MCG curator admits Boxing Day pitch error after 36 wickets fall in 2 days

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) – Melbourne Cricket Ground staff have admitted that the pitch prepared for the Boxing Day test was skewed too heavily in favor of bowlers, as an attempt to avoid a dull draw instead triggered a frantic two-day landslide of wickets.

Curator Matt Page, recruited to inject “life” into the MCG deck following a lifeless 2017 Ashes stalemate, conceded Sunday that leaving 10mm of grass on the surface proved excessive. The decision resulted in 36 wickets falling across just 142 overs of play, leaving the surface under intense scrutiny from players and officials alike.

“I was in a state of shock after the first day… to see 20 wickets in a day,” Page said. “I’ve never been involved in a test match like it and hopefully never involved in a test match like it again.

“It was a roller-coaster ride for two days to see everything unfold.”

The result marked the first time in 129 years a series has produced multiple two-day finishes, following a similar result in the first Ashes test at Perth.

Despite a first win for England in Australia since 2011, captain Ben Stokes was scathing in his assessment, suggesting that other nations would face harsher consequences for such conditions.

“I’m pretty sure if that was somewhere else in the world there’d be hell on,” Stokes said to the BBC after the match ended Saturday. “With 36 wickets in less than two days and no total over 200, I think you can read into that a lot.

“If that was another condition somewhere else… you probably would get a pasting.”

Despite the criticism and the millions of dollars in refunds for ticketholders triggered by the early finish, Australian Travis Head, the leading run scorer for the series, defended the difficulty of the groundsman’s role.

“Everyone wants to see wickets. No one wants to see blokes get 300s, Head said. “There needs to be a balance and sometimes we’re going to see the balance like last week err to the batters and some weeks we’re going to see it to the bowlers.

“So I do feel for him especially, obviously, in terms of the Boxing Day test and the amount of people. It’s been highly talked about and it’s probably the most talked about Ashes series that we’ve seen for a long time in terms of the last three or four weeks around everything that everyone does.”

ICC match referee Jeff Crowe is expected to rate the surface this week, which takes into account feedback from both captains.

The fifth and final test of the series starts Jan. 4 at the Sydney Cricket Ground.

Australia leads the series 3-1 and has retained the Ashes.