Are you still with us? I don’t blame you if you’re not because the MCG, Australia’s most self-reverential stadium, is the Grinch that stole cricket.

Over six laborious sessions, Australia and India have struggled to produce just over 450 runs and the only real threat to the batsmen are themselves.

It’s not unreasonable for anyone living a full life to muse that there may be more enthralling ways to spend their time.

I mean, if you’re still watching this Test match you may have to evaluate your leisure time priorities.

May I suggest taking up macramé or scrapbooking the history of your tax returns as a more rewarding and exciting pursuit than hanging in there for this ride on the boredom train to Dullsville.

Melbourne – the self-proclaimed home of sport – has become the home of snores.

Is this the most boring Test of all time? Well, not quite yet, but it’s on track to make the final.

Old cricket sages will point to the fifth Test in Durban in 1939 between South Africa and England as the winner of the golden pillow. In that thriller, the match went for 10 days with more than 900 runs being scored from 5460 deliveries without a result.

In fact, England had to call it quits and head for the docks so the team didn’t miss the ship to get home.

This Test is being played on a dull, lifeless wicket that has about as much dynamism as a Mathias Cormann speech on fiscal rectitude.

It’s not the players’ fault. The Australian bowlers have toiled ridiculously hard on a wicket that has as much bounce and zest as a bean bag.

DROPPED! There goes another one for Nathan Lyon.

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How must Nathan Lyon be feeling after whipping through 48 overs, only to watch a couple of his teammates grass simple catches off his bowling?

At one point he put his baggy green cap over his face and walked slowly toward the boundary rope, muttering for an extended time. One can only imagine the profanity now laced into the sacred silk lining of his battered cap.

The Indian batsmen have done their duty, picking off the bad balls and wearing down their opponents over by over, session by session.

There will be some cricketing purist prattling on somewhere that this is real Test cricket; that drudgery is a virtue that rewards the patient.

These people are to be avoided at dinner parties and quarantined at family barbecues in the backyard shed where they can preach their Calvinistic bumpkin to the garden gnomes.

Here’s what the rest of us know: The MCG and its toll road pitch have brought a rollicking good series to a grinding halt.

Following on from last year’s yawn-a-thon Boxing Day Ashes Test, second consecutive go-slow has people asking why the MCG should have a monopoly on Australian cricket’s marquee occasion.

Fair question, too. Why Melbourne should be quarantined from a change in the Test schedule while other venues and states have had to make do is hard to justify.

Particularly when it promises a cricketing feast and serves up overcooked mutton such as this.

Oh, and there’s the promise of three more days to come!

Don’t say you weren’t warned.