“We’ve got a plan”.
Advertisement
Now add in the consensus opinion that the pink ball behaves more like the one-day white ball than the traditional test red and the conundrum grows another leg.
“We’ve seen in the past, with the last two games that were played out there, that it offers the seamers a fair bit but it also offers spinners a little bit off the straight, off the good part of the wicket”.
For a change, the situation certainly will be slightly different at Adelaide, if not a whole lot.
Paris also said none of his team had lost sight of the ball while fielding due to the colour of the ball. “Generally it only swings for 10 [overs] but I thought he swung it for another 10 or 15 after that, which was good”, Hesson said of Wagner, a late addition to their squad.
The tall left armer, who produced a sizzling 160.4kmph delivery in the Perth test, has put up remarkable figures in pink ball first-class matches. Darker the shade of the pink, the brighter should be the sight-screen and vice-versa. Firstly he saw that cricket at the top level is a profession and that the best players should be paid accordingly.
“That’s one thing that’s been very consistent over the past couple of years with the pink ball”. With pleasant evening temperatures there from October to April and a public keen to watch their heroes but unable to do so because of work commitments, the UAE would be a ideal place to play Tests under lights if everything proves to be in order in Adelaide.
The Boxing Day and New Year’s Test matches are traditionally played at the year end and earn huge revenues for Cricket Australia and, therefore, an experimentation won’t be feasible.
CA board member and former Test captain Taylor and chief executive James Sutherland are proponents of the ICC taking its lead from the PGA golfing tour and locking Test matches in as events that begin on Thursdays and build up to a climax on Sundays when most people can engage. Likewise, different test playing venues have their own pros and cons for their selection criteria of stadiums. However the consensus is seam and swing bowling can be highly effective under lights. “At night with the new ball it swings – and probably more so than it does during the day”. Australian conditions rarely favour spin bowling and, therefore, the spin factor of the ball will hardly come into play. It will be interesting to see how the Pink Kookaburra ball behaves. It’s going to nip around and at night, depending on the dew, it may slide on.
Advertisement
Cricket Australia is looking to revive what it sees as the dwindling interest in the iconic longer form of the game by moving it to a day/night format which will, it hopes, will draw in bigger crowds and better broadcast audience numbers.
