Australia vs India 2018: Don't Get Fooled by Grass on MCG Pitch - Marcus Harris

Marcus Harris, who made his international debut at Adelaide, has warned against getting carried away by the grass on the MCG pitch, saying the track does offer runs to those who show patience.

Meanwhile, with the series at 1-1, both the sides will clash for the Boxing Day Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. India went down at Perth by 146 runs after taking a 1-0 lead at the Adelaide in the first Test of the series.

Marcus Harris cited an example of a Sheffield Shield match between Victoria and New South Wales on the same pitch. He thought the game would be over in a day and a half but ended up raising an unbeaten 250.

“Pre-match when I saw the wicket I was really freaked out and I thought ‘this game’s going to be over in a day and a half and we’ve got blokes trying to vie for Test spots’, so I went into the game with no expectations on myself and the wicket actually played pretty well,” Harris told ESPNcricinfo.

“It was relatively slow and stayed together. I saw this morning the wicket will probably be more similar to the South Australia game, where it had a bit more green grass on it, nipped around a bit but it was one of those wickets where if you play well you can make runs but if you bowl well you can take wickets,” he added.

Patience is the key to score at MCG

Marcus Harris suggested patience is the virtue of having on the wicket for the Boxing day test, starting on Wednesday at the MCG.

“I think it’ll be the same old thing of patience, the MCG is never a really quick scoring ground anyway, so that’ll be the key, just realising things will take a while to evolve. Not sure the wicket will break up too much, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

“Fortunately we’ve probably got the best bowling attack in the world so that looks after itself a little bit, but I think as batters a patience game will be the key and run rates won’t be as quick as what you’d like, but that’s the way it will be,” he concluded.