoke of mixed emotions. James Anderson, still swinging the ball at 39, was honest enough to admit bowlers enjoyed themselves but sympathised with paying punters. David Warner, whose final home Test innings lasted 11 balls, wore a rueful grin outside the dressing-room: “Sometimes you’re the statue, sometimes the pigeon,” he quipped.
Will the row linger? Probably until the next decent surface appears and everyone calms down. Test cricket has long walked a tightrope between lively contest and unfair lottery. The MCG slipped the wrong side this week, but the lessons are obvious: a little less grass, perhaps a touch less moisture, and five days might just feel possible again.
For now, England head to Sydney 2-1 up, content with points and performance yet mindful that winning a sprint tells you little about stamina. Australia, meanwhile, will hope the SCG reverts to type – drier, slower, offering something for Nathan Lyon. A decider stretching deep into day five would be the perfect antidote to this manic fortnight.
Until then the memory of those 852 balls will hang in the air, a reminder that even the proud Boxing Day Test is not immune to mis-calculation. As Stokes muttered while packing his kit, “Not ideal.”
