Australia’s captain Pat Cummins celebrates the wicket of India’s Nitish Kumar Reddy on the third Test between India and Australia at the Gabba in Brisbane. (AP Photo)
With the series hanging in balance, the spotlight has been on the pitch at the MCG ahead of the Boxing Day Test match in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. While the series has seen the pace bowlers dominating the series with spinners only getting six wickets out of the total 93 wickets to fall so far in the series so far, the MCG pitch too is expected to support pace and bounce. Australian skipper Pat Cummins feels the MCG pitch is ‘nice and firm’.
“The pitch looks really good. (It is) quite consistent to what it has been here for the last few years. (There is a) bit of grass coverage and it feels nice and firm. They’ve done a great job here for … probably the last five to six years with their pitches and I suspect (it will be) the same this year. (But we will see) how the heat changes it. We’ll get to the ground tomorrow and kind of assess it, but it looks like it is a good wicket,” said Cummins while talking with the media.
While the third Test at Brisbane saw constant rains interrupting the match, it also saw temperatures reaching around 35 degrees during the sunny phase. With the ongoing Australian summers seeing occasional rains this month, Melbourne though is expected to see hot weather and Cummins was of the view that heat is one of the factors in the MCG Test. “(We will) look at the pitch and get a bit of a sense of what the day is going to feel like, and then you kind of make a decision from then. So I think (the heat) is a factor. Last week in Brisbane was hot, which is kind of a bit of a tick. Starcy and I bowled a lot in the heat, and (Nathan) Lyon as well, and got through it fine, so I don’t think it scares us too much. But we wait and see. 39 can get pretty hot,” said Cummins.
MCG curator Matt Page too had shared his views on the pitch curated for the Boxing Day Test. Page, who has been the curator at the MCG since 2017, shared that the fast bowlers will get excited about the pitch on offer. “All the good bowlers get excited when they come here now. It gets through well for us. We’re never going to be as quick as Perth and Brisbane, but over the last few years, we’ve managed to get some pace in it, which has created that excitement. There’s a bit of grass on it. If you’re a fast bowler, and you look at it, you probably do get excited,” Page had said on Monday.
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