The hosts of the fourth Ashes Test in Melbourne, which finished on Saturday after only two days, said there were discussions about the players returning on Sunday for an exhibition match in an attempt to placate ticket holders and broadcasters.
It is understood that the idea was first mooted by the Victoria sports minister, Steve Dimopoulos. The Melbourne Cricket Club chief executive, Stuart Fox, said: “There were alternatives discussed. There was talk of players coming out and having a hit, but that didn’t get up.”
That the suggestion was made at all shows how anxious Melbourne’s sports administrators are in the wake of a dramatically early finish that will cost Cricket Australia (CA) in the region of £5million in returned tickets for what had been a day-three sell-out, as well as lost hospitality revenues.
The state of Victoria is still feeling the PR fallout from its failure to host the 2026 Commonwealth Games, proposals for which collapsed due to overambitious planning and inflated cost estimates. The cancellation cost was put at almost £300million and a damning parliamentary report accused ministers of mismanagement.
Given that England had just won their first Test on Australian soil since January 2011, it is highly unlikely that they would have entertained such a proposal and a team spokesman confirmed that no conversations were had with them.
Attention has now turned to preparations for the final Test in Sydney, starting on Sunday, with the CA chief executive, Todd Greenberg, saying the spotlight was now on the SCG pitch and its curator, Adam Lewis. The most recent Test at Sydney, between Australia and India, finished inside three days, with no side scoring more than 185. Both of this season’s Sheffield Shield matches also finished in three days.
“People in Sydney will be knowing full well the spotlight will be on them in a day or two, and I’m really hoping the SCG wicket performs well for us,” Greenberg said.
Travis Head, the Australia batsman and leading runscorer in this Ashes series, said: “After the last couple of days [in Melbourne], he [the Sydney curator] would probably be a touch nervous. We can only go by the Shield games they’ve [hosted]. The news was it [the pitch] was pretty good, and then got a couple of cracks. We saw cracks on it last year with grass.”
Melbourne Cricket Club CEO Stuart Fox and head curator Matthew Page, right, held a press conference the morning after the fourth Test ended amid questions about the pitch
JAMES ROSS/EPA
Matthew Page, the MCG’s head curator, said he was in a “state of shock” during England’s two-day victory, in which 36 wickets fell in six sessions after he left 10mm of grass on the surface. Page took the unusual step of holding a press conference the morning after the match.
“I’ve never been involved in a Test match like it and hopefully I’m not involved in a Test match like it again,” he said. “We know this hasn’t gone as we planned. We will look at what we need to do to improve.
“I was in a state of shock after the first day. We’re obviously disappointed that it’s [only] gone two days. We’ll learn from that and make sure we get it right next year.”
CA is not insured for the loss of revenue from the Melbourne Test — such insurance is common for significant venues in the UK — but is still forecast to receive about £300million in revenue this financial year.
Asked what his feedback to the match referee would be on the Melbourne pitch, the England captain Ben Stokes said: “It won’t be the best.”