This was published 4 years ago
That’s a wrap for day one of the third Ashes Test.
Thanks for following our rolling coverage of Boxing Day as the Aussies find themselves in a familiar position at stumps - in total control against England.
Join us again for all the action on day two tomorrow as Tom Decent picks up the coverage again from the first ball of the first session.
Until then, goodbye for now, and hopefully you’re still enjoying the festive season.
Recalled England batter Jonny Bairstow has blamed the toss as a major factor in England’s latest woes with the willow during the opening day of the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne.
However, he did concede that more discipline around shot selection could have been helpful as England failed to reach 200 first the third time in as many Tests.
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Scott Boland’s maiden Test wicket was solemnised by his spiritual predecessor on their shared home ground on its summer feast day, made more festive still by another rampant Australian display.
Former Victorian and Australian right-arm seam bowler Paul Reiffel, now an umpire, upheld an lbw appeal against England tailender Mark Wood to put Victorian and new Australian right-arm seam bowler Boland on the Test board.
Wood ran the decision through DRS, and it needed a finely made judgement, about which of pad and bat was struck first, by third umpire Rod Tucker. It’s enough to say that all was in alignment. Reiffel was professional enough to keep a blank face as he raised his finger again. It was a wicket from his own textbook.
It was that sort of day for Australia. It was that sort of debut for Boland. Already on familiar territory, he could not have been made to feel more at home if he was sprawled on his own lounge chair with his feet up on the ottoman. Possibly on previous Boxing Days, he was.
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Australian cricketers will think twice about handing their phones over to integrity investigators until Cricket Australia tightens protocols around the protection of anonymous tips.
Regular conversations during the Boxing Day Test match between CA’s chief executive Nick Hockley and his opposite number at the Australian Cricketers Association, Todd Greenberg, will depart from the usual pleasantries to an update about the issues raised by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald in a story revealing leaked audio about a prominent player’s off-field behaviour.
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The fight for the urn is almost over, but the nightmare is only just beginning for England.
Australia is just days away from sealing another home Ashes series victory after Joe Root’s pre-game rallying cry failed to prevent a Boxing Day debacle for the beleaguered visitors.
A crowd of 57,100 - well below the predicted 70,000 - watched the 10th day of this series play out eerily similar to the nine before it, this time with a new-look England line-up folding meekly to an Australian attack that by the end were no longer celebrating wickets with gusto.
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Scott Boland spoke to the media after making his Test debut for Australia on Boxing Day...
Q: You’ve joined a pretty small group of players of Indigenous descent to play Tests for Australia, I’m just wondering if you could share to us what that means to you and how significant it is to you and even perhaps what you hope that might do for Indigenous cricket or players out there of Indigenous descent?
A: Yeah, obviously pretty proud, obviously my family is very proud as well. It means a lot to join a pretty small club and hopefully it’s just the start of something big for the Indigenous community in cricket. I just hope I can be a role model for young Indigenous kids to want to play cricket. I think the Indigenous community in AFL and rugby are so big, hopefully one day Aboriginals in cricket can be just as big.
Q: I was wondering if you could take us through your first wicket and what you were thinking at the time and the emotions of it all?
A: I was really excited when the finger went up and the only thing I was doubting was if maybe it was bouncing over but the guys behind the wicket were certain it was hitting the stumps. I was very confident it definitely hit pad first. I was so happy, all my teammates really got around me which made it really special and when I went down to the boundary, the crowd was going nuts so, yeah, really good.
Q: You were added to the squad on Monday, was it always the plan for you to come? Or was it a bit of a late surprise that you were even called up? At what point did you find out you were playing?
A: I’ve had really good chats with [national selector] George Bailey, the communication has been excellent from him. So probably had chats before the start of the season and also after the first couple of Shield games he was in contact just to say, ‘Well done’, and if I was ever going to be a chance to be named in the squad, it was probably going to be around MCG (or) SCG Test with the wickets being a bit lower. I played a Big Bash game 10 or 11 days ago and a couple of nights later I found out that I was needed in Adelaide after the COVID scare and so I found that out pretty late at night and had to fly out the next morning and on the flight still wasn’t sure if I was going to be needed to play or not but obviously it played out as it was and then he told me during day five of the Adelaide Test that I was going to be added to the squad for cover for a couple of guys who are a bit sore.
Q: Bowling in this attack with [Cam] Green and the quality of the spells you guys were able to put together today, what was that like?
A: I was very nervous in that first session and was able to calm down a bit after that but knowing that you’ve got the captain that’s the best bowler in the world and he sort of led the way for the first session and then ‘Starcy’ [Mitch Starc] got a couple of crucial breakthroughs with [Joe] Root and [Jonny] Bairstow and the like and then you’ve got the best off-spinner ever so it’s a great attack to be a part of and hopefully we can take the 20 wickets.
Few ever described the temptation of a batter to play at the wide ball better than Richie Benaud. “Drawn into the shot out there,” he’d say as another victim trudged off, “like a moth to the flame.”
After a week in which he trained and drilled as intently as ever, England’s captain Joe Root played with fire throughout an innings that simply had to be a hundred if the tourists were to make a fist of Boxing Day.
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Pat Cummins’ surgical removal of England’s opening batsmen during the early overs of the Boxing Day Test reinforces England’s dire situation at the top of the order.
The dropping of Rory Burns for Zak Crawley, among four changes by the tourists after heavy defeats during the opening two Tests in Brisbane and Adelaide, was no surprise.
Nor was it a surprise when the latest attempt to find capable opening batsmen quickly became shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic.
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A well-deserved fist bump for nightwatchman Nathan Lyon who held up his end of the bargain and ensured the Aussies remained just one wicket down heading into day two.
Harris gets through the final Stokes over without any real trouble. The last ball of the day is a thick outside edge that flies to the boundary for four but it was never going to hand.
However, it will be interesting to see whether that finger of his is broken. I’m sure we’ll have an update shortly.
That ends an excellent day for Australia, who rolled the dice by bowling first and managed to get the rewards by rolling the tourists for 185.
The bowlers all did their job, while David Warner plundered some quick runs late in the day to reduce the deficit .
Harris is still there on 20 after grinding through 16 tricky overs, with his Test spot on the line. It was a period where England probably bowled too short and didn’t put enough balls in the same spot.