Some 84,345 people packed into the MCG on Boxing Day to enjoy day one of the fourth Ashes Test, not quite a full house with the stadium's capacity 96,500, but 87 percent full is nothing to be ashamed of considering the plight of the Australians at present.

Conversely South Africa are engaged in a battle with a top-ranked Indian side, already one-up in the series. Despite this, only 12,018 people arrived at Kingsmead to see the Proteas play, a miserly 48 percent of capacity.

Despite it being a public holiday, South African fans historically have not warmed to the Boxing Day Test. It's a strange situation as one would imagine - as it is in other countries - that the day would notch up top attendance numbers, but it is not the case.

The idea of South Africa playing India in a city with a large Indian population on an official holiday sounds like a marketer's dream, but instead it has fallen flat. Kingsmead has suffered poor attendance numbers for some time, but it was hoped this match up would change that.

The traditional home of the Boxing Day Test, Kingsmead was denied the privilege in 2008 after a string of poor crowds in years gone by. The game was instead played at St George's Park in Port Elizabeth but once again the crowds failed to materialise.

Perhaps it was the poor quality of the opposition - the West Indies - but the Port Elizabeth experiment was deemed to be so unsuccessful that the game was moved back to Durban the following year.

In 2009, a healthy serving of members of the Barmy Army made the crowd look fairly respectable, but the local numbers still looked to be lacking.

While the overcast conditions may have chased fair-weather fans away, one can't explain away the problem that easily.

Perhaps the most striking indictment of South Africa's poor attendance can be found in the fact that, while the lack of a full house at the MCG was a surprise, the half-full stadium at Kingsmead was not.