The second Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy between India and Australia will be a day-night match, which will be played with a pink ball under the milky light of the Adelaide ground. This will be the 12th pink ball Test, and all have been on the Australian home grounds. Australia has won 11 of these 12 Tests, while they lost the only Test played against West Indies at Gabba in Brisbane earlier this year.
Adelaide is the fortress for Australia in day-night Tests
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The last time the Indian team played a day-night Test match against Australia in Adelaide, it all went out for a world record score of 36 runs in the second innings and despite taking the lead in the first innings, had to face a crushing defeat by eight wickets. The Indian team, which has taken a 1-0 lead in the series, will now want to avenge that shameful defeat.
However, it will not be so easy in any way because Australia has played the maximum seven-day-night Test matches on this ground and has remained undefeated here so far.
Brief history of the Pink Ball Test
The world’s first day-night Test match was played between Australia and New Zealand on this same ground in Adelaide in November-December 2015, and overall this will be the 23rd pink ball Test match. If we talk about India, this will be only the fifth pink ball Test match of the Indian team.
They played their first-ever pink ball Test match against Bangladesh in Kolkata in November 2019, where they got a big win over the Indian team by innings and 46 runs. Since then, the Indian team has played three more pink ball Test matches from which they got two more big wins in the matches played on home soil while facing a crushing defeat in Adelaide.
Why was the pink ball used?
In the 2010s, the ICC, worrying about the decline in test matches’ popularity, decided to do some experimenting with it and the idea of a day-night test came up. Since the red ball cannot be seen very well under milky light due to its red color, on an experimental basis, it was implemented in first-class matches everywhere in the world.
When that experiment went to full success, this idea of day-night test implementation was taken to test match.
Why is the pink ball challenging for batting?
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This is one of the biggest questions. If we look at the history of pink ball test matches so far, only six out of 22 pink ball test matches have reached the fifth day, while seven matches have ended on the fourth day. There are also nine matches that have ended within three days or less. So far, there has not been a day-night test match that has ended in a draw, while two matches have ended within two days.
That means batting against the pink ball is not easy, as KL Rahul also admitted during the press conference on Wednesday. He said, “When the pink ball is leaving the bowler’s hand, it becomes a bit tough to notice it right away. Also, it is a wee bit harder than the red ball. Even while you are fielding, you feel that it hits your palm faster.
It’s also a wee bit faster. That’s exactly the case even in batting. It hits the batsman a lot faster than the red ball. It also seems more than the red ball. It becomes tougher for the batsmen. At the same time, I’m glad to face it. I mean, this is my very first pink ball test.”
Mohammad Siraj said the same after the match against the Prime Minister’s XI, “The pink ball is very different from the red ball. There may be confusion about the ball but our focus is only on practice and we will keep improving day by day. Its seam is very hard and this ball is also very shiny and big. However, the more you practice, the better it will be for you.
I think it will be better to bowl back of length with the pink ball.” Let us tell you that Australia prefers to bat first in day-night Test matches and then bowl to the other team in the twilight of the second day. The twilight hour stretches between 20 minutes prior to sunset and 20 minutes subsequent to sunset when batting is most challenging. Sunset in Adelaide is at 8 pm local time.
Both teams have some world-class bowlers who can test the new batsmen with pink ball. The day-night match is much more challenging to the new batsman than others. When there’s no new ball under floodlights, i.e., at twilight, the established batsmen find batting quite easy, and it was clearly witnessed in the Sheffield Shield too.
But if you do have a new ball with you at that point and time and have a combination of the established batsmen coming along and some new faces arriving on the crease, it does create the same trouble.
It all was visible in Adelaide during the final Test of the Australian Test tour of India where Indian batting was completely folded just after the morning of day three when Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins presented only 36 runs.
Cheteshwar Pujara’s analysis of pink ball
Cheteshwar Pujara, who played in that match, says, “The pink ball shines a little more than the red ball. This is because it has more coats of color and it also has more layers of paint, which do not go away quickly. When you are facing the red ball, it gets old quickly, whereas the pink ball keeps shining for a longer time.
Since there are more layers of paint on the pink ball, when it falls on the pitch, it skids a little more. So as a batsman, you have very little time and this is the biggest difference, in which the batsman has to adapt as soon as possible.”
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