Ok, enough poring over the entrails of Adelaide. On to the big one athte Melbourne Cricket Ground, the M.C.G. or as we locals call it the G.
Even though it is dead rubber 100,000 or thereabouts on day one is the usual attendance. Mild weather 19 celsius forecast for Day One. Melbournians will be hoping that local hero Scotty Boland has another stellar effort at his home and favourite ground.
Cummins and Lyon are scratchings- 2 pretty huge outs and you’d assume Smith comes back in. OK that’s 2 bowlers out and a batter in. Hmm.
Surely time for some changes in the English team and maybe don’t announce locked in changes so far in advance this time.
There aren’t really that many changes they can make given the squad. Duckett could do with some time away but there’s no spare opener. Maybe Jacks, but asking him to open would be as unfair as asking him to be our main spinner… Oh. Bethell in for Pope is locked in, surely.
And probably makes sense to rest Archer – he’s played 3 and him getting injured again with the series already lost would be the cherry on top of this mess. So Atkinson or Potts for him. Not the world’s most terrifying pace attack, but here we are.
And why not give Bashir a go, he could no doubt do with some cricket and he couldn’t be worse as our main spinner than Jacks surely…
I’m not terribly hopeful basically.
Rest Archer , gosh. I thought he was starting to get a bit of match fitness that he should have had at the start.
History of breaking down, not exactly what you want in your best/fastest bowler
There’s a lesson here for someone in the English camp.
Starc is 35, just about 36, and seems to be able to just keep going. And to keep going at a good pace as well.
Archer? “We might need to pull him after three matches just in case he breaks down. Again.”
Personally, I think half the reason he breaks down is because he doesn’t play enough.
Cricket really is another language. Do they all speak it, down-under?
Becoming less so.
Back here, in the Daily Torygraph Sir Geoffrey of Boycott has waded in regarding Bazball saying No-one wants to see dour cricket but…” which is a tiny bit rich coming from him. Michael Vaughan has been sticking the knives in too.
England would snatch your hand off for either of those two at the moment!
But in reality the only change might be Bethel for Pope as their are no other batting options in the squad.
How are you Junior since your accident? I hope all’s well
Cricket? Couldn’t care less, that’s unless we’re winning! 🤣
Thanks Pyramid. Improving. Still limping , still aches. Reckon arthritis is a good chance in the cold where the screws are. But hey ho. “ I’m still standing “
The outcome of these two dead rubbers rather depends on which Australia turns up.
An Australia that’ll want to rub salt into the wound (likely) or an Australia that will have the cue on the rack and a barbeque and cold beers in abundance (less likely).
Let us not kid ourselves that a 3-2 defeat will somehow make it better, as we’ll never know if this England team could win a Test in Australia (unlikely) if something was really riding on it.
If England do pull off a win, please let them not be as embarrassing as that last Test at The Oval two years ago. .. “Lads, ‘they’ retained the Ashes, what don’t you understand!”
I think I’d prefer 5-0 to that.
“After three warm up games the England cricket team are well prepared for the First Test in Melbourne”
Arf!
Arf arf
Daily Torygraph laying into them again today. Booze etc and McCullum describing his job as “fun.” How dare he!
Greg Chappell in today’s Sydney Morning Herald –
“This Ashes campaign might fairly be seen as among the most ill-conceived British expeditions since (Captain) Scott’s doomed venture. It was equivalent to preparing for an English Channel swim by doing a few laps of a heated pool”.
Full article here
https://archive.md/EcODx
The more you read the more you shake your head. Stokes suggesting a morning run at Noosa and not one player turning up to join him. I cannot imagine the Aussies not fronting if Cummins asked. Ok maybe Trav.
Video of Duckett so shit faced he can hardly talk. Doubt he was Robinson Crusoe- just the one caught on film.
England don’t seem to behave like a team. The individualism that Bazball promotes seems to be at the expense of cohesion.
I wonder if McCullum tries to come over as one of the lads. He’s not much older than them. If this is the case I can see discipline and respect for him disappears
It seems like it Dai. Certainly doesn’t seem to be any selection insecurity.
And now Archer breaks down and is out of the series . It seems most of us, including Australia, thought England were in with a real chance of regaining the Ashes – we were all Wrong.
I’m not sure keeping a bowler in cotton wool is the way to go. A test series is gruelling and you need players that can endure. Doesn’t matter if you are the best bowler in the world if you cant get on the park.
Ok. Cummins is now out and Hazelwood never played a test this series but, over the journey they have had resilience.
It would seem it is the shorter game and the decline of your County comp that has denied England of a proper proving ground. Starc foresook T20 and sacks if money to extend his Test career.
