Boxing Day Cricket at the Melbourne Cricket Ground

We have just ticked ✔️ a box on our bucket list for the 2nd Christmas in a row. Woo hoo!

Our ? Christmas Day was the usual wonderful family affair of presents, breakfast,  ?  presents, lunch ? and a special present ? Steve and I gave to ourselves.

We have been waiting a few years now for the Poms ??????? to venture back to Oz,  ?? so we could re claim the cricket ashes…. I booked our  tickets 7 months ago and it as it turns out flew Jetcrap to Melbourne.. A word of warning do not fly Jetstar to Melbs they now have their own terminal and it’s miles from the plane to the baggage claim !

Well what did we expect for $29- fares ! To be honest I thought they were Qantas however Qantas Code share with the orange and black uniformed ones.  The flight to Melbs was delayed so our first night was spent with Christmas movies and room service.

We are staying at the Como Hotel in South Yarra, a gentle stroll into the city or the botanical gardens and  yes it’s a fav hotel of ours -close to shops, trams ?  and of course the city . ?

After having breakfast with the English cricketers who also happen to be staying with us at the Como, (we hid the weetbix), we took a 40 minute stroll to the Melbourne Cricket Ground ~the MCG ~ the G …. and whilst the members of the MCG, probably queued up from 5.00am in their suits and ties to get their seats, we joined a small queue to enter the  hallowed sacred ground. Our friends on either side of our general admission seats in the the Great Southern Stand -Michael and Patrick from Belfast, who have just been visiting relations in Perth and a another family who drove down from Canberra, all enjoyed the entertaining people watching and mostly enjoyable cricket game with a crowd of  88,172. Did I mention I jagged shaded seats all day? Winner on a 26 degree day in Melbourne.

It got a little boring between lunch and tea however no one does balmy afternoons in the sun like the ‘Balmy Army’ resplendent in their attire of suits of armour from medieval days along with the usual riff raff.  Cleary hungover in the morning session from the night before,  the Army came to Life. To quote a classic line of theirs~ ‘we only sing when we’re winning’ was quite true today, although winning is a stretch!

It is fair to say it’s been a bucket list kind of day all round with our opening batsman for Australia  D.Warner scoring a century and later this afternoon  we saw S.Smith score his half century.

The scoreboard is proudly sponsored by an  Australian paint company ~ Dulux weather shield. There may have been a comment from one S Mccarthy sitting beside me, when Usman Kuwaja dragged the poms back into the game ~  ‘seriously spending 5 hours to watch the Aussie’s score 133 runs is like watching paint dry’ ….. very clever of Dulux paint to be a score board sponsor.

The poms are behind in their time slot, and  have seriously taken forever to set their field and will probably get a fine as the game will go slightly over time.
It’s been wonderful to watch Steve Smith hit singles and jog between the wickets late in the first days play.

As the game concludes on day 1, we are off to have drinks with some friends from Sydney, Klem and Mara who flew in from London, recently and like us flew in from Sydney last night to enjoy the Boxing Day test.
Australia are currently 3-244 on the scoreboard.

I actually didn’t fidget too much today considering we arrived at 9am and we are leaving at 6.00pm

Love a good people watching day.

As Richie Benaud once said that’s all from us from the cricket,  as we head to sundowners we some wonderful friends before dinner at Cafe e Cucina

love ?

Mrs Wong and the cricket stat guy Macca xx