From Boland to bedlam: A Boxing Day that explained this Ashes

On a record-breaking day for crowd attendances in Australia, the loudest roar was reserved for Test opener Scott Boland edging a ball past gully for four. At any other time, you might think there's quite a bit not right with that statement. That is before you even add the fact that this was Australia's second innings and Boland had already batted once earlier. But not on this particular Boxing Day, when 94,199 packed the iconic MCG, the greatest number of people to have watched a day of Test cricket at a venue ever on Australian soil.

Only to see 20 wickets fall on a pitch that will be debated and discussed for a long time to come. The first time that had happened on Australian soil since 1950, which was in Brisbane during another Ashes Test.

And for the record, Boland was opening the batting as a night watcher for Jake Weatherald with Australia left to face one over late on Friday following two equally incredible batting collapses.

The fact that none of it seemed bizarre or outlandish, and if anything more inevitable in the lead-up to the fourth Test, sums up both where this Ashes series stands and also the make-up of most modern-day Test batters.

This is not to say that anyone would have necessarily predicted both teams to be bowled out before the close of play on Day One of a Test. But it did seem rather along expected lines that there was going to be minimal resistance shown by batters from both teams against high-quality seam bowling on a pitch with 10 mm of "furry" grass on top.

It's just the norm these days after all. There'd been plenty of trepidation around how the surface at the 'G would play as we got closer to Boxing Day. Steve Smith had hinted on the eve of the Test about how he expected it to be quite lively, and potentially spicier than what we saw here four years ago when Boland made his dramatic Test debut, when the match lasted less than seven sessions.

It's the same on a pitch in the subcontinent that's expected to be a raging turner as it is on one of these seamer-friendly tracks in this part of the world. Where you almost get a feeling that batters these days prefer pre-empting their approach to how they perceive the pitch to play rather than always adjusting or adapting to how it actually does.

These were indeed difficult batting conditions at the 'G today. It was one of the coldest starts to a Boxing Day Test, with the temperature "feeling like 8 degrees" when Ben Stokes won the toss and elected to field. There was definite seam movement, and significant amount of it, throughout the day. If anything, the pitch that started off slightly slow with rubber ball bounce, started to get quicker by the time England began losing their wickets in the third session of play. Conditions where there would be talk of the proverbial ball with the batter's name on it, and where run-scoring would be a tough ask, if not a hard grind.

But from the moment Travis Head edged a Gus Atkinson delivery on to his stumps early in the piece, there was a feeling that it would be a day where wickets will fall in clumps. Even if not many could have predicted the incredible frequency with which they did eventually.

On the face of it, close to 70 per cent of the 20 wickets that fell on the day could be deemed as being a result of batter error.

Let's go through them. Marnus Labuschagne had looked unsettled for most of his innings before getting squared up by a Josh Tongue delivery, and then playing a forceful drive to a full delivery off the next ball to be nicked off. Steve Smith had got some rhythm before he attempted an extravagant drive off a delivery that jagged back slightly from the Nottinghamshire seamer. Alex Carey was strangled down the leg-side to a trap that Ben Stokes had set for him while Usman Khawaja was caught behind by an Atkinson delivery that angled in from around the wicket and left him very late.

It wasn't always the wicket delivery that got the better of them, but instead the ones leading into them. Like how the straight ball does the most damage for spinners on big turners in the subcontinent.

The same could be said about the English innings. Ben Duckett and Ben Stokes fell to untoward shots, the opener in particular clearly looking out of sorts after what's been a difficult week for him.

But apart from Jamie Smith and Will Jacks, who fell prey to the prodigious movement from Boland from that Boland length on what is Boland's pitch, the rest of the wickets came via very good pieces of bowling either from Mitch Starc or Michael Neser playing in his first-ever red-ball Test.

That England would struggle to get close to Australia's paltry first innings total of 152 seemed evident even before their openers took strike was a sign of how this series has gone, and the lack of trust in England's batting resilience. And as predicted they barely managed to get their score into three-figures, courtesy some late boundaries from Atkinson.

The innings that really put the pitch into perspective, along with Australia's feelings about the brittle English batting, came from Mitch Starc. Even if it lasted all of six deliveries. For in those half-a-dozen balls that he faced, Starc couldn't have looked keener to be get his hands on the new-ball and start steaming in. Even if this was only the second session of Day One, and even if Australia had only gone past 150 on the board. Between that and Boland opening the batting in front of a raucous MCG crowd to close out proceedings, it was a day of cricket that was bizarre and strangely predictable in equal measure.