England captain Ben Stokes offered a sharply worded assessment of the much-criticised Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) pitch after the fourth Test of the ongoing Ashes series ended inside two days. While England secured a historic victory – their first Test win on Australian soil in 15 years – Stokes admitted the nature of the surface raised serious concerns.
Ben Stokes Calls His Remarks ‘Brutally Honest’
Calling his feedback “brutally honest,” Stokes said his comments to the match referee “won’t be the best,” suggesting the pitch did not live up to expectations for a marquee Boxing Day Test.
“Being brutally honest, that’s not really what you want,” Stokes said. “Boxing Day Test match. You don’t want a game finishing in less than two days. Not ideal. But you can’t change it once you start the game and you’ve just got to play what’s in front of you.”
He added that similar conditions elsewhere would likely provoke a strong reaction.
“But I’m pretty sure if that was somewhere else in the world, there’d be hell on. Not the best thing for games that should be played over five days. But we played a type of cricket that ended up getting the job done.”
Historic Ashes Boxing Day Match Ends Within Two Days
In Melbourne, a total of 20 wickets fell on the opening day, marking the first time in the history of Boxing Day Tests that both teams were bowled out on Day 1.
Australia then suffered a dramatic collapse around the lunch break on the second day, being dismissed for just 132. That left England a modest target of 175 runs. Despite having already lost the Ashes series after defeats in the first three Tests, England chased down the target comfortably, sealing a four-wicket win.
Melbourne Test: Rare Statistical Anomalies
The match produced several statistical rarities. None of the batters from either side managed to score a half-century, the first time on Australian soil for 93 years.
The Melbourne Test was also the second match of the ongoing Ashes series to finish inside two days, following the opening Test in Perth. The last time a Test series featured more than one two-day match was in 1912. Overall, this was only the fourth instance in Australia’s Test history where a match concluded within two days.
Zubair Amin is a Senior Journalist at NewsX with over seven years of experience in reporting and editorial work. He has written for leading national and international publications, including Foreign Policy Magazine, Al Jazeera, The Economic Times, The Indian Express, The Wire, Article 14, Mongabay, News9, among others. His primary focus is on international affairs, with a strong interest in US politics and policy. He also writes on West Asia, Indian polity, and constitutional issues. Zubair tweets at zubaiyr.amin
The post ‘Not Ideal’: Ben Stokes Blasts MCG Pitch After 2-Day Ashes Boxing Day Test, ‘Hell Would’ve Broken Loose’ appeared first on NewsX.
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