Boxing Day Test filled with cheer and hope but nothing can be taken for granted
The first stop for the self-anointed “Yobbo Crew” when they had arrived at cricket’s mecca was the statue of Shane Warne,The group – just one of hundreds who had dressed up for the big day at the MCG – wore thongs, mustard yellow bucket hats brandishing their name, and denim shorts with less leg coverage than a 7-2 field,As the clock ticked past 9am, they appeared happy to be at Australian cricket’s great festival, but looked less than comfortable with the temperature,After the coldest Christmas in Melbourne in two decades, Boxing Day had brought wind, spits of rain, and a top temperature in the mid-teens,And so, before taking their photo under the bronzed leg-spinner, the Yobbo Crew took off their hoodies to reveal matching yellow singlets, and offered a zinced grimace.
Another fan, talking to his companion while walking down from Jolimont Station, put it succinctly, “It’s fucking freezing,” as his friend remarked how different it was compared with 2024.It wasn’t just about the weather.Last year the cricketing contest between Australia and India held a nation transfixed, as the Border-Gavaskar trophy remained alive right through to the final Test.The MCG fixture, when it was close to 40C as Sam Konstas turned the heat up on Jasprit Bumrah, was the summer’s zenith.At stumps on Boxing Day last year, the notion that within 12 months Australia would have won the Ashes but Konstas would already be out of the team was unimaginable.
But few things can be taken for granted, as the police patrolling the ground with assault rifles reminded all.Five overs in and the sun finally broke through, as England looked to find a counter to Australia’s generally competent cricket, AKA “Ronball”.There was an early test for Snicko, prompting more snickering from fans around the ground, then a surprise.The wicket of Travis Head brought a hearty cheer from the Barmy Army, and three more breakthroughs had English fans wondering whether this was to be their first Test victory on Australia soil in almost 15 years.The morning’s festivities, with a full stadium enjoying a compelling contest on a pitch tinged with green, was a sight to behold.
Although comments from Cricket Australia (CA) chief executive, Todd Greenberg, before play outside the ground, suggested it should not be taken for granted.The fixture has become one of cricket’s grand traditions since it was established in the 1980s, but CA’s new boss – overseeing the national pastime on Boxing Day for the first time – said a pink-ball Test match the day after Christmas was “not off the cards”.“We’ve been talking a lot about the strength of pink-ball cricket.It was amazing this year in Brisbane, it has been really good in Adelaide,” he said.“March 2027, we’ll get an opportunity here in Melbourne.
”Greenberg was talking about the one-off 150th anniversary match between these sides.Despite that event’s nod to the past, it now represents a pilot for the evening timeslot loved by broadcasters.Stuart Fox, chief executive of the Melbourne Cricket Club, offered the counter argument.“I actually love the tradition personally,” he said.“I love the tradition of a day game here, and I think the day-night Tests have been great in Adelaide and Brisbane.
”Fox had expressed disappointment earlier in the week that the outcome of the Ashes series had already been settled before the MCG clash, but was still hopeful of a ground record single day Test attendance, beating the 91,112 set in 2013.“It’ll be a record today,” he said on Friday morning.His confidence was justified when the figure of 93,442 was announced just before 3pm.It is not only a Test match record, it eclipses the 93,013 that attended the World Cup final in 2015 to make it MCG’s biggest ever cricket crowd.While AFL grand finals attract more than 100,000, cricket attendances at the MCG are capped due to the seats lost at either end.
“I’ve been trying to see if Todd could remove some of the sight screens and reduce them because then we could get a few more seats in the stadium,” Fox said lightheardly.“The players, I don’t think they quite agree with my thoughts.”The pursuit of growth is the reason for a mooted rebuild of the Shane Warne Stand, which was constructed in the 1990s.A business case is currently being prepared, and a capacity increase is on the table to return the MCG to the top 10 list of the world’s biggest stadiums.“You go to India, as one example, people know the MCG before they know the Sydney Harbour Bridge,” said Victorian sport minister, Steve Dimopoulos.
“We want to make sure that it stays an iconic venue for the next 50 years.”Outside the ground, there was a mob of inflatable kangaroo outfits, and a horde of men wearing viking helmets adorned with golden pigtails.A family of four from Queensland had come down for the first two days, their outfits matching in lemon yellow and a mosaic of cockatoos.Tomorrow’s were to have pineapples, according to the mother’s plan, although the son had outgrown his and would wear his Australian jersey.Nearby, a middle-aged Indian husband and wife took off their puffer jackets for a picture under the Boxing Day Test sign.
It was an English couple, about the same age, they approached to take the snap.Afterwards, the Englishman asked shyly, “Would you mind doing one of us?”, just as the group was set to part.Another Englishman, Rob Goliah, arrived in lycra at the ground before play.He had ridden his bicycle from Melbourne in Derbyshire, across 22 countries, to its Victorian namesake to raise money for medical research.His cross-border journey was celebrated with the international language of a “shoey”.