Problem with Archer is he has all the attributes to be one of the best fast bowlers ever apart from one thing – a body that can cope with fast bowling. Apart from a couple of tests earlier in his career he has never been over bowled, poor chap flings down a hundred overs or so of high-class high-speed before, once again, retiring to the treatment room. Mind you, he’s been on a high-wage retainer for many years now – an educated guess would suggest that for every ball he’s bowled in first-class cricket he’s been paid a tenner.
I’ve just had another look at my abacus – nearer a thousand quid every time he picks up the ball
Doing your head in isn’t it Lodes?
Australia going in sans a spinner. Never liked that. Great for Neser and Doggett though.
To use Steve Waugh’s phrase it would seem the English team has mentally disintegrated. I’m not sure the absence of a spinner will matter. But let’s hope it does. We all want a decent contest.
Ok, I wanted a good contest but steady on lads.
🙂
The commentator called it!
😳
‘The avenue of apprehension…” 🙂
The artist previously known as the corridor of indecision.
So England remember how to bowl, and catch…. just in time
/s
… but not how to bat
10 mm of grass , tricky wicket. But jeez
Been attempting to instal a bracket for the hose reel. 8 wickets fallen and still not finished.
It’s the hope that kills you! The MCG used to be a road , big innings and drawn games. Seems the pendulum has swung the other way. 7 mm grass last year 10 mm this time.
Didn’t mind Brook having a go. At least threw the bowlers off their line. Sadly this test would be a massive money spinner and Cricket Australia needs the dough.
What a hilarious last over of the day
Blimey, this really isn’t going to be remembered as a great Ashes series is it? Is this England’s worst ever batting performance there? They are completely shot. The bowling slightly better, but so intermittent that you never know what will turn up.
Australia’s batting has basically been Head and Carey but their bowling (mostly their second-string attack after all) has just been so all over England’s batting it’s actually embarrassing.
How much worse can this get?
Even Broad has been complaining the wicket has favoured the bowlers too much. We are due some hot weather and maybe they greened it up a bit more in preparation for that. But it’s a disaster. Over 90000 tickets sold for each of the first 3 days at least. Refunds , the catering over ordering and us , the punters on the couch with one less excuse for not resuming our chores.
At this point, I have started to assume that Australia and England have a pact to kill test cricket stone dead. Even the Barmy Army must be thinking they have better uses for time and money than flying half round the world for two day matches.
My groundsman nephew copped heaps after the game. His view was that neither team dug in properly to weather the conditions … a few straight bat defensive strokes then wallop.
Saw this on FB.
New trivia question just dropped: “Which pace bowler opened the batting for Australia on day 1 of a Boxing Day Ashes Test, and was not out at stumps?”
This is crazy.
Blimey, I wake up and it’s the Australians imploding. 8 out in single figures and England within sight of chasing them down. Surprised and relieved if England pull this off, but dont think any of this is a great advert for test cricket is it?
I write this after only looking at the scores, and I’ve yet to investigate further, so maybe something miraculous has happened or more likely just some shit cricket on a dodgy pitch.
Blimey, though.
Well they won, just, but please let’s not find this the start of an attempt to rewrite this sorry mess. The least shit side on the day wins. A farce of a game in a farce of a series. With England by a distance the biggest farceurs overall.
Whoever prepared this pitch had better get himself down the Labour Exchange pronto …
I dont think it was “ that” bad. Your mob did ok in the second innings. Can’t have changed that much in the course of the day.
Where “ok in second innings” means 178-6 on Day 2….hmmm?
How many refunded tickets is it this time? No one wins from this
Fucken disaster @Chiz. A mate flew down from Sydney for days 2,3 and 4.
As discussed previously. Refunded tickets , catering, accommodation tv advertising.
Piss poor effort all round. ,
My mate flew out with his 12 year old son for the last two tests. I guess they’ll have had a fun couple of days at least!
I wonder about refunds. It’s not an act of nature or something similar, just a match finished really quickly.
I think refunds kick in if it lasts less than 2 days which was the case. No doubt this will be complicated by categories of tickets etc.
A long time ago admittedly but my experience in similar circumstances was a partial refund – £10 off a £25 ticket?
Don’t you pay for each day separately in which case surely full refunds for days of cricket that don’t happen at all?
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/dec/27/bad-for-business-cricket-australia-facing-5m-loss-after-two-day-test-at-mcg?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
From a Melbourne sports commentator Rohan Connolly.
Well done England on a belated victory. But there’s a massive elephant in the room after this Test IMO. Two two-day Tests this series exposes an issue I think has been lurking for some time. And it’s NOT about pitches. It’s about the disappearance of both technique and sufficient concentration skills from the art of batting.
