Just nowFri 26 Dec 2025 at 11:13pm

How’s the weather looking in Melbourne today?MCG members arrive(Getty Images)

It’s chilly again, but not nearly as freezing as yesterday. Barely a cloud in the sky too which will aid in the all-round defrosting.

Cool temps aren’t going to help the pitch though, which should remain relatively soft as it hasn’t yet had a chance to really bake out. Not to say there will be 20 wickets again today, but batting isn’t going to be a whole lot easier.

1m agoFri 26 Dec 2025 at 11:12pm

Funny story…

After yesterday’s action one (with day three tickets) would hope this is a pitch that settles over time rather than becoming more chaotic.

– Doc

I feel your pain Doc.

And so did one of my good friends, who was so worried that he wouldn’t see any cricket with his third day cricket that he scrambled and got a ticket for today’s action instead.

Will the pitch flatten out? Scott Boland didn’t seem certain when Fox Sports spoke to him a little while ago.

And Dean Bilton at the ground tells us that there is some suggestion that the pitch is going to play even worse today.

Which is fun.

6m agoFri 26 Dec 2025 at 11:07pm

Who scored the most runs yesterday?

 Hands up if you had these four  batters in your top scorers yesterday…

Harry Brook (41)(Getty Images)Michael Neser (35)(Getty Images)Usman Khawaja (29)(Getty Images)Gus Atkinson (28)(Getty Images)

11m agoFri 26 Dec 2025 at 11:02pm

Is the pitch doing too much?(Getty Images)

Look, nobody is going to accuse this England team of having the first sense of what it is to value their wickets.

But for 20 of them to fall in a single day (obviously only 10 of them English) suggests there was something pretty serious going on with the pitch.

“We’re always looking for a fair balance between bat and ball. I thought that was unfair for the batters,” Michael Vaughan told the BBC Test Match Special at the close yesterday.

“The pitch has done plenty. There’s been plenty of movement out there. It’s not been easy for both sides but I don’t like seeing a pitch do so much.”

So was it doing too much?

Some of the seam movement off the pitch was excessive to most observers eyes, making some deliveries completely unplayable.

Former Australian coach Darren Lehmann declared the MCG pitch — which featured 10mm of grass on it — as worse than the Perth pitch from the series opener.

However, batters from both sides came in for heavy criticism for a lack of application throughout the day’s play.

Lehmann’s former teammate Jason Gillespie accused England’s batters of putting the task of surviving in the middle in the “too hard basket”, while fellow former Australian paceman Stuart Clark said the overall spectacle was “certainly not good for Test cricket”.

“Looking at the scores, obviously people will say it’s the type of surface that’s done too much,” Gillespie said on ABC Radio.

“Bowlers have bowled well, but the bowlers are allowed to bowl well. Batters are allowed to trust their technique, strategise and figure out a game plan, and we just haven’t seen that today.”

Read more here.

16m agoFri 26 Dec 2025 at 10:57pm

Yesterday’s stats in a single tweet19m agoFri 26 Dec 2025 at 10:54pm’Carnage and chaos’ at the G(Getty)

Everyone has a take on the first day’s play at the MCG after a ridiculous 20 wickets fell and we saw Boxing Day end with the start of the third innings of the Test.

I think most people agree the bowling was pretty good and the batting was lacking decent technique, but that the pitch was probably a bit too helpful to ball movement.

“There’s a pretty fine balance between action and excitement, and carnage and chaos. And I think this tipped the balance into carnage and chaos,” former Test opener Ed Cowan said on the ABC Cricket Podcast.

“Would it have been possible for it to have been a 13- or 14-wicket day? And how much is attributable to the conducive conditions and how much is attributable to some pretty average batting? I think it’s probs 60/40 conditions. There was some pretty average batting.

“I’ll tell you what’s gone out of the game: The forward defence, the locked-in forward defence under the eyes, bat and pad together where the ball just trickles back to the bowler, you show the maker’s name.

“Call me old fashioned, but a few more of those today and — I still think it would’ve been a 13- or 14-wicket day, because there would’ve been balls with your name on it — but a little bit more graft, a little bit of technique, a little bit more patience and I think we would’ve seen a lesser outcome of carnage. But I think there was too much grass on the wicket.”

26m agoFri 26 Dec 2025 at 10:48pm

Welcome to day two(Getty Images)

Hello everybody and welcome to day two of the Boxing Day Test.

Blip, zog, wug, flike, spoat, skron, spleg, drom, bibble, slambition…

Oh, I’m sorry, given the nonsense we saw yesterday I figured I’d just start with some complete gobbledygook on this morning’s blog.

A ridiculous 20 wickets fell on day one, a combination of some terrible shots, excellent bowling and a pitch that in my opinion moved excessively off the seam.

England finally discovered what a good length looked like in Australia — it only took them 12 days to be fair — but as has been the case all series, the batters completely negated any good the men with the ball did by throwing their wickets away with complete abandon.

Will we see similar carnage today? We’ll find out soon enough.