RECORD STORE DAY: 20 Wickets on Day 1 in Melbourne

·33 min·2 clips

Ben Stokes described this as his most disappointing tour while defending his dressing room.

It was one of those days that would not settle down. Haig and Lawler open by taking in the scene in Melbourne, where the backdrop feels as ragged as the cricket and the whole day already sounds like a messy argument with the scoreboard. Twenty wickets fell. Australia were dismissed for 152, England then batted in reply, and the hosts keep circling the same central point: this was the sort of first day that makes a low-scoring Test feel like it may already be heading toward a finish. The numbers are ugly. They note that 20 wickets in a first-day Test in Australia had not happened since 1951, which gives the whole thing a slightly antique, almost absurd edge before the analysis even gets rolling. England were not polished, though the bowling was not as poor as it has sometimes been and some of it was fairly decent. They still sprayed the ball around enough to keep pressure and chaos close together. Then came the run-out. They linger on the dismissal that broke a useful stand, with a late hesitation and a direct throw at the non-striker’s stumps to turn pressure into a wicket. That sort of thing stings. The hosts keep coming back to the old cricket truth that a dismissal can look accidental until it happens, and then it suddenly feels inevitable, especially when an innings has so little room to breathe. Boland turns into a footnote with a bat. Scott Boland finishing the day as Australia’s night watchman gives the closing stretch a comic edge, and the discussion keeps folding that image back into the bigger story of a match already sliding toward attrition. The English slips are not really the point. What matters more is the way the show leaves room for the technical stuff without pretending the humour is a side dish, because the humour is part of how the cricket is being understood. It stays conversational. The hosts move by question, correction, and half-finished thought, which suits a day where the scorecard has more movement than most teams want in a week. By the end, the episode has made that shambles feel readable: a low-scoring Test, a rare wicket avalanche, a fielding moment that changed the mood, and a sense that tomorrow may get stranger still.

As heard by us

A messy Test day, handled with dry wit and enough detail to keep the collapse readable.

The episode follows a shambolic Test day in which 20 wickets fell and Australia was all out for 152 before England came in. Gideon Haig and Peter Lawler keep the tone dry and faintly exasperated, which fits a contest that yielded 267 runs or thereabouts, roughly 75 overs, and…

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Why you'd press play

If you want a first-day Test collapse with bite, this is the one.

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