MCG’s rating record in peril as Stokes slams Boxing Day pitch

England captain Ben Stokes has slammed the MCG pitch as Cricket Australia chief Todd Greenberg flagged the governing body could take a more direct influence over pitch preparation after the Boxing Day Test finished inside two days.

Cricket Australia faces a $10 million revenue shortfall thanks to the marquee match’s early finish, according to a source with knowledge of the matter, as the governing body is forced to refund tickets for days three and four.

Instead of donning the baggy green in front of a bumper crowd of 90,000 on Sunday, as had been expected, Australian players will instead be attending a fan zone outside the venue in Yarra Park in recognition of the public’s support for the team.

MCG ground staff belatedly mowed the Test strip on Saturday night, hours after England sealed a four-wicket victory, having overhauled Australia’s modest target of 175 late in the final session on the second day. Curator Matt Page had left 10 millimetres of grass on the pitch to start the match.

It is the second two-day Test of the summer and only the 27th in the format’s 2615-game history.

CA also lost about $4 million in revenue from the two-day Test in Perth last month that opened the Ashes series.

CricViz rated the Boxing Day Test pitch as the most difficult to bat on in Australia since their records started in 2006.

The result leaves the MCG’s run of three consecutive top ratings for their pitch in grave danger of being broken after 36 wickets fell in 142 overs across two days.

The bowler-dominated Test comes eight years after the bore draw of the 2017 series when Alastair Cook made a record 244 not out. Cook’s 634-minute vigil lasted longer than the first three innings of this match.

Stokes said his feedback on the pitch “won’t be the best” when he speaks to match referee Jeff Crowe, who is responsible for handing down the International Cricket Council’s pitch rating.

“If I’m being brutally honest, that’s not what you want,” Stokes said. “Boxing Day Test match, you don’t want a game finishing in less than two days.

“I’m pretty sure if that was somewhere else in the world there’d be hell.

“Not the best thing for games that should be played over five days.”

The remark about the other part of the world was an apparent reference to India, though Stokes did not elaborate when asked.

Australia captain Steve Smith was more restrained in his critique of the pitch produced by MCC head curator Page, describing it as “tricky”.

“Thirty-six wickets over two days probably offered just a little bit too much,” Smith said. “It’s tough as a groundsman. He’s always looking for the right sort of balance.

“Last year’s wicket was outstanding, went to day five, last session, and in an ideal world every wicket does that and it’s exciting for everyone, but maybe if you took it from 10 millimetres to eight millimetres it would’ve been a nice challenging wicket, maybe a bit more even.

“Groundsmen are always learning and he’ll probably take something from it no doubt.”

CA is becoming increasingly wary of the effect that heavily truncated Tests are having on the bottom line and have not ruled out radical changes in how pitches are produced.

‘Bad for business’

“Simple phrase I’d use is ‘short Tests are bad for business’,” Greenberg said on SEN on Saturday morning. “I can’t be much more blunt than that.”

Though Greenberg said he would wait until after the Test to pass judgment on the MCG track, he has flagged the idea of CA taking a more interventionist approach to how pitches are produced in this country.

“That’s something we’ll have to look at at the end of the series because historically, we have taken a hands-off approach on all of our wicket preparation and allowed the staff and conditions in those characteristics to be presented,” Greenberg said.

“It’s hard not to get more involved when you see the impact on the sport, especially commercially. I’m not suggesting I’ll go around talking to ground staff, but we do have to have a careful eye on what our expectations are over the course of a summer.

“Short Tests aren’t good for business.”

Unlike in India, curators in this country are fiercely independent when it comes to their craft, and it would be a drastic shift if head office were to have more of a say.

“History tells you we’ve never done that because we’ve never needed to,” Greenberg said.

“What I’m conscious of is for Australian cricket to continue to evolve – clearly the players are evolving to the point you didn’t see players, in tricky conditions, any real partnership that dug in and said [they] were going to try and get through the next two hours.

“What we saw was players running down the wicket to try and hit their way out of it.

“If that’s the modern game, is the wicket preparation and our conditions conducive to getting the best outcomes for our sport? That’s an open question for me and some others.”

Page said before the game that captains do not have a say in how the pitch is unveiled.

“We are left to our own devices, which is perfect,” he said.

Test greats Stuart Broad and Brett Lee were among a host of former players who believed the Boxing Day pitch was too heavily slanted in favour of the bowlers.

“I haven’t seen a pitch move as much as that in a long, long time,” Broad said on Seven.

Greenberg said 20 wickets falling in a day, as happened on day one, was too many.

“So I would like to see a slightly broader balance between the bat and the ball,” Greenberg said. “I thought yesterday slightly favoured the ball.

“The batters have some ownership in some of that, I don’t think it’s all around the pitch, but we’ve got some challenges.”

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