England implode as 20 wickets fall on chaotic opening day of the Boxing Day Test – as cricket great lambasts ‘shocker’ MCG pitch, writes LAWRENCE BOOTH

Criticism of another England collapse rubbed shoulders with criticism of the pitch as stunned spectators turned away from the MCG on Boxing Day in the craziest cricket anyone can remember.

Of course, it also helped that Australia had already been reduced to 152 before England responded with 110, making this the wildest day in the Ashes for at least five weeks.

On 21 November, Perth had 19 wickets and England were ahead by 49 runs. There were 20 men here and Australia were 46 ahead. But while Perth’s pitch was no worse than fast and lively, Melbourne’s offerings were green and challenging, like Derby or Chelmsford in mid-April. No wonder everyone looks confused.

The biggest day on Australia’s sporting calendar ended with the record-breaking crowd of 94,199 cheering nightwatchman Scott Boland’s four-run last-ball lead already dwindling. It was his second strikeout in less than three hours after his first. If you blinked, you probably missed it.

Cricket Australia cannot afford another shortened Test after the match in Perth ended in two days, costing the board millions of dollars and prompting CA CEO Todd Greenberg to admit: ‘It hurt.’

Why MCG curator Matt Page served up a stitched mamba was a mystery made all the more inscrutable by his pre-match insistence that he hoped for a repeat of the surface that featured a five-day classic against India a year ago. ‘Epic,’ he said. But the general consensus after Friday’s game was: ‘Epic fail.’

But England’s response to Australia’s low score got off to a terrible start with four wickets falling in quick succession as Ben Duckett, Jacob Bethell, Zak Crawley (pictured) and Joe Root fell.

Michael Vaughan described the surface as ‘shocking for a first-day Test match’ and added: ‘He did too much.’ Stuart Broad, commentating on Australian radio, agrees: ‘Test match bowlers don’t need that much movement to look threatening.’

Meanwhile, Alastair Cook said: ‘Bow players didn’t have to work that hard for wickets. If you put it in the right place it will break either way. It’s a bit of an unfair competition.’

And if it was all looking like English sour grapes after another day that ended with Australia surging, Glenn McGrath, who worked hard for his 42 wickets in 11 Melbourne Tests, wasn’t exactly full of praise either. ‘There’s a lot of grass on this field,’ he said. ‘I was saying 7 mm, but it’s 10 mm. ‘There’s a lot of life in this ground for Test cricket.’

Circumstances have brought into sharper relief the turmoil in which England’s batting unit finds itself as we approach the end of this tour. Because for all the optimism surrounding Josh Tongue’s career-best five-for-45, there was English trepidation about what it would all mean when Australia’s relentless seam attack took its turn as a first-class haul, which included Steve Smith’s trophy wicket, passed through the gate.

There has been a sea change in England since Ben Stokes delivered his “no room for weak men” monologue after the second Test in Brisbane; It was a howl of disappointment that might have had the opposite effect of what he desired.

Facing one of the flattest pitches in the world in Adelaide, England retreated into their shell just when their oft-stated desire to put pressure on their opponents would have served them well.

Pat Cummins, who retained the captaincy for that match before opting to sit out the remainder of the series and nurse a sore back, reflected on their first innings performance during the third Test: ‘It was 40 degrees, it was hot, it was a very flat wicket and they closed shop for half the day, so I was quite happy with that.’

It was a very well observed excavation. By the time England discovered a happier balance between risk and reward in the second innings and scored 352 while chasing 435, the Ashes had already been lost.

The Australians sent on nightwatchman Scott Boland and when he took the final ball of the evening to make it four, the record-breaking crowd erupted at the MCG.

Now, on the first day in Melbourne, with jobs at stake and careers at stake, many have again opted for the safety-first approach of the defensive drive when it was clear that counter-attacking was the only way to make any impact under the circumstances.

Only Harry Brook seemed to understand this; Using his rare hand-eye coordination, he made 41 from 34 balls, his highest score of the day and certainly his bravest knock. Even he eventually paid the price for his timidity, hitting two singles from six balls before moving on to Boland and so obviously jammed in front of him that he did not even discuss the possibility of a review with Stokes.

There was the usual pearl-clutching of those who felt his approach was reckless, but what did they prefer? Zak Crawley tamely pushing Mitchell Starc to second slip for five, or Joe Root nudging Michael Neser to Alex Carey for a 15-ball duck?

We have entered a strange and possibly fatal discourse for the Bazball era; For low scores, docile fine boundaries were preferable to batsmen trying to stop one-way traffic by going on the offensive.

Stokes produced a four off Neser, but apart from that the only other England player to find the boundary was Gus Atkinson, the only player who dared to attack; Gus Atkinson’s 28 from the 9th was the fourth highest score of the day.

The losing team is forced to address their shortcomings in a way that winners don’t always do, but England need to be careful what they wish for. Playing largely conventional cricket has led to a series of victories in Australia since 1986-87.

Their biggest problem after the first day at the MCG was that they no longer knew what style of cricket they were playing.