My Impressions of the MCG Head Groundsman (“Curator” if you don’t mind)

Peter Kettle | 8:28am GMT 29 December 2025

With the caveat that one’s private impressions will be fallible, listed below are mine based mostly on curator Matt Web page’s interview by a gang of media folks on the day following the debacle of the Melbourne Check – which as everyone now is aware of lasted not more than two days, with seam bowlers dominating and a few technically poor batting from quite a lot of members of each groups.

It wasn’t begin to this Q & A session, because it grew to become instantly apparent that Matt Web page isn’t a extremely educated individual – by dint of his tough accent and, extra tellingly, his nearly countless repetition of phrases similar to, “I’m very upset by this”, “It’s not what we had been aiming at”, “I used to be shocked at how the pitch behaved” and related. It’s now a formality for the ICC to declare this pitch “unsatisfactory”, on receiving a report from its match referee Jeff Crowe.

Being a Pommie expatriate – coming to reside in Melbourne 4 many years in the past – I envisage that Matt Web page’s counterpart at Lord’s (Karl McDermott who took over in 2018) might have been educated at an English public college (similar to Winchester or Stowe or Lancing School *), and he definitely speaks nicely in interview. 

All through this questioning and responses, the optics weren’t helped by the introducer – Melbourne Cricket Membership’s chief govt, Stuart Fox – having a grim expression and searching as if he was attempting to identify anybody within the press, or surrounding spectators, who may be carrying a gun as a prelude to an assignation try.

Appointed in November 2017, having had the identical function for quite a lot of years taking care of the WACA floor in Perth, Web page did say that the pitch turned out to go too far in favouring the seam bowlers; additionally, that the diploma of bounce obtained shocked him. However he didn’t reply quite a lot of essential questions immediately – repeatedly saying that when all the info is in, we can have an in depth take a look at it and study from it for the long run, but not mentioning explicitly what kind of information could be at his disposal. I collect this often contains abstract stats on the diploma of bounce and lateral motion off the pitch, consistency or in any other case of bounce, relative velocity of deliveries earlier than and after hitting the pitch, the depth of carry of deliveries by means of to the keeper and possibly another matters as nicely.

As to the admitted 10 millimetres of grass masking on the pitch, this contrasts with solely 7 millimetres for the MCG Check towards India in mid-December 2024 – the sport lasting for 5 days, with 81 overs delivered on the ultimate day. Web page stated this pitch masking for the England match was to make it final and never considerably deteriorate, within the context of anticipating “plenty of sizzling climate on the again finish” of the scheduled 5 days of play – presumably that means days 4 and 5. Nicely, evidently he was badly misinformed concerning the climate forecast. That given by Victoria’s Bureau of Meteorology early on Wednesday twenty fourth December (two days prior the beginning of play) was for max temperatures of 21C that day, adopted by 17-19C, 18-20 (for Day 1), 22C, 24C, 29C and 25C (for Day 5). 

Melbourne-ites consider 30C as heat and the mid-30s as sizzling, and so no actually “sizzling” climate was forecast. Accordingly, it was arrant nonsense to speak as Web page did. And it turned out that the projections had been, on the whole, carefully mirrored by actuality when that got here alongside: 17.5C on Day 1, 19.7C on Day 2, 28.7C on Day 3, and 34.8C on Day 4 – the one actually sizzling day – with 27C being anticipated tomorrow (Day 5). Although, in fact, it’s Met Workplace forecasts fairly than the out-turn that rely for pitch preparation.

The fee as a result of play not going past Day 2 is put at round A$10 million by Cricket Australia, which faces a large number of compensatory payouts to could be spectators, thereby a lot aggravating the losses made initially of the collection in Perth.

*  I’m fallacious on this: Karl McDermott began his profession as a groundsman as an early-teenager after leaving college in Dublin, starting his work on the Clontarf Cricket Membership in that metropolis.