Whole new ball game: how Australia has embraced and dominated the sub-genre of Test cricket under lights

The World Test champion has won every pink-ball game it has played at the Adelaide Oval, its unyielding pace battery’s penetrating lengths in helpful conditions proving irresistible. It’s why the host begins next week’s day-night contest with an edge despite India claiming the Perth Test

It is revealing of cricket bureaucracy’s resistance to innovation and change that it took the intervention of an ‘outsider’ — Australian media tycoon Kerry Packer — for the day-night game to materialise. 

The watershed moment arrived in Packer’s controversial World Series Cricket, an initiative that riled up the establishment across the board. It was the beginning of the revolution that the sport has undergone over the last four decades, with white balls, coloured clothing and larger crowds becoming integral parts of the landscape in limited-overs cricket.

Uncharted territory

Belatedly, maybe, but the belief that the classical format was in need of a similar boost is what resulted in the first-ever day-night Test. Uncharted territory was entered in 2015, a few years after the idea was first mooted, as Australia faced Trans-Tasman rival New Zealand in Adelaide in late November. It may have taken place sooner if not for the obstacle of finding a suitable ball that lasted the course of 80 overs — red was hard to spot under lights while white would not offer a contrast with the attire for Tests. 

Eventually, after trials with different-coloured balls, pink was settled on as the ideal hue for a spectacle that has proven to be, literally and metaphorically, a whole new ball game.

It is an addition that has been embraced by Australia in particular. It has been involved in 12 of the 22 matches held under lights. And it continues to include at least one day-night Test in nearly every home series.

It is with anticipation of that offering in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy that the caravan will move to the scenic Adelaide Oval — the spiritual home of this sub-genre — in a week from now. Despite India winning the first Test in Perth, it’s fair to say that the host begins this contest with an edge; it has won 11 of its 12 day-night Tests, the only slip-up coming against a Shamar Joseph-inspired West Indian team at the Gabba in Brisbane at the start of this year. In Adelaide, where the sky turns crimson at sunset to make for a breathtaking view, Australia has won all seven day-night Tests.

India, too, has had a healthy success rate in day-night Tests, winning three of the four it has played so far. But it’s India’s experience in Adelaide during the 2020-21 tour that is most relevant to the build-up — it suffered the ignominy of being bowled out for 36 (its lowest total ever) in the second innings of an eight-wicket defeat. It was a perfect storm as India’s batters kept nicking, rather than playing and missing, the penetrating lengths hit by Australia’s unyielding pace battery in helpful conditions. Nobody reached double figures as India, which was nine for one after six overs on the second day’s close, folded a little over an hour into the start of play on day three. It is to deal with any glaring shortcomings that India is preparing with a day-night warm-up game against a Prime Minister’s XI in Canberra between the first two Tests, a rarity otherwise in the current calendar.

India’s collapse, though it was extreme, points to the fundamental challenge of batting against the pink ball in Australia. In 12 day-night Tests Down Under, the overall batting average is 26.11, a noticeable decline from an average of 32.45 in other Tests there during this period (Nov. 2015-Jan. 2024).

Look elsewhere too, besides the UAE that tends to produce highways masquerading as pitches, and the notion that batting has been more burdensome in these Tests is hard to escape. When India played England in Ahmedabad in 2021, for instance, the Test lasted less than two days with totals of 112, 145, 81 and 49 for 0 suggesting that the scales were heavily tilted in favour of the bowlers.

Preserving the ball

A precedent was set in that very first Test between Australia and New Zealand in 2015 when neither team crossed 250 on a track laden with grass. The rationale for a pacer-friendly track was associated with the pink ball, and preserving its condition for a longer period. This was arrived at after an abrasive pitch for a trial game in Canberra in the lead-up to the Test led to the ball’s early deterioration. Ever since, a generous sprinkling of grass on the pitch has become de rigueur for day-night Tests in Australia even as the manufacturers have kept fine-tuning the pink Kookaburra based on feedback.

“The extra grass helps in retaining the shine and visibility of the ball. The pink ball definitely loses colour if it is an abrasive wicket,” says Paras Anand, CEO of Sanspareils Greenlands (SG), which manufactures balls used in Tests in India.

Where a pink ball differs from a red cherry, aside from the colour obviously, is that it has extra coatings of lacquer, although it must be noted that Kookaburra has recently made variations to the red ball, too, to help bowlers have a greater say. It also has a black seam on the suggestion of Australian batter Steve Smith after that inaugural Test. 

“With the red ball, the way the leather is processed, there is actually no layer of colour coating on it. You just dye the leather red and process it without any layers on it,” Anand elaborates. “For the pink ball, to get that colour to stay on the ball for 80 overs, there are layers of pink coating applied on it. There is a process where it takes about three days, and in those three days, you keep applying layers of colour. On top of it, you apply PU coating also, which protects that colour. That is the basic difference in how the balls are prepared.”

It is probably on account of this preparation, according to former India bowling coach Bharat Arun, that the pink ball seems to offer more lateral movement. Arun was part of the set-up for three of India’s four pink-ball Tests, including the one at Adelaide.

“There is some extra movement that you get with the pink ball. Because of the glaze on the ball, you get that extra movement. Any batter in the world finds it difficult to negotiate a moving ball. In Australia, there is also extra bounce. Bounce and movement is a deadly combination. It appeared in most of the matches we played, even in India, that the pink ball moved a bit more than the red ball. I don’t know how the ball is made, but it does a little more,” the 61-year-old coach said.

In view of these nuances, it is far from ideal that India hasn’t played a pink-ball Test since facing Sri Lanka in Bengaluru in March 2022. It doesn’t help either that the experiment of having day-night games in the Duleep Trophy was halted after three iterations with the pink ball from 2016 to 2018.

Batting troubles

Sheldon Jackson, a seasoned professional from Saurashtra who was the third-highest run-getter for the triumphant India Blue in the 2016 edition, threw light on the troubles that batters encounter. “Especially under lights, you can’t judge the shine of the ball very well to know which way it will swing. With the red ball, it is a bit easier to pick the shinier side. And the ball starts doing a lot more than what it does in the daytime,” he said.

Batters seem to be vulnerable particularly during the twilight period, when the natural light fades and the floodlights begin to take over. “Yes, the tricky period most definitely is that. You just have to focus and concentrate a lot more on watching the ball during that period,” Jackson said.

Will the events in Adelaide four years ago have any bearing? “I don’t think so,” Arun responded. “They will be just looking to play as it comes.”

Which is what India did at Perth’s Optus Stadium, surmounting the backlash of a whitewash by New Zealand at home. Defeating Australia in a day-night Test in Adelaide is perhaps an even harder ask. But one that you can’t put beyond the current bunch, not when India’s last two Tests in Australia have witnessed fortress-breaching victories in Brisbane and Perth.

Published - November 29, 2024 11:36 pm IST