WHAT JUST HAPPENED AT THE MCG? IT WAS….
– England’s first Test win in Australia since 2011.
At the time of that previous victory, the current iPhone model was the 4. Novak Djokovic had won just one of his record 24 grand slam crowns, while Jacob Bethell was seven years old. Usman Khawaja and Steve Smith are the only Australians to have played in both losses, separated by 5468 days.
– The second two-day Test this summer.
It is incredibly rare for a game to be wrapped up so quickly (and costly for Cricket Australia). In the history of the sport there have only been two other two-day Tests in Australia: in 1931 and 2022. It is the first time the same series has had two two-day Tests in 129 years.
– A comprehensively bad game from batters.
Nobody from either side managed to reach 50, with Travis Head’s second-innings 46 the top score. It is the first Test in Australia where a batter has not posted a half-century or century since 1932. It hasn’t happened in an Ashes Test since 1981.
– A brutal Boxing Day.
Some 20 wickets fell on day one of the fourth Ashes Test. It marked the first 20-wicket day of Test cricket in Australia since 1951 at Adelaide Oval.
– Unmitigated chaos.
Across the two days of Test cricket, there were 572 runs score for the loss of 36 wickets. All of it was squeezed into 852 balls. That means 15.88 runs per wicket and, approximately, a dismissal every four overs. It was the shortest-ever Test at the MCG, outside Australia’s clash with South Africa in 1932 (656 balls).
– Incredibly well attended.
An official crowd of 94,199 poured into the iconic venue on Boxing Day, surpassing the previous record for a day of cricket (93,013 for the men’s ODI World Cup final in 2015). The attendance for day two was 92,045.
https://thewest.com.au/sport/cricket/crazy-cricket-stats-highlight-full-extent-of-mcg-chaos-c-21133466
