![\"England](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/england-captain-ben-stokes-VIXUXOAZ6NFYXFNYQMKGWMWSPI.jpg\")
<\/p>\nAfter the second two-day Test of the summer, Australia players will return to the MCG to sign autographs for fans who were instead hoping to watch them play out in the middle.<\/p>\n
Cricket Australia is bracing for a monster financial loss after England won the Boxing Day Test inside two days, only a month after the Ashes opener in Perth also ended with three days to spare.<\/p>\n
It is the first time the same series has had multiple two-day Tests in 129 years.<\/p>\n
Millions of dollars in refunds will be handed to patrons who had purchased tickets for day three, which had virtually been sold out.<\/p>\n
MCC curator Matt Page will front the media on Sunday to explain why he decided to leave 10 mm of grass on the pitch.<\/p>\n
Speaking before the match, Page was hoping to replicate the surface for the epic 2024 Test against India that ended in the final session on day five.<\/p>\n
But instead, the pitch became a fast bowler’s dream, as neither team bothered with one over from a spinner.<\/p>\n
This pitch was treacherous to bat on for both sides, prompting criticism even from fast-bowling greats such as Stuart Broad, Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee, and former England captain Michael Vaughan.<\/p>\n
“If that was somewhere else in the world, you know, there’d be hell on<\/p>\n
“Maybe if you took it from 10 to eight mm (of grass), it would have been a nice, challenging wicket, but maybe a little bit more even,” stand-in Australia captain Steve Smith said.<\/p>\n
“But groundsmen are always learning and they’ll probably take something from that.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
England captain Ben Stokes. (Source: Getty)<\/p>\n
England captain Ben Stokes, even after securing his country’s first Test win in Australia for 15 years, slammed the state of the pitch for being too heavily in favour of bowlers.<\/p>\n
“Being brutally honest, that’s not really what you want,” Stokes said.<\/p>\n
“Boxing Day Test match, you don’t want a game finishing in less than two days. Not ideal.”<\/p>\n
Nobody from either side managed to reach 50, with Travis Head’s second-innings 46 the top score. <\/p>\n
It was the first Test in Australia where a batter has not posted a fifty since 1932.<\/p>\n
Both teams thought so little of the pitch they decided the best way to bat was to attack rather than wait for an unplayable delivery.<\/p>\n
Smith praised the batting of England blaster Harry Brook, who regularly charged down the pitch and looked to play outrageously aggressive shots.<\/p>\n
Brook followed up a first-innings 41 with an unbeaten 18 in the successful run chase.<\/p>\n
“Running down the wicket, playing some kind of rogue shots and trying to get the bowlers off their lengths that way,” Smith said of Brook.<\/p>\n
“Whether we could have been a bit more proactive potentially, and played a few more of those, that’s something we’ll talk about. <\/p>\n
“It’s also a tricky one to do that, you want to try and dig in for your team.”<\/p>\n
The rapid-fire Boxing Day Test comes eight years after the MCG pitch came under criticism and received a “poor” rating when only 24 wickets fell across five days in a dull draw.<\/p>\n
Australia and England will enjoy an extra three days to prepare for the fifth and final Test at the SCG, starting on January 4.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After the second two-day Test of the summer, Australia players will return to the MCG to sign autographs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204350,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,111,139,69,213],"class_list":{"0":"post-204349","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}