Sir Leonard Hutton once likened the Melbourne Cricket Ground to a “giant colosseum where the thumbs are all pointed down.” Today there were more thumbs than ever, attached to the hands of a world’s record cricket crowd of 94,199, and batting was haunted by a sense of encircling doom: 20 wickets fell for 266 runs in 457 deliveries on a pitch resembling a suburban median strip. Two batters exceeded 30; none made 50. Scott Boland faced the day’s last over as a nightwatchman, was dropped in the gully from the penultimate ball, and edged the last for four to the sound of the final reverberating cheer.
Early on, it had been the Barmy Army in good voice. Every team looks better after three practice matches, even if it’s a pity that England chose to make theirs the Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide Test matches. Now the Ashes are done, they might as well be playing for the Fifa Peace Prize.
Still, after Ben Stokes won the toss, his bowlers hit consistently threatening lengths, and even the stumps – three bowleds and a run out in addition to five caught behind the wicket. Were Australia’s batters a little demob happy? Perhaps, but no matter. Even without Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood, their bowlers proved far too strong.
What did we do before curators started telling us how closely they were mowing the pitch? Now it has become integral to the profusion of pre-match data – the curator’s final bit of backspin, the commentator’s preliminary back-and-across. Here the magic number was 10mm – ‘quite furry’, as Steve Smith put it, as though describing a native marsupial. Everyone sort of knew what they were in for, and the marsupial proved to be one of those with very sharp teeth - the day’s average seam movement, another modish statistic, exceeded 0.8 degrees.
England had three wickets to show for their first hour’s work, if a little luckily – Travis Head, dragging on, and Jake Weatherald, a leg-side strangle, will rue their dismissals, while Marnus Labuschagne continued his indeterminate series by throwing his hands at a ball he might have left. Josh Tongue, however, deserved his success. He runs in as elbowing through a crowd; as he hits the crease, he is a one-man melee, arms flailing left and right. Yet for this reason he poses unusual perplexities of angle, and he troubled Smith even before he bowled him through a windy drive. Though Usman Khawaja batted with something like his old suavity, and Alex Carey with his routine busyness, Australia at 91-6 were in their most desperate straits since lunch on the second day in Perth.
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Still, sauce for the goose, eh? Australia’s lower order tackled their task, understandably, as if impatient to get out and have a bowl. Cameron Green clubbed a full toss and a half tracker from Tongue for four, and Michael Neser slapped Carse for three consecutive boundaries, throwing his hands at everything at any semblance of width. Their run-a-minute 50-run partnership was unexpectedly curtailed by a run out: Green, pushed back, was a little slow out of the blocks responding to Neser’s call, and caught short of his ground by bowler Carse’s limber throw at the non-striker’s stumps.
When Mitchell Starc, Michael Neser and Boland got their turn, however, batting seemed to verge on the impossible. As if reenacting the corresponding Test four years ago (when the visitors lost by an innings and 14 runs) Ben Duckett, Jacob Bethell and Zak Crawley all proffered tentative defensive bats – it was as though Bazball never happened. Harry Brook reminded us that it had by charging down the pitch to his first ball from Starc, and missing. With England eight for three, Smith dispatched his extra cover to the rope.
Still, on an illogical day, Brook’s methods made a madcap sense. Having nicked off to his 15th ball from Neser, Joe Root walked off rehearsing his forward defensive prod all the way, as if to convince himself that the conditions had rendered him powerless. Brook came capering down again to launch Starc over cover for six, then Neser over mid-wicket for six more. With a stoic Stokes, Brook added a run-a-ball 50, only to fall over to the off side as he tried to defend Boland.
Neser was characteristically precise. In made to measure conditions, Boland sent deliveries jackknifing back through Jamie Smith and Will Jacks. Gus Atkinson batted commonsensically for almost an hour before having to bowl a second time to an arrears of 42 runs.
All in all, it was a bizarre day, the first session played in pale light and bitter, swirling cold before the sun broke shyly through. The presence of caps and the needlessness of sunglasses lent proceedings an ironically traditional appearance; likewise the popularity of jumpers, obscuring the players’ meaningless, visually-cluttering numbers.
To remind us of cricket as a capitalist shopfront, CEO of Cricket Australia Todd Greenberg softened us up before play with the hint that a Boxing Night Test match is “not off the cards”. A very Greenberg locution, this – not ruling in but not ruling not out, so that when everyone is not off the same page, it will not be taken off board, and is therefore not off the horizon. For the pink ball idea, mind you, the day provided a further thumbs down: had this match been played at night, it might already be over.
Photograph by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images