Day 61 - A Good Day to Be A Bowler

​Going to the Boxing Day Test at the MCG has been a dream of mine for quite a few years now, and was in many ways the centre of my trip planning. I’m still not 100% sure how my desire to see a festive cricket game led me to take half a year off work and travel thousands of miles via two dozen or so countries, but here we are.

As soon as I woke up and looked out the window this morning, it was clear that it would be a good day to bowl (as Melbourne was doing an excellent impression of Manchester). I did not really appreciate how good though!

Neil drove us down to the city this morning and we were able to park in his favourite carpark a short walk away from the stadium. There was a great atmosphere and a LOT of people, and we were delighted to find that England had won the toss and were going to bowl first. 


It was all going very well. Whilst Carse was a bit off-target, Tongue and Atkinson bowled beautifully in the morning session to have Australia four down at lunch. An excellent start that meant we ate our picnic very happily indeed.

The afternoon session was even better - when I had said in the morning that we would be batting at tea, I didn’t really believe that! Tongue got a five-fer and we were all buzzing. Australia all out for 152 felt like a real Christmas miracle. 


We knew that the pitch was ‘doing a bit’, but had not necessarily appreciated how much until the evening session, which was a cricketing bloodbath. If it wasn’t for Brook and Atkinson hitting some hefty blows, it could have been a lot worse than 110 all out. Whilst there was some poor batting from both sides, the pitch was probably too lively for day one of a test.

When making predictions for the day, getting into the third inning of the match and Scott Boland opening for Australia did not feature, so it really did feel like we had seen everything. Twenty wickets fell in total today and records were broken everywhere you looked. And this was all in front of a record crowd too. I am a little suspicious of the crowd figure as there were a decent amount of empty seats, but will take their word for it.



There was, understandably, a buzz around the ground at the close of play, and it did then feel like a rather large crowd! Luckily for us, Neil’s sneaky parking place allowed for a quick getaway and for us to make good time home for dinner. There have been a lot of leftovers these past couple of days, so it was yet another feast this evening!

After a few phone calls for us all to catch up with family in the UK, we then settled down to watch Tinsel Town on Amazon Prime. It was a lovely Christmas film - would highly recommend.

And now it is bedtime as I will need all my energy for tomorrow for what could feasibly be my final day of cricket in Australia! 

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