As Australian sports fans settle in for another MCG Boxing Day Test Match this week, they may not be aware of the significant anniversary they will unknowingly celebrate.
The Australia-India showdown will be the 50th anniversary of the virtual beginning of what is now a national sporting tradition.
It wasn’t always that way, though. Indeed, being “only” 50 years old, it is a relatively modern tradition.
Until 1974, only two MCG Tests had included play on Boxing Day.
The second Test of the 1950/51 Ashes series was played over the Christmas weekend with Boxing Day being Day 4 of a match going the way of Lindsay Hassett’s Australians by 28 runs.
The other Boxing Day Test before 1974 was the second Test of the 1968/69 Frank Worrell Trophy Series against Garry Sobers’ ageing West Indian tourists.
This Test was the first MCG Test to actually start on December 26. Australia won by an innings on the back of a ten-wicket haul from Graham “Garth” McKenzie, and an avalanche of runs from Bill Lawry (205) and Ian Chappell (165).
Before ’74, the ‘traditional’ MCG cricket fixture that included Boxing Day was the annual ‘grudge’ Sheffield Shield match between Australian cricket’s oldest rivals: Victoria and New South Wales.
These pre-1974 matches include the almost iconic world record for a completed first class innings – all out for 1,107!
This was set by Victoria in their innings and led to a 656-run win over the hapless NSW in the 1926 Christmas/Boxing Day weekend fixture.
As any Victorian cricket tragic will tell you, that is a record that will probably last forever.
Instead, the Melbourne Test was the original New Year’s Test until ’74. These matches generally started on either New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day itself.
It is said that necessity is the mother of all invention.
Come 1974, the Australian Cricket Board (ACB – now Cricket Australia) needed – by necessity – to squeeze in six Ashes Test matches in a condensed period. This would allow Perth their recently won WACA Test, and enable two Tests to be played in either Sydney or Melbourne on alternate summers as was the scheduling at the time.
Hence, the Boxing Day MCG Test was revived – and drew 77,167 punters through the gates for Boxing Day to start with, and over 250,000 for the five days of play which ended in a thrilling draw.
The up-and-coming West Indies drew a massive 85,661 the following December 26 in 1975 as another six Test series in condensed timeframes forced Boxing Day MCG Tests in successive summers for the first time.
As Australia eased to a comfortable eight-wicket victory for a total match attendance of over 222,000, the seeds had been sown for the now-modern tradition.
The ACB went back to the old New Year’s Test schedule at the “G” for the next 4 years, but their new TV masters at Kerry Packer’s Channel 9 pushed hard for Boxing Day Test Cricket to go up against the then Australian Open tennis coverage on the rival 7 Network. (This was when the Australian Open was held over the Christmas/New Year period across town from the MCG at Kooyong).
Hence, New Zealand restored the Boxing Day Test match for their draw with Australia in 1980. Ratings were high, even though crowds were relatively low (only 28,671 for Boxing Day) – enough to persist with for the next couple of summers.
Two epic Test matches – against the West Indies and England respectively – followed for the next two Boxing Day Tests with bigger crowds (nearly 40,000 in 1981, and 63,900 in 1982).
The ACB then had no choice but to set the modern Boxing Day MCG tradition in stone.
There has been a Test match at the MCG either starting on or including play on December 26 every year since – except for 1989 when the main attraction that summer (Pakistan) did not arrive in Australia until Christmas week itself.
This forced a One Day International against Sri Lanka on that Boxing Day – the only time an ODI has been (and probably ever will) be played on December 26 in Australia.
So – to mark the 50th anniversary of the start of this modern Australian sporting tradition – this Roar Rookie over the next few days will list my ten greatest Boxing Day MCG Tests in two parts.
This is not the defining list – just this Roar Rookie’s list. In the great tradition of this site, it should jog some memories and get some discussions going.
Some of Australian cricket’s greatest – and most controversial – moments have taken place at the “G” either in the Boxing Day Test or on Boxing Day itself.
It is fitting that as the MCG Boxing Day Test tradition turns 50, we mark some of those moments here at The Roar.
#years #unmissable #moments
