toIt rarely meets expectations. Around this time every year, these achievements come with increasing frequency. Yes, you are fatter, poorer, more wrinkled, and less well-read than you want to be. That fleeting high school ambition, that you might travel the world, or make a difference: for most people, I’m sorry to say, the optimism was misplaced.
So, when a cricket match achieves results that go far beyond what fans could ever dream of, it’s worth celebrating. There is no doubt that the Boxing Day Test was among the finest sporting moments. Australia’s most culturally significant annual sporting event, bringing together two rivals, drags on and on until the final hour of the final day. A victory that will forever be associated with captain Pat Cummins and his peers, a loss that will surely galvanize a new generation of Indian cricketers.
Today The Guardian published a list of Australia’s 10 biggest sporting moments of 2024. Although the calendar didn’t allow for it, the article needed to wait another day. This five-day cricket extravaganza was at times more entertaining than Raygun. Fresher than gout. Harder than the blues. Smarter than a fox. Certainly, more unpredictable than Angelo.
So the luster of the match is long lasting, and this is being written about 15 hours after the last wicket fell. Yet people still come to read, the headline and accompanying image igniting within Australians something irresistible. The world had to move forward. But this test – in the minds of those who merely witnessed the ball – will remain for a long time.
There were a lot of such minds. In total, 373,691 people attended the MCG over the five days, a number “bigger than Bradman’s”, or at least the best-attended Test during the era of Australia’s greatest supporters.
Test cricket these days in most countries is played in front of empty stadiums. The red ball remains a feature of the international calendar today, a form of prestige for fans of the game. But people simply don’t come to see it very often.
In this context, the turnout is ridiculous. The Boxing Day Test is traditionally the most popular Test of the Australian summer, but attracting up to 200,000 people has only been played five times in the past 40 years. This match surpassed the next highest figure – the 272,000 people who turned out to watch the Ashes in 2013 – by more than 100,000.
But there is added significance in its status now as the highest attended Test ever in Australia. This is no longer just a British outpost where overcoming an ancient enemy is the most compelling motivation in sport. Now, modern Australia has a new enemy.
Most of these events – the waving of flags, the beating of drums, the incessant noise – were due to the Indian community in Australia, who wear blue clothes. This crowning glory of cricket was not without infectious enthusiasm.
This amplified five days of drama, from moments that each seemed crucial until they weren’t. When Yashasvi Jaiswal, perhaps the next great Indian batsman after Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli, languished on the new ball and frustrated the hosts in a wicketless second over on day five, Sam Konstas’s exploits for the first time looked like they were long ago.
The 19-year-old fell short in his second Test rounds, but still had the audacity to chirp his imposing opponent relentlessly. It was incongruous, a throwback to the pre-Cummins leadership of Australian cricket, and utterly convincing.
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Constas’s fatal naivete was just one of the character studies that enriched the five days. Like a glazed ham, Indian captain Rohit Sharma wilted in the hours after Christmas, and is surely a legend now on the wane. A reckless Kohli battling Father Time who has set up camp outside his off-stump.
And Jaiswal’s freshness and his ragged story. Or Nitish Kumar Reddy and his father, bowing at the feet of Sunil Gavaskar, a meeting with Indian royalty that was only possible in his son’s maiden Test century.
The intimacy was matched by the drama on the final day. From Jaiswal’s silent thumb, or Nathan Lyon walking away and then changing his mind, or Boland – always Scotty Boland. And Cummins was never far away, the catalyst and leader in a match that secured his legacy.
The days are speeding up with artificial intelligence software, notifications and low-Earth orbit satellites. The slow-moving humanity of this test was like the cup of water you didn’t know you needed. During the holidays, aunts and uncles come and go, but Steve Smith is forever. And the best thing about it all? There’s another test coming.