His was the first of many Boxing Day beers to find the floor.
Former EU commissioner and activists barred from US in attack on European tech regulators
The state department has barred five Europeans from the US, accusing them of leading efforts to pressure tech firms to censor or suppress American viewpoints, in the latest attack on European regulations that target hate speech and misinformation.Secretary of state Marco Rubio said the five people targeted with visa bans – who include former European Commissioner Thierry Breton – have led “organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose.”“These radical activists and weaponized NGOs have advanced censorship crackdowns by foreign states – in each case targeting American speakers and American companies,” Rubio said in an announcement.In recent months, Trump officials have ordered US diplomats to build opposition to the European Union’s landmark Digital Services Act (DSA), which is intended to combat hateful speech, misinformation and disinformation, but which Washington says stifles free speech and imposes costs on US tech companies.Late on Tuesday night, Breton posted on social media: “Is McCarthy’s witch hunt back?”Tuesday’s move is part of a Trump administration campaign against foreign influence over online speech, using immigration law rather than platform regulations or sanctions
Elon Musk, AI and the antichrist: the biggest tech stories of 2025
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, wishing you a happy and healthy end of the year. I myself have a cold.Today, we are looking back at the biggest stories in tech of 2025 – Elon Musk’s political rise, burst and fall; artificial intelligence’s subsumption of the global economy, all other technology, and even the Earth’s topography; Australia’s remarkable social media ban; the tech industry’s new Trumpian politics; and, as a treat, a glimpse of the apocalypse offered by one of Silicon Valley’s savviest and strangest billionaires.At the close of 2024, I wrote that Elon Musk’s support of Donald Trump had made him the world’s most powerful unelected man
Activist group says it has scraped 86m music files from Spotify
An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them online.Observers said the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their technology.A group called Anna’s Archive said it had scraped 86m music files from Spotify and 256m rows of metadata such as artist and album names. Spotify, which hosts more than 100m tracks, confirmed that the leak did not represent its entire inventory.The Stockholm-based company, which has more than 700 million users worldwide, said it had “identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping”
Chinese robotaxis due in London next year as Lyft and Uber reveal tie-ups
Chinese robotaxis are due to be on the streets of London next year after the US ride-hailing companies Lyft and Uber announced tie-ups with Beijing-based Baidu to deploy its self-driving technology.Lyft is the third firm to announce plans to introduce self-driving taxis to the UK capital next year, after Uber and Waymo, the main operator of robotaxis in the US.Its ride-hailing services are the major rival to Uber’s in the US and Canada, and this year Lyft expanded into Europe after acquiring the Freenow app in the summer.While Uber had signed a deal to work with Baidu in the summer in other global markets, it had not until now said that the Chinese tech company’s Apollo Go cars were planned for London. It had previously announced its services would be operated with self-driving technology from the UK-US firm Wayve
MPs question UK Palantir contracts after investigation reveals security concerns
UK MPs have raised concerns about the government’s contracts with Palantir after an investigation published in Switzerland highlighted allegations about the suitability and security of its products.The investigation by the Zurich-based research collective WAV and the Swiss online magazine Republik details Palantir’s efforts, over the course of seven years, to sell its products to Swiss federal agencies.Palantir is a US company that provides software to integrate and analyse data scattered across different systems, such as in the health service. It also provides artificial intelligence-enabled military targeting systems.The investigation cites an expert report, internal to the Swiss army, that assessed Palantir’s status as a US company meant there was a possibility sensitive data shared with it could be accessed by the US government and intelligence services
Extremists are using AI voice cloning to supercharge propaganda. Experts say it’s helping them grow
While the artificial intelligence boom is upending sections of the music industry, voice generating bots are also becoming a boon to another unlikely corner of the internet: extremist movements that are using them to recreate the voices and speeches of major figures in their milieu, and experts say it is helping them grow.“The adoption of AI-enabled translation by terrorists and extremists marks a significant evolution in digital propaganda strategies,” said Lucas Webber, a senior threat intelligence analyst at Tech Against Terrorism and a research fellow at the Soufan Center. Webber specializes in monitoring the online tools of terrorist groups and extremists around the world.“Earlier methods relied on human translators or rudimentary machine translation, often limited by language fidelity and stylistic nuance,” he said. “Now, with the rise of advanced generative AI tools, these groups are able to produce seamless, contextually accurate translations that preserve tone, emotion, and ideological intensity across multiple languages
VIP viewing: cinemas bet on luxury bars and beds to usher in a new film era
Sustainable aviation fuel take-up in UK unlikely to hit 2025 target, data suggests
‘Undermines free speech’: Labour MP hits back at US government over visa ban on UK campaigners
Visa ban for European critics of online harm is first shot in US free speech war
Hou Yifan, women’s world No 1, stars in rare appearance at Global Chess League
I was there: Carlos Alcaraz’s comeback in French Open final is still hard to comprehend