One might recall that on that first day's play England who won the toss routed Australia by taking all 10 wickets for a measly 98 runs before England went to stumps without losing even one wicket.
84,000 spectators came and watched with baited breath that first day's play and one question is, he asks - why they came?
Did they come because it is a Boxing Day tradition that the Melbourne Cricket Test first day's play is the "cricket tragic delight" where the passionate turn up.
Did they come because old foes were again contesting, that love hate relationship, England and Australia, the Lion verses the Kangaroo. There is certainly something to this, in that the cricket loving public treat this as being a 'sacred event'.
Did they come for an entirely different reason, that the Test series was 1-1(one all). A Test Ashes series poised was no common occurrence.
But there is something else afoot as another question relates to whether this was the swan song for Australian Test Cricket, a last hurrah, to see off the Australian cricket team with a waving of flags and streets lined with palm leaves.
Australian cricket has been on the top of their game for many years. The foundations were laid by Allan Border, which was followed by the tenure of Mark Taylor and then Steve Waugh. Under Ricky Ponting some of the greats of those eras retired: Shane Warne, Glen McGrath, Adam Gilchrist, Justin Langer and Matt Hayden.
The Cricket Academy of Excellence over many years were bringing through reams of youngsters but they had no where to go in Test cricket so they turned their attention to the two short forms of the game – the one day game (many have doubts as to its future) or the more lucrative Twenty/20 which has huge international dollars attached to it.
Commentators are now looking at the future of Test Cricket and Australia's long term future in this form of the game. Cricket Australia has even formed a commission of review. The team has lost the last two Ashes series in England which is like the proverbial cricket millstone. Now they have lost this home series.
Perhaps there are two possible scenarios. The first is a partial repeat of history. After the Cricket World Series peace with Australian cricket in the late seventies, the Test team was essentially left with starting again. New faces, new heroes, new headlines.
The second, is to acknowledge there are cricketers who are keenly a-tuned to Test Cricket to be cultivated and rewarded accordingly.
But there is a psychological issue at hand here. Former Prime Minister John Howard was rejected by the International Cricket Council for reasons which have as yet to be explained. This was like a two edged sword cutting at Australia's cricket heart and an illustration that the power behind world cricket has turned decidedly 'sub-continent'.
In many ways, the 84,000 spectators on the first day's play at the Boxing Day Ashes Test seems more and more like a colonial yearning for the days of the Raj when all things were in their rightful place.
As a Christian minister, it reminds me of how the power house of Christianity has likewise moved to both Africa and Asia. The nature of the difficulties in which the western theological heart is grappling with this, has many of the same hallmarks as cricket's trauma.
