Snoozers,
MJ Clarke - who seems to have taken on the role as Channel Nine's official "pitch inspector" on the morning of each day's play - saw the featherbed as the covers were peeled off the pitch on Boxing Day at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and exclaimed "that looks like a one-day wicket! Oh, that is flat, and look at it, shaved, not a blade of grass...that is going to be a beautiful pitch to bat on."
Pup would have been muttering under this breath "what a farkin' belter! Wish I wasn't retired, or I'd fill my freakin' boots".
And so it came to pass.
One of the commentariat called the strip a "bowl of porridge".
In retrospect the match was drawn at the toss, never mind the fact that Straya fell at least 150 runs short in the first innings, when 600+ was ripe for the taking.
The pitch and the scoring were so lifeless and slow on the opening day, how could it be otherwise?
On the morning of Day 5, Clarkey was moved to remark "it's extremely flat, hardly any foot marks at all. This pitch looks just like it did on Day 1”.
Marvellous Melbourne.
It's been 18 seasons now of "drop-in" pitches at the MCG - the pioneers in that Dept. - and they only did it after Australian Rules footballers got weak and sick and tired of being hammered into a concrete hard mud heap in the winter, and whinged and complained about it, after it had been going on for more than a century.
Don't they know football was invented to give cricketers something to do in the winter?
And what's it been good for?
Absolutely nothing.
And as far as Powers That Be down at the ICC go, 40 tonnes of "drop-ins" are now the gold standard.
You'd have to suspect their evil plan is to play all test matches into the night and let the pink ball do the talkin'.
Even the very idea would have the purists apoplectic with fury
This year's model was doing zip, jack shit, bugger all throughout - dead from the opening delivery; deceased, no more, finished up, kaput, carcassised...dead, buried & cremated.
My Spy at The Ground pushed through a message at the start of Day 4 on the Bush Telegraph "bat, bat, bat, and then bat some more, on this flat pillow".
On interview after stumps were drawn early at the denouement, soon after the Australian captain wiped his brow with yet another century, he remarked, "the pitch was slow, although it was good to bat on it wasn't that easy to score runs over the five days. Yeah, pretty slow".
The Stats Guru did a quick whir of the abacus and confirmed as much with an aggregate run rate of 2.75 per over the duration.
Even the old bush cricket ploy, where an opposition captain would lay a well formed log of a turd on a good length at both ends the night before the match, would not have livened things up much or helped that deck.
And the over rate, as usual, got more appalling as it dragged on.
The pitiable bowlers knew there was nothing in it for them from the opening bounce and lost interest for hours on end.
As Smiffy was meticulously getting together his ton, with most it all run, on the last day, the Good Lady Wife reminded me of the great Peter Shanahan, the long serving breakfast newsreader during my stint at Radio 2GB back in the 80's.
One morning during an Ashes test match in the 70's, Shanahan was presented with some sports copy to read and broadcast to the world:
"England's Tony Grieg failed to extract any bounce from the lifeless bitch...er...pitch".
If only he hadn't corrected himself, he would have got away with it; as it was, he never lived it down.
Just lucky it wasn't me who got strangled for writing the copy.
Wasn't there, yr Honour.
As far as tame draws go it was an inconsequential dead rubber, anyway.
The only time the Poms ever got even the slightest hint of a sniff was having Straya four down and 13 runs in front on the morning of the last day, but the result was never in doubt.
NID.
The curator had made sure of that.
Skipper Smiffy's second innings hundred put him way out there into the stratosphere of course, with some plainly ridiculous average for this season on account of he's all but impossible to get out and is making tons at will, double centuries if you don't mind, when they matter.
A good Captain's knock, have no doubt about it - no ifs or buts - but in the Grand Scheme of Things it didn't really matter that much or 'save' the game, as the whole shootin' match slowed to a crawl and fizzled out, with rain taking a couple of bites out of the damp squib.
Not much of a game worth 'saving', really.
Oh well.
Engerland's opener AN Cook, who no-one's really ever rated and everyone thought was one bad game away from being dropped after a long career, of course made 244 not, prompting cries from the most uncharitable of "even my grandmother could make a hundred on that six lane highway", but more to the point, Cook spent every minute of the test match on the field over the full five days.
Never missed a minute.
He fielded in both the Australian innings and performed the rare feat of "carrying his bat" for ten and a half hours in the Poms only innings - saw the lot, he did.
Nothing passed him by.
No time spent in the sheds, no rub-downs, no doing the crossword or having a game of cards, and no chance to slip out the back for a quiet gin'n'tonic.
Cook witnessed every damn one of the 2,325 balls bowled in the match, and closely watched just 24 wickets fall.
There's no rest for the wicked and the poor Pom would have been absolutely buggered and completely rooted after that.
But he would have been miserable even after going very large with a big double hundred as his team still couldn't win.
Not on that road.
Oh, no siree.
Purpose built for Straya not to lose, it was.
It's still 3-nil, chaps, with Sydney to play.
Although the prospect of a whitewashed clean sweep is now gone, and with the Ashes won what seems a long time ago now during the co-coinciding Silly Season, Smiffy will make doubly doubly sure that the Poms go home in the New Year without winning so much as a sausage.
And that's the way we like it.
