Melbourne Cricket Ground Pitch Report For Day 3 Of India vs Australia 4th Test

Bhargav Dixit

327/9 were scored on Day 2. [Source: @MCG/X]327/9 were scored on Day 2. [Source: @MCG/X]

“Nice bowling wicket,” India vice-captain Jasprit Bumrah’s sarcasm was caught on the stump mic in the first session of the second day of the ongoing fourth Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2024/25 Test match in Melbourne. In simple words, Bumrah took a dig at the MCG surface for tilting towards the batters in spite of the presence of 6mm grass over it at the start of the match.

A primary reason why the pitch at the Melbourne Cricket Ground has behaved contrary to the pitches in Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane in this series is the difference in temperatures between these cities. With the sun beating down drastically on the first day, the surface has flattened to quite an extent.

As a result, 327/9 were scored across the 82.4 bowled on Day 2. As mentioned here, almost the same number of runs were scored on the second day of the last Melbourne Test as well. While four less batters were dismissed today, they could’ve been even lesser had India batted sensibly towards the last 30 minutes.

Melbourne Cricket Ground Pitch Report For Day 3

Because the MCG pitch put on display no major daemons on Friday, expect it to remain the same way on Saturday as well. As predicted yesterday, there are runs to be made on this pitch provided batters are willing to do so.

Steven Smith and Pat Cummins putting together a 112-run seventh-wicket partnership, only Australia’s fourth 100+ stand for the seventh wicket or lower in the last decade should motivate the likes of Rishabh Pant, Ravindra Jadeja, Nitish Kumar Reddy and Washington Sundar. For the unversed, while Australia’s four instances are the third-worst in terms of such partnerships in this period, India are at the top with 17 such stands.

Therefore, if the Indian batters aren’t able to move closer towards the hosts’ first innings total of 474, the blame would lie more with them than the Melbourne pitch.

Historically, 257/10 were scored on Day 3 of the last Boxing Day Test here. In 2022, 204/6 were scored in 61 overs on a rain-affected day. Therefore, unless Scott Boland comes with a miracle alike the last Melbourne Ashes Test in 2021, without wanting to iterate, Indians should ideally bat better than today.