The Melbourne Cricket Club is reportedly bracing for major losses of around $25million (£12.39m) in the wake of the Boxing Day Test pitch debacle.
On Monday, the ICC handed the MCG one demerit point after match referee Jeff Crowe deemed the greentop pitch ‘unsatisfactory’ after England and Australia played out the shortest Test match seen at the iconic Melbourne arena since 1932.
The tourists ended their 15-year wait to win a Test match on Australian soil inside just two days, with 36 wickets falling in 142 overs across all four innings.
Match referees use a four-tiered scale to rank pitches, with ‘unsatisfactory’ being the second lowest rating in the system. If a ground receives six demerit points in the space of five years, it can be suspended from hosting international cricket for 12 months.
Cricket Australia is now reeling from the pitch debacle, with stakeholders and broadcasters all set to miss out on a huge chunk of revenue.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that this figure could be around $25m, but adds that TV networks were ‘quietly fuming’ after this became the second Test of the series to end inside two days.
Sources told the outlet that the major revenue loss relates to tickets, food and beverage sales and broadcasting money.
Should the Sydney Test go the distance, only 18 days of cricket will have been played during the series, meaning broadcasters could be set to miss out on seven days of coverage.
Despite the revenue shortfall, Channel 7 is reporting a bump in its viewing figures, with the Brisbane Test pulling in a national TV audience of 1.21million. That is a six per cent lift on the first Test in Perth, while it also presents a 36 per cent rise on Australia and India’s second Test during the 2023-24 Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
In another press release, the network said its Boxing Day Test match coverage was said to be up by 16 per cent following last year’s clash against India.
However, it is understood that Channel 7 faced losses of around $1m to $2m in the wake of the Perth Test due to missed advertising opportunities.
Interestingly, the ICC had ranked the Perth pitch as ‘very good’ even after that Test match ended in two days.
While batters on both sides have been scrutinised for their poor performances at the MCG this weekend – with Travis Head’s 46 being the highest score of the match – many former players and pundits have taken a swipe at the pitch.
Ben Stokes claimed that ‘there’d be hell’ if the same pitch used during the Boxing Day Test had been prepared elsewhere in the world.
Stuart Broad said to SEN Radio: ‘It has just done far too much. Test match bowlers don’t need this amount of movement to look threatening. Great Test match pitches, generally, they bounce, but they don’t jag all over the place.’
Aussie great Ricky Ponting noted that curators had left 10mm of grass on the wicket. During Australia’s Test against India here in 2024, curators had left 7mm of grass on the pitch, with the match coming to a thrilling conclusion on the fifth and final day.
‘That will be the question that is going to be asked of the groundsmen – why did you leave more grass this year than in previous years?’ Ponting said.
Cricket Australia boss Todd Greenberg has also since hinted that the governing body may pay closer attention to how pitches are prepared in future.
It comes as MCC curator Matt Page took responsibility for the debacle.
‘We don’t get inconsistent bounce, we don’t get deterioration in our pitches and we’re trying to balance that contest between bat and ball throughout four or five days to provide that captivating Test for all,’ Page said on Sunday.
‘For us, we left it longer because we knew we were going to get weather at the back end and we knew where we needed our grass at.
‘You look back at it and go, it has favoured the bowlers too much on days one and two. If that doesn’t happen, we set ourselves up really good for days three and four.’
