Key events
Here’s our lead-in piece on Konstas and his forerunner, Ricky Ponting.
The biggest news for Australia is the debut of young sensation Sam Konstas to open the batting. Huge challenge for him, especially if he’s called upon immediately. Although that would give him less time to get nervous, I suppose. He seems pretty confident, but walking out in front of 90,000 would have to challenge any teenage bravado.
Scott Boland is coming back for Australia replacing the injured Josh Hazlewood. Not sure what India will do yet, they always play their cards close and always seem to make a change somewhere along the line.
Preamble
Geoff Lemon
Happy tidings of the Yule. Now that I think about it, I’ve never thought to check what Yule means. Yuletide could be the guy from The King and I doing an album of Vance Joy covers. Regardless, what with all of those logs and whatnot, I’m going to assume that most people had a festive time. In most of Australia, Christmas was stinking hot, in the UK it’s been cold and bleh to a moderate sort of level, and wherever else you were in the world, it was something else. Or still is something else, for those on the negative side of Greenwich Mean.
Whatever the case, it is Boxing Day in Melbourne, and that means one thing. We are about to send 13 players and two umpires into the middle of the MCG to suffer in ridiculous heat all day. In Melbourne the temperature didn’t drop out of the 20s all night, it will be into the 30s by the time the toss takes place, and it will be up towards 40 degrees by the end of the afternoon. The following days will cool off.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure the ICC doesn’t have an extreme heat policy, even though the world is getting hotter. Cricket Australia does have one, where something called the Heat Stress Risk Index can be calculated to theoretically suspend games if it gets hot enough. But at this level of heat they usually just have extra drink breaks.
So, on we go. Safe to say this is a bat-first day, even though the MCG has become the best bowling pitch in the country after they renovated it for being too flat.
