Indian cricket legend Sunil Gavaskar has sharply criticised the International Cricket Council for what he described as double standards in pitch ratings after the Melbourne Boxing Day Test became the second Ashes match to finish within two days, yet officials awarded positive assessments to surfaces that heavily favoured bowlers.

The Melbourne Cricket Ground Test ended in chaos on December 27 as 36 wickets fell across just 142 overs, with England securing a four-wicket victory, their first Test win on Australian soil since January 2011. The carnage mirrored the series opener in Perth, which also concluded within two days after 32 wickets tumbled and received the ICC's highest rating of "very good" from match referee Ranjan Madugalle.

Sarcasm and Double Standards

Writing in his column for Sportstar, Gavaskar took aim at the discrepancy between how Australian pitches and subcontinental surfaces are judged. "Since there is a new match referee, Jeff Crowe, for the Melbourne and Sydney Test matches, the rating could be different," he wrote. "Since 36 wickets fell in the Melbourne Test instead of 32 in Perth, Crowe might drop the word 'very' from the 'very good' that Madugalle gave for the Perth pitch and rate the MCG pitch as good".

The Indian batting great added a biting comparison to pitch curators on the subcontinent. "The curators, or as we found out about the person in charge at the MCG, the Director of Turf, may make a human error and get it slightly wrong, but they are not as devious as those 'horrible groundsmen' in India who do not even prepare a pitch and expect the batters to score runs on them. Tut tut," Gavaskar wrote.

Financial and Reputational Fallout

The Melbourne Test saw 20 wickets fall on the opening day, the most in Australia on Day 1 of a Test since 1951. MCG head curator Matt Page admitted he was in a "state of shock" after leaving 10 millimetres of grass on the pitch, compared to seven millimetres the previous year.

Cricket Australia chief executive Todd Greenberg estimated the financial shortfall from lost ticket sales at over AUD 10 million, compounding similar losses from the Perth Test. "Short Tests are bad for business," Greenberg said, acknowledging he "didn't sleep well" after watching 20 wickets fall on Boxing Day.

England captain Ben Stokes suggested that a similar pitch outside Australia would face harsher scrutiny. "I'm quite certain that if this happened elsewhere in the world, there would be outrage," Stokes told the BBC. Australian captain Steve Smith also provided critical feedback to match referee Crowe, who will determine whether the MCG pitch receives an "unsatisfactory" rating that could result in a demerit point for the venue.

The Boxing Day collapse marked the first time in 129 years that the same series produced multiple two-day Tests.