{"id":377055,"date":"2025-12-29T00:09:21","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T00:09:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/377055\/"},"modified":"2025-12-29T00:09:21","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T00:09:21","slug":"the-blunt-phone-call-from-cricket-boss-to-the-mcc-amid-mcg-test-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/377055\/","title":{"rendered":"The blunt phone call from cricket boss to the MCC amid MCG Test disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cTo their credit, [the MCC] have created great wickets over a period since the change in 2017 and as I said to Stuart, the margins for error are so small, and so on this occasion they got it wrong. Everyone pays a heavy price for that, but that\u2019s the reality. They didn\u2019t get this one right.\u201c<\/p>\n

For Fox and his staff, this involved activating scenarios for day two to be the final day of the Test: notifying hospitality staff of shift changes, contacting charities about the repurposing of food already prepared for days three and four, and discussing how they would explain a two-day game to the world.<\/p>\n

\"MCG<\/p>\n

MCG curator Matthew Page fronts the media on Sunday with his boss, MCC CEO Stuart Fox.Credit: Wayne Taylor<\/p>\n

Greenberg\u2019s mind, meanwhile, raced briefly back to discussions that had taken place in Perth around the possibility of playing a T20 game on one of the remaining scheduled days of play.<\/p>\n

CA chair Mike Baird and former Melbourne Stars and Collingwood president Eddie McGuire (a CA hospitality guest this week) were among those eager to see it happen. But it fell to Joel Morrison, CA\u2019s head of events, to provide a reminder of logistical impossibility.<\/p>\n

Loading<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst conversation was clearly, \u2018we\u2019re not going to get to day three, so this one\u2019s going to sting\u2019,\u201d Greenberg said. \u201cThen we started to think about what we could do today [Sunday]… Everyone\u2019s mind went to \u2018let\u2019s play another game, let\u2019s turn it into a T20\u2019 and all those things I can understand.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose conversations were real [after the first Test ended in two days] in Perth.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the reality is people have purchased tickets for a Test match, they\u2019ve paid a price at a set point, they do a transaction with us, so everyone\u2019s got to get a refund. To turn that around in such a short space of time is very difficult. Not to mention the fact that we\u2019ve got to prepare for another Test match with Test Championship points.\u201d<\/p>\n

The compromise was the appearance of the entire Australian squad in the fan zone erected outside the MCG for stage appearance and autographs.<\/a> Greenberg, Baird and CA executives mingled with the players. All were aware that the events of the past two days had left a scar on the summer.<\/p>\n

Watching the Boxing Day broadcast at home in Adelaide on Friday morning, Australia\u2019s doyen of pitch preparation Les Burdett had an uneasy feeling about the pitch he could see on TV. Now 74, having retired as Adelaide Oval curator in 2010, Burdett still serves as CA\u2019s pitch adviser, speaking with groundsmen around the country and also the head of cricket operations Peter Roach.<\/p>\n

When the clock ticked past 10am Melbourne time, Burdett knew it was too late to take any more grass off the thickly matted MCG surface.<\/p>\n

\"Australia<\/p>\n

Australia coach Andrew McDonald inspects the MCG pitch on Christmas Eve. Credit: Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you look at the curator\u2019s role, we are able to do whatever we like until half an hour before the start of the game, and once the coin is tossed, the running of the game is in the hands of the umpires,\u201d Burdett said.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the morning, the pitch is swept and cut at the same cutting height it was cut on day one. You\u2019re not allowed to change the cutting height of the mower for the duration of the game. Once the first day was over, he couldn\u2019t change the cutting height or do anything else to that end.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I saw this one on the morning of day one, I thought \u2018mmm, yeah\u2019. Before a ball was bowled, you could see how much grass was on it. So I thought, \u2018well, I guess Pagey knows what he\u2019s doing\u2019. I marked his pitch last year as the best for the series. I congratulated Pagey and said, \u2018mate, that was the best one\u2019. So to turn around now … the lawnmower broke down.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Former<\/p>\n

Former Adelaide Oval curator Les Burdett, who is now a pitch adviser to Cricket Australia.Credit: Sebastian Costanzo<\/p>\n

As the game took on a breakneck pace, with 20 wickets falling on day one<\/a>, Page said he was in a \u201cstate of shock\u201d at what transpired. For Burdett, the procession of wickets was not foreseeable.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know Pagey would\u2019ve had the best intentions for the game, but this just went a bit pear-shaped on him,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve never been a big advocate for too much grass anyway because it\u2019s far better when the ball touches the clay and the ball comes onto the bat and it opens the game up.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen you get the opportunity for spikes to get into the clay, and you\u2019ve got up and down bounce. If you happen to have too much grass, what can happen is the ball can actually, instead of sliding off the surface, it goes into the pile of grass and jumps at you. A bit of grass is fine… On this one, it was just a bit too coarse. The 10 millimetres he would have got away with, but it seemed to me the grass was a bit coarse.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you watched [Marnus] Labuschagne get hit a couple of times on the hands, that ball just hit the pitch and jumped. There\u2019s balloon bounce where the pitch is a bit soft and the ball can balloon up like a tennis ball, but when it\u2019s hard it can grab the grass and move sideways or jump at you. So sadly, that\u2019s what happened here.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Burdett does point out that a trend towards grassier pitches has brought more of the unknown into the game at the same time as batsmen have got more proactive and bowlers more durable.<\/p>\n

\"Marnus<\/p>\n

Marnus Labuschagne copped one at the MCG.Credit: Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cPlayers now are far more urgent about what they do,\u201d he said. \u201cCricketers are entertainers and it is right that they do try to move the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were some flat tracks around the place in the past, and I\u2019d rather an enthralling draw than a quick two-day one. It\u2019s still up to the individual cricketer how he approaches the game, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Loading<\/p>\n

This is a key point for Greenberg as he looks at how to avoid more such rapid finishes to Test matches. Is pitch preparation out of step with how the game is now being played?<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the way batters are batting and the way the game is evolving, are the wickets in lockstep with that or are they not, and if they\u2019re not, how do we ensure they are so we can try to balance the commercial implications versus the performance,\u201d Greenberg said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not an exact science. I feel sometimes talking to the people who prepare wickets that it\u2019s all about the secret herbs and spices that go into it. I\u2019m not suggesting this is easy and the margins are very fine, but I\u2019m not sure if those conversations have been had over the last couple of years as the game has evolved. That\u2019s the conversation I want to pick up at the end of the series.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Sunday morning, before he fronted a packed press conference to explain what had happened in the middle, Page received a consoling message from Burdett, who has long counselled curators to balance the competing demands of commerce, team performance and the \u201cright thing by cricket\u201d. But he is hesitant to be too prescriptive. <\/p>\n

Loading<\/p>\n

\u201dI wouldn\u2019t like someone coming to my paddock and telling me what to do,\u201d Burdett said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy role with CA has been not to tell them what to do. I\u2019m here to support you in any issues you\u2019ve got and hopefully collectively you and I can gameplan, and you need to take ownership of that gameplan.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody is hurting more at the moment than Matty Page,\u201d Burdett said. \u201cI sent him a quiet message this morning to say, \u2018I hope you\u2019re ok mate, if you want to chat, give me a call.\u2019 It\u2019s very, very lonely when things go wrong as a curator.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cTo their credit, [the MCC] have created great wickets over a period since the change in 2017 and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377056,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-377055","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-boxing","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}