Australia vs New Zealand
29 March 2015
Brad Haddin claimed a catch off a bottom edge in the 2015 World Cup Final that was reviewed and given out, with New Zealand questioning whether the ball had carried.
Australia vs India
7 February 1981
Sunil Gavaskar was so furious with an LBW decision that he tried to take his batting partner Chetan Chauhan off the field with him in protest.
Australia vs New Zealand
1981-02-01
Greg Chappell instructed his brother Trevor to bowl the last ball underarm along the ground to prevent New Zealand from hitting a six to tie, sparking outrage and eternal mockery.
Australia vs England
12-17 March 1977
The Centenary Test at the MCG in March 1977 commemorated 100 years since the first Test match at the same venue. Australia won by 45 runs — exactly the same margin as the 1877 result. Dennis Lillee took 6/26 and 5/139 across the two innings; Derek Randall made 174 in England's second-innings chase of 463; over 200 surviving Australian and English Test cricketers attended a celebration that became part of cricket's institutional memory.
Australia vs West Indies
31 January - 5 February 1976
Lance Gibbs took his 309th Test wicket — Gary Gilmour caught Fredericks — in the sixth Test of the 1975-76 series at the MCG, passing Fred Trueman's previous record of 307 and becoming the first spinner to lead the all-time Test wicket-takers' list. The wicket was his last in international cricket. He retired at the end of the tour, holding the record until Dennis Lillee passed him in December 1981.
Australia vs England
5 January 1971
The first one-day international in cricket history was played at the MCG on 5 January 1971 as a hastily arranged consolation after the third Ashes Test was washed out for the first three days. Played over 40 eight-ball overs a side, Australia won by five wickets, John Edrich top-scored with 82 for England, and an estimated crowd of more than 46,000 watched a fixture neither board had originally planned to stage.
Australia vs England
1966-02-11
On 11-12 February 1966 Victoria's Bob Cowper batted for twelve hours and seven minutes to score 307 against England at the MCG — then the highest score ever made by an Australian at home, and still the longest innings in Australian Test history. England's attack, containing Snow, Brown and Allen, bowled 138 overs at Cowper before he was finally out. Australia declared at 543 for 8 and the match was drawn.
Australia vs England
1955-01-05
On the morning of 5 January 1955 at the MCG, Frank Tyson took 6 for 16 in 6.3 eight-ball overs to finish with 7 for 27 and bowl England to a 128-run win over Australia. The 50,000-strong crowd witnessed the fastest spell of the decade. Tyson, nicknamed 'Typhoon' on tour after his vicious pace, ended the third Test with a haul that turned the 1954-55 Ashes and remains the best by an England bowler in Australia since George Lohmann in 1886-87.
Australia v England
1937-01-01
On a wet New Year's Day pitch at the MCG in 1937, with Australia 0-2 down in the series, Don Bradman batted himself at No. 7, sent his tail in first to absorb the sticky, and then made 270 over almost eight hours. It is the highest score made on a sticky wicket in Test cricket, the innings that turned the 1936-37 Ashes, and the one Wisden in 2001 voted the greatest Test innings of the 20th century.
Victoria v Queensland
1927-12-21
Five years after his 429 against Tasmania, Bill Ponsford broke his own world first-class record in December 1927 with 437 against Queensland at the MCG — the first batsman in cricket history to score two individual innings of 400 or more.
Victoria v Tasmania
1923-02-22
On 22 February 1923 the 22-year-old Bill Ponsford made 429 against Tasmania at the MCG, breaking Archie MacLaren's 28-year-old world first-class record of 424 and announcing the arrival of the most prolific run-machine Australian cricket had yet produced — a man who would go on to break his own record five years later with 437.
Australia v England
1883-01-19
On 19 January 1883 Billy Bates of Yorkshire took the first hat-trick by an England bowler in a Test match — McDonnell, Giffen and Bonnor in successive deliveries — on the way to match figures of 14 for 102 and an innings win for Bligh's team at the MCG. It remained the only Ashes hat-trick by an England bowler for the rest of the 19th century.
Australia v England
1879-01-02
On 2 January 1879, in only the third Test ever played, Fred Spofforth took the first hat-trick in Test cricket — Vernon Royle bowled, Francis MacKinnon bowled, Tom Emmett lbw — at the MCG. He finished the innings with 6 for 48 and the match with 13 wickets for 110 runs, an Australian win by 10 wickets, and an early sketch of the Demon Bowler legend that would mature at The Oval three years later.
Aboriginal XI vs Melbourne Cricket Club
1866-12-26
Tom Wills, the Cambridge-educated Victorian who had drafted the original rules of Australian Rules football in 1859, captained an Aboriginal XI from the Edenhope district against the Melbourne Cricket Club at the MCG on Boxing Day 1866 in front of more than 10,000 spectators. The match — the first cricket fixture between an Aboriginal team and a leading white club — was the proving ground that led directly to the 1868 English tour.
Victoria vs New South Wales
1856-03-26
On 26-27 March 1856 the Melbourne Cricket Ground hosted its first inter-colonial fixture, between Victoria and New South Wales. NSW won by three wickets in front of a crowd of around 5,000 — among them many gold-rush emigrants. The match opened the Vic-NSW rivalry that would, with the Sheffield Shield from 1892-93, become the spine of Australian first-class cricket.
Local Melbourne Cricket Club fixture
1854-09-30
On 30 September 1854 the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the future cathedral of Australian cricket, hosted its first match. The Melbourne Cricket Club, displaced from its previous home by Australia's first steam railway line, had been granted a fresh ten-acre site in Yarra Park the year before. The ground would within a generation become the most important cricket venue in the southern hemisphere.