Inside the 21-minute grilling of the MCG curator and his boss

2 months ago 13

It’s never a good sign when the curator of a cricket pitch fronts a press conference, beamed live on national television, at 9.01am on what should have been day three of the Boxing Day Test.

When MCG curator Matt Page and MCC chief executive Stuart Fox emerged from gate two of the empty, 100,000-seat coliseum on Sunday morning in Melbourne, their slow walk towards dozens of journalists, cameras and photographers said it all.

With expressions more befitting a funeral, Page and Fox took deep breaths and prepared to own the situation.

It felt more like a scene from Australian politics than cricket, reminiscent of Anthony Albanese striding into the prime minister’s courtyard in Canberra to tackle a major issue with members of the fourth estate wanting answers.

Instead, this press conference, announced by Cricket Australia 68 minutes after the final delivery of England’s victory in the fourth Ashes Test, was convened to discuss a grassy pitch under fire.

A two-day Test, the first at the MCG in 94 years, is a big deal.

Melbourne Cricket Club chief executive Stuart Fox and head curator Matthew Page front the media at the MCG on what should have been day three of the Test.

“Thanks for coming down,” Fox began, with Page to his left, wearing an MCC polo shirt tucked into long trousers – a far cry from the navy blue shorts he would have expected to be wearing while bringing out the heavy roller to the middle of the ground.

“I didn’t think we’d be standing out here doing a press conference this morning. I thought we’d be getting ready for day three. We thought we’d jump on the front foot and address the media and the public.

“We’re obviously disappointed the Test has finished within two days. We didn’t plan for it. We didn’t want this to happen. It’s obviously challenging times for us.”

What followed was a 21-minute grilling about, effectively, the length of grass on a 20-metre cricket pitch. There were 25 mentions of the “disappointment” and the “disappointing” events of a whirlwind 48 hours, and repeated references to a surface that, in hindsight, was a few millimetres too furry.

Melbourne Cricket Club curator Matt Page on Sunday.

Fine margins.

“I’m a bit flat,” Page admitted. “We’ll learn from this. We’ll get better from it.”

Five days earlier, before the match, Page told Australian Associated Press: “We’ve sort of found a recipe that works here and I think the last couple of years have been really good. We don’t see any reason why we would change that up.”

As Page faced the music, a number of curious Australian cricket fans, with their day three tickets now refunded, hovered around to listen. There were 90,000 other fans throughout the city with little to do.

MCG curator Matt Page speaks with Australia coach Andrew McDonald on December 24.

It says a lot about Page and Fox that they were happy to take as many questions as required. If an Australian Test star made a duck, they would never front up at a post-match press conference. The same goes for an umpire if they made a howler of a decision.

“We’ve got to take responsibility,” Fox said. “And that’s why we’re standing here today.”

Page, appointed MCG curator in 2017 after a stint at the WACA, said he doesn’t read newspapers or watch nightly news bulletins. That is probably a good thing. But he didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to know the events of Friday and Saturday would create blowback.

“I was in a state of shock,” Page said. “I’ve never been involved in a Test match like it, and hopefully never involved in a Test match like that again. It was a rollercoaster ride for two days to see everything unfold.”

Melbourne Cricket Club chief executive Stuart Fox and curator Matthew Page answer the tough questions.

No other sport leans so heavily on the length of blades of grass.

Test cricket’s finances can pivot on the decisions of a curator and his team. Had Australia and England’s batsmen shown a little more tenacity with the willow, Page wouldn’t have been on the end of such a grilling. They believed leaving more grass on the pitch than normal would be required to offset the hotter conditions forecast for later in the match.

By the 18-minute mark of Sunday’s media conference some good news emerged. Not only were the media offered free pies – a fan favourite that would otherwise go uneaten – it was announced perishables would be donated to SecondBite, an MCC charity partner that rescues surplus food from growers, retailers and manufacturers and distributes it to charities and community groups.

By 9.22am the formalities were finished. Page and Fox walked away with a 10 out of 10 rating for fronting up and answering the difficult questions.

A few hundred metres away, Australian players began arriving at a fan activation zone, having been asked by CA chief executive Todd Greenberg to give an hour of their time to sign autographs and answer questions on stage in front of cricket-deprived fans.

Steve Smith’s driving skills and favourite pizza toppings were among the topics of conversation.

CA’s “Summer Fest fan zone in Yarra Park” had a ferris wheel, deckchairs beside beach volleyball courts and big screens, with the MCG as the backdrop. They just didn’t have any cricket to show.

It was a bizarre scene: Greenberg greeted players as they arrived, alongside CA chairman Mike Baird and other executives, while Travis Head sipped a Gatorade. An English journalist told Greenberg this never would never happen in the UK the day after a Test.

Australia’s players get to atone for the MCG defeat in Sydney, starting next Sunday. But Page and his team will have to wait 12 months.