A Double Knockout at the MCG
England win the Boxing Day Test in record time, to the dismay of pretty much everyone! A dispatch from Day five!
Honestly, where do you start?
Today feels marginally better than yesterday afternoon, when I felt both anger and a complete sense of muddiness while watching Australia gift wickets to England, then England to come out and play like they were in a Christmas Day backyard slogathon.
Oh, sorry —just for context, I started writing this post on Sunday. It’s now Tuesday, day five of the Boxing Day Test, and no one can remember what happened, me included!
And to make things considerably worse, today, Sunday, December 28, the weather is set perfectly fair in Melbourne, after a chilly-billy beginning on Thursday.
Melbourne’s a city expectant of a Test match playing along nicely in the background while it goes about its post-Christmas business. After all, this Test match, over all the others, functions on time-honoured rituals. Seriously, boys, we cut the damn grass to 7mm - not five, eight, or in this case, fucking 10mm. It’s 7mm. Assuming the MCG pays the curator’s wages, I wonder if they reneged on their 2025 bonus! And Matt Page and his crew said, “Fark you!”
Are you confused? So am I!
So today, now Tuesday, an improbable day five, the anger is less, but the confusion and apathy linger.
Metaphorically, I’ve switched from place to place, still to land on a compatible parable—is there one? “Likely not. Actually, I do have one, I’ll drop it in later.
So, in the absence of what seemed like a reasonable analogy, I tried to transplant myself back to how Test cricket was, when I played—not Test cricket, before you check, but the level below, I think it’s still called First-class cricket, the feeder pool that this England team left behind three years ago.
That said, Test cricket had Lara, Tendulkar, and Ponting with the bat, and McGrath, Warne and co with the ball. Teams won the toss and batted, and batted, and some, often into the shadows of day two - yes, it wasn’t inconceivable that one innings then, would live as long as four innings now - I hear you, how boring, but reassuring! And the wicket-taking mirrored a 60-minute documentary, now we have TikTok and Snapchat set-ups—I know, get with it, you say; you fucking Luddite!
See, even this doesn’t work.
Just start with the reporting—why not? Everyone else does. Read a few reports and form your own analysis—joking. I watched close to every ball—all 140 overs!
And what to report? Try this:
One team got sent in and got out before they were really in, and the other team that sent the first team in did the same. Then the first team decided on more of the same, while the last one, who went back in after they got the first team out again, swung like a rusty gate, and danced like Bruno Mars—that counters your Luddite claim—and before they could fuck it up, they needed 20 to win, and they did it. They, England, outlasted the other team, Australia, just. How good? Except patrons were still queuing for their beer, and it was all over!
So, it must be said in all seriousness: England won a Test match in Australia. It was their first Test victory in Australia for fifteen years.
And the analogy I landed on was a “Double knockout.” Two boxers out on their feet with one last left-hook in them, they swing simultaneously, connect, both go down, with England making the 10-count on nine—that’s the best I can do.
Of course, there had to be serious commentary; these people are paid for their opinions. We must listen, digest, and try to believe. Remember, these said people, in the main, only have one agenda, and it’s not for your betterment. Has self-promotion in the media ever been stronger? There are exceptions.
So why did 36 wickets fall in 140 overs—I’ll leave the match to you. But that’s a combined strike-rate of 23 (a wicket every 23 balls)
The harsh but manufactured truth—being offered by the bowling-centric media—is that there were many dismissals over the two days where the pitch was silently blameless.
Yes, true without context. With context, not so.
In any given wicket ball, the pitch may have been innocent, but it is always culpable by association. Indifferent bounce, lateral seam movement, and variable post-bounce ball-speeds will always be an aiding and abetting accomplice to a traitorous surface. I recall Australian golfer Steve Elkington, after winning his PGA championship, saying of the bumpy and uneven greens, “I used the bumps as target lines, it helped me get my start lines, and the imperfections took away any overplayed expectations. In short, Elkington bluffed himself into thinking there was nothing unsavoury in the Riviera greens. Unfortunately for the day-three ticket holders, no batter on either side was able to play the internal bluff game.
This was a stupid game of Russian Roulette. It wasn’t a case of who blinked first; both teams did this. It was who blinked last.
Both teams are in a state of flux; I believed England had more to fix than Australia, but now I am not so sure. England’s victory only served to highlight the opportunities missed in Perth and Brisbane, less so Adelaide.
Is this closure for Bazball? No, because it doesn’t exist.
England’s biggest gaffe in this era was telling the world what they planned to do while transforming English and World cricket. Internal IP is gold, to be hidden in a London vault, not let loose on the world and the adoring media. Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes are victims of their own enthusiasm. And, there’s nothing really wrong with that at a fundamental level.
England owes it to their emerging players to bury whatever Bazball is and retreat to a middle ground where Jacob Bethell, Gus Atkinson, and others can learn the intricacies of the purest of all formats in peace, without opening and closing their eyes.
Ps. I’ll get back to you on Australia. They retained the Ashes and are streets ahead in the World Test Championship.