Look how often teams have been skittled for ridiculously low tallies over the past decade. Why? No, we haven’t suddenly started playing on worse tracks. Yes, this pitch helped the bowlers a lot. But anyone who has read about cricket in the era of uncovered wickets or (like me) witnessed some of those crack-riddled MCG nightmare tracks of the 1980s with grubbers and ‘poppers’ taking heads off knows that it hasn’t actually been THAT bad.
I’m not a huge fan of T20 (just find it all a bit ‘same-ish’) but accept it’s bringing new fans to the game. But I’m finding it harder to believe it’s not seriously impacting players’ ability to play at Test level. So what happens when new players and fans (via T20) come only at the expense of the quality of the game the people who love cricket most MOST love? That’s where I think we’re at. And when the standard of Test cricket begins to obviously suffer, that is a BIG problem. #Ashes
Lot of sense in there, a lot
It sounds a bit familiar.
It seems to echo criticism of Gooch’s team from 30 years ago, though the target was simple one-day cricket as neither twenty overs nor The 100 were even fevered dreams in the minds of cricket administrators.
I don’t disagree with the analysis.
Here’s another perspective:
To all jokers shitbagging the MCG wicket. The curator puts up with a ridiculous timetable.
AFL, Taylor Swift, AC/DC and all sorts of stuff, gets delivered a pitch that he never nurtured, slaps it in the park a month or two before Boxing Day and the people expect diamonds.
Turf is tricky. Really tricky.
I hope the boys are in the shed having an ale and still loving this caper…we’ve all been there!.
Andy Fairweather Low has played the MCG?
Probably wide eyed and legless like our cricketers.
In the last six Tests v. Australia, three have been won by Australia, one was drawn (that ridiculous 4th Test in 2023 when, for the only time in the whole series, England decided to bat slow when they had to bat fast!!!), and England have won two.
Those two were both dead rubbers. The Ashes went thattaway, fellas. Whoppee-do.
Oh dear, what a farce. Please don’t tell me that this will prolong the Stokes/McCullum era.
If they’re still there next June, it’s New Zealand all the way for me. I might even get myself a Kiwi sunhat.
Local village sides had some exciting games this year, albeit the standard is pretty awful. Still it’s entertaining in its own way. Then again they aren’t trying to charge me £100s of pounds to watch. I posted elsewhere earlier today suggesting that this series was like watching a 5 game series between the Northants an Leicester sides of the 20s/30s, when both teams essentiallly had 2, perhaps 3 good players.
More on the pitch. BTW. I think Dizzy is coaching in England. You could do a lot worse than add him to your coaching ranks and maybe even succeed McCullum.
Former Australia Fast Bowler Jason Gillespie Has Defends MCG Pitch And Expressed Serious Concerns Over The Mindset And Preparation Of Modern-Day Batters.
He Said : ” My overriding feeling is the batting hasn’t been as good as it could be, I can’t believe what I’ve seen to be honest. Yes there’s movement off the surface and a little through the air. But I wouldn’t say there’s demons in the surface.
It just seems to me the modern batter, the moment there’s any sideways movement there’s this saying of ‘there’s one with my name on it so make the most of it’. I’m not quite sure that’s the right approach.”
He Added : ” Are modern batters batting enough on surfaces that favour bowlers in practice or do they just go and have the easy throwdowns as opposed to a good hard contest in training?
That’s how you learn, work out solutions, problem solve, work out strategies. We certainly haven’t seen any of that.”
I’m with Dizzy.
Modern batters think they have to approach wickets like the MCG on Boxing Day with a T20 approach.
Yes it was probably too green – I loved hearing Josh Tongue say it had 10 milligrams of grass – but if that’s what’s in front of you then deal with it. Play defensively to preserve your wicket and hit the loose balls.
Says a person who’s never played cricket at all…*
*Although I did umpire my son’s Under-11 team’s one dayers. I was very fair. “Did you hit that?” I’d ask the batter…
Twas ever thus…the 5th Ashes test, MCG, Feb 1959. 6 days and 8-ball overs! Spoiler alert: Australia won by 9 wickets. I’d forgotten that bouncers used to be called bumpers.
If the fruity voice-over seems familiar, it’s none other than Michael Charlton, who was a fixture on the Beeb for years, notably on Panorama. No idea he was Australian – certainly doesn’t sound it. He died earlier this year at the ripe old age of 98.
There’s something I’ve never liked about Greg Chappell – I take every word back
https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/memo-to-australia-and-england-honour-the-format-that-has-elevated-you-1517475
GC always writes well. I agree with that he says there too. Briefly, if you can’t be bothered to read it, today’s cricketers are not respecting the tradition of digging in and dealing with whatever the pitch is offering
That’s what we’ve been saying about England all series! It’s not flipping rocket science..