Australia v India: Boxing Day Test, day five – live!

“Just wanted to say thank you to you, Adam and Jonathan (and all the other hosts) as well as all the OBO-ers for your excellent efforts in this test and over the whole year. It’s a beacon of amusement and camaraderie and a reminder that the game is bigger than a few passing ripples in its pond.”

Thanks Ian. In all sincerity, it’s a privilege to be allowed to pilot this strange, lovely, ramshackle thing that has survived and flourished for as many years as it has.

Pat Cummins has to do everything.

“Hi Geoff,” writes Jeremy. “In your preamble I reckon you’ve put your finger on exactly why I love Test cricket: this game is a piquant mix of a starry-eyed optimism that has you dreaming that your hero can bat all day and the pessimism that is the OBO’s poetic stock in trade.

“But best of all are those valiant performances in defeat; Cummins’ on-drives yesterday had the look of a captain going down with the ship and trying to hold back the waves while he was at it. And then your mind starts to play those lovely games of ‘what if?’ – sadly, in this case it’s: what if one or two of the top six had shown a tenth of Cummins’ application?”

Exactly what I was thinking yesterday. Trailing by 141, it’s not that big a gap. Wring another hundred runs out of the specialists batsmen, and we’d have an all-time classic finish on our hands. The resistance from the lower order, in any match, has a special emotional resonance, but never more than when it has this kind of substance.

And now it’s hammering rain at the MCG once more. Australia won’t mind, if this drags on a little longer then we’ll start losing overs. As vain as that hope may be. A few silly types online are already expostulating over Kohli not enforcing the follow-on, as though this is going to make a difference in the end.

“Not sure that Indian wickets afford quick bowlers much comfort,” emails John Burton about Bumrah. That’s the perception, but there has been a concerted effort to produce more pace-friendly pitches at times in Indian domestic cricket, which is partly where this generation of excellent quicks has come from. And if that’s where India’s advantage lies in any given series, you can bet that the ground staff at various venues will respond appropriately.

It keeps changing. Play was due to start at 11. Then the covers came back on. Now they’re off again.

Word from Melbourne’s northern suburbs is that there’s rain coming down there, and thunder. The weather on the radar seems to be coming west to east, and it looks like there’s another band of rain maybe an hour away. I suspect it’ll clear up by the afternoon, so bear with us.

The hessian is being stripped. It’s Christmas all over again. The umpires will do an inspection shortly.

The time for a start has arrived, but the morning showers are still showering at the ground. The TV broadcasters at Seven are doing a panel on selection with Gideon Haigh and Peter Lalor from The Australian, which is owned by the company that also owns Foxtel, where the broadcast is doing something else.

The covers are stripped back to the hessian layers, so we won’t be delayed by much.

This is the kind of niche specialist content that Collins can bring you.

Also this morning, keep an eye on Jasprit Bumrah. He currently has 47 wickets and is playing his 9th Test. So he can’t quite get to 50 in 9, like Mohammad Abbas so memorably threatened to do for Pakistan this year. But he’s very close, and if he takes 10 Tests he’ll still be the fastest Indian seamer to the mark by a distance. (Ravi Ashwin holds the Indian record with 9 Tests, Terror Turner holds the all-time record with 6 Tests.) For Bumrah, it’s a truly remarkable rise for someone who was an unknown curiosity bowler in the IPL a few years ago, who only debuted in Tests this year, and who’s never had the comfort of playing at home.

Now, the weather. “Tell me how we feel about the weather,” says the poet Derrick Brown. “Talk about the moon, but not about how it f–––s up our blood.” The weather has its emotional impact on us all, and cricket players or watchers are among the most concretely affected. Rain can be saviour or tormentor. There is some rain around Melbourne this morning, and a bit of grumbling thunder even now. But the forecast and the radar show patchy bits, so it won’t be enough to wash out a day. We might lose a bit of time, but even that’s unlikely with the umpires showing on day four how late they’re willing to play with the floodlights on. I’ll keep you posted, but rain isn’t expected to play a role.

Here’s that poem, if you want to feel something for a few minutes while we wait.