Imagine watching a pre-title sequence from a Bond film and then getting up and leaving the cinema, happy with the entertainment value but disinterested in how the rest of the film turns out.
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This is what Test cricket has become, especially the Boxing Day Test.
The bowling of the first ball at the Melbourne Cricket Ground at 11am on December 26 has been elevated onto a sporting pedestal almost unrivalled within Australian shores.
Spectators will invest untold dollars and travel unparalleled kilometres to be present in Yarra Park, Jolimont, at that precise moment.
Google Melbourne, zoom in on that very spot and you will find it described not simply as the MCG but as “birthplace of Test cricket”.
Take that Lord’s.
No true Australian sports fan’s bucket list would be complete without either the Boxing Day Test or indeed Evandale’s penny farthing world championships.
And yet those fans appear oblivious to it being a five-day contest. The cricket that is - long time to spend in a penny farthing saddle.
Rarely does the contest get irrevocably decided on that first day, much less the first session or even first over, but that is what spectators flock to.
In contrast, by the time the winning ball is bowled or run is scored, the venue is almost always virtually deserted – even when organisers make the final session free of charge.
Yasir Shah deploying his leading edge to cunningly redirect a Mitchell Starc delivery to a delighted Jackson Bird at mid-on in the 54th over of Pakistan’s second innings on day five of a stop-start-stop-again contest perfectly demonstrated the enigmatic appeal of Test cricket.
In contrast to the 63,000 on the opening day, less than a tenth - just 6189 - were present to witness the contest get decided.
In a venue that holds 100,000, it was like sending a bus to pick up one passenger.
The cinematic equivalent would be that Bond reference, or watching the opening scene from Jaws as the shark attacks the lone swimmer in a crescendo of screams, gurgles and splashes but being round a mate’s barbie by the time that Roy Scheider finally converts it into sushi.
No other iconic Australian sporting moment is so warped in the national psyche.
The final seconds before the first bounce of the AFL Grand Final at the same venue is indeed spine-tingling, but so it the final siren when a team is crowned premiers a couple of hours later. To experience one without the other would leave any fan shortchanged.
Similarly, imagine being at Flemington or Bathurst as contrasting fields of horsepower roar into life but then opting to head for the beach rather than find out who crosses the finish line first.
But cricket has always reveled in its own idiosyncrasy.
This is a sport where the object is to score runs but a well-judged leave gets a warm round of applause and where a bowler is targeting stumps but gets a pat on the back for a bouncer that misses them by two Mitchell Starcs.
The record attendance for Boxing Day of a Boxing Day Test was just three years ago. A crowd of 91,112 was present on the day England captain Alastair Cook took strike to Ryan Harris for the first delivery.
Impressively, 38,522 were still there at 2.30pm on day four when crowd-favourite Shane Watson claimed a couple off Monty Panesar to complete an eight-wicket win and a 4-0 scoreline.
A somewhat larger anomaly came in the previous Ashes series in 2010 when 84,345 were present on the day England bowled Australia out for 98 before tea and raced to 157 without loss by stumps.
Unsurprisingly, just 18,899 were there on day four when a Ben Hilfenhaus duck gave England an innings and 157-run win and a 2-1 series lead.
It is worth noting at this juncture that for all its claims to be the home of Test cricket and Australian sport, the MCG’s largest single-day attendance was not to watch the Ashes, Collingwood, Essendon or even the Socceroos but when 130,000 flocked to the colosseum to hear the alternative message of evangelist Billy Graham in 1959.
Obviously, being a public holiday, it is easier for fans to attend the MCG on December 26 than subsequent days.
But the inverse ratio of fans-to-outcome is not limited to Melbourne.
In the popular day-night series opener against Pakistan in Brisbane last month, a non-Ashes record was set within three days by which time a total of 66,325 fans had rolled up, including attendances of 26,353 and 23,344 on the opening two days.
However, when the tourists came within 40 runs of victory with two wickets in hand on the final day – a thrilling scenario in any fan’s book – there were hardly any left to be sitting on the edge of their Gabba seats.
It is difficult to think of another sporting contest where the introduction is viewed as more desirable than the conclusion.
In almost every other sport, the attendance grows towards the finale rather than drops.
Perhaps the only other is that alternative Australian Boxing Day sporting institution where tens of thousands line Sydney Harbour to watch a fleet set out in glorious daylight but by the time the winner emerges through the Hobart darkness the only people present are a handful of hardy spectators and some caffeined-up journalists on overtime.
