C is for Christmas and...

CRICKET!!! The day after Christmas in Australia is a public holiday - Boxing Day - and the highlight of Boxing Day in Melbourne is the Boxing Day Test Match. This year it was Australia vs. South Africa, #1 in the ranking vs. #2, which promised to be an exciting match (as exciting as cricket gets) since the second-ranking South African team just recently beat the first-ranking Australian team at their last meeting.

Those of you who follow cricket understand that it is a long game, and by long game I mean that a Test Match lasts up to five days, with each day of play lasting around 6 hours. We weren't up for a full day at the MCG, so we decided to head that way after the lunch break (yes, they have a lunch break, as well as morning and afternoon tea breaks!) With our GA tickets we ended up in the nose-bleed section on the 4th level, but it turned out to be a great bird's eye view of the game and helped us avoid all of the hoolligans in GA on the ground level. And we made it in time for the highlight of the day - Ricky Ponting scoring a Century. The play in which Ponting scored point 100 was great and Josh was quick enough to get it on film.

The rest of the game was a bit slow and the innebriated crowd was feeling it. The rowdy section started creating towers of empty beer cups and it caught on throughout the GA sections. The police did their best to break up the action, and there were a few folks taken out of the stadium against their will, but the plastic towers grew into snakes that spanned entire sections. We guessed those folks weren't actually there to watch the cricket! The day ended with Australia on 6 wickets (they get 10) for 280 points - we'll know sometime next week if they win.

Of course we had to hit the Boxing Day sales downtown before heading to the game. The equivalent of the day after Thanksgiving sales, the city was a madhouse and people were running everywhere trying to get the best deals. We fought the crowds and came out with some new board shorts and rash guards to take with us to Lord Howe Island. We head out early tomorrow a.m. and will be back next Saturday. As we will be out of contact until then, we hope you all have a Happy New Year!