- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Opinion
When was the last time a Boxing Day Test was actually gripping? Not last year, when India effectively won the match midway through Day 3.
Not the year before either, when a turgid pitch produced a boring draw and earned a rebuke from the ICC.
The two summers prior to that Australia steamrolled Pakistan and the West Indies, and going back a year further India and Australia played out a mind-numbing draw on a ridiculously flat pitch.
In 2013 Australia’s eight-wicket win at the MCG against a broken England team put them 4-0 up in the Ashes, and in 2012 they monstered Sri Lanka by an innings and 201 runs.
You have to go back eight summers to find the most recent Boxing Day Test that produced an interesting contest. In that match in 2011 India were an outside chance of chasing 292 to win before a strong Aussie bowling display saw them win by 122 runs.
(Julian Smith/AAP)
It wasn’t exactly a classic Test. But even still, that’s the closest match we’ve seen at the MCG in the past two decades. In reality the last properly exciting Boxing Day Test was 21 years ago when England won by 12 runs in an absolute thriller. Twenty-one years ago!
What’s more is that in recent years the MCG surface has been so sleepy that we haven’t often even seen patches of engrossing cricket amid otherwise one-sided matches. There have probably been more captivating passages of play in the two Tests at Perth Stadium than there have been across the past ten Boxing Day matches.
Whenever we hear pundits and fans hyping up Boxing Day they use the same talking points about the history and the atmosphere and the huge crowds. In other words, they praise everything but the cricket itself. Because banging on about an absorbing Boxing Day Test from 21 years ago isn’t that inspiring.
Victorian cricket writer Gideon Haigh last week said Perth Stadium was not fit to host the Boxing Day Test because it had “as much atmosphere as an aircraft hangar and it’s as sterile as an operating theatre”. By comparison, he reckoned, the “MCG has everything in its favour”.
“It’s the venue of the first Test match (ever), it’s the venue of the first One Day International – it’s the venue of all our great occasions,” Haigh argued.
I agree that the MCG is a terrific sporting venue, one of the best in the world. The small problem is that it so very rarely produces riveting Test cricket. I’d rather watch a close Test match at a rundown stadium anywhere on the planet than another one-sided Boxing Day match on a stodgy MCG pitch, no matter how good the atmosphere or how large the crowds or how proud the traditions involved.
The Boxing Day Test might be enjoyable for those fans who get to attend the match live and savour the rousing ambience and spectacular setting. But for those of us watching it on TV none of that enhances our experience. We’re just watching the cricket. And, for the most part, the cricket sucks. Like a pugilist who years ago knocked out a champion and ever since has been coasting against no-name fighters, the Boxing Day Test is living off a faded reputation.
Never has it been under more scrutiny either. For several years now discontent has been growing about the lifeless state of its pitch and the stale cricket it tends to produce. As my Roar colleague David Schout highlighted in an excellent recent piece, the MCG faces enormous pressure to produce an acceptable surface for next week’s Test between Australia and New Zealand.
Just like Perth Stadium, the MCG is a drop-in pitch. Yet that Perth deck is now easily the best Test surface in Australia.
So the problem isn’t, as many fans claim, with drop-in pitches specifically. It is an MCG problem. The reputation of the Boxing Day Test has already taken a beating. It cannot afford to serve up another five days of forgettable cricket.