Day-night Tests supported by Pakistan’s Shahid Afridi
As cricket authorities grapple with the increasingly difficult task of maintaining and balancing public interest in Test cricket, ODIs and Twenty20s, Shahid Afridi has come out in support of playing the longest form of the game under lights.
While some of the practicalities of day-night Test matches still need to be sorted out – finding an appropriately coloured ball is the major hurdle at the moment – the Pakistan captain has backed the concept saying that he thinks it would lead to an increase in crowd participation and revenues for Test matches.
That Test matches will eventually be played under lights now seems an inevitability, it’s just a matter of when, with the ICC Cricket Committee’s annual meeting last month resolving to commission research into, and conduct trials of, the ideal colour for balls to be used in day-night cricket.
That announcement followed trials held both by the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and Cricket Australia earlier in the year, where coloured balls were used in floodlit conditions during domestic matches.
The MCC and 2009 county champions Durham experimented with a pink ball during this year’s season curtain raiser, played under lights in Abu Dhabi, with the same coloured balls also used in domestic matches in Adelaide and Brisbane at the end of the Australian summer, with the trials Down Under yielding only a mixed reaction to the ball, with issues raised including their visibility and durability.
The practicalities aside, there is little surprise that Afridi and others see merit in the concept, as Test and ODI cricket now find themselves battling to retain, and even grow, their popularity in the face of the rapid rise of the faster-moving Twenty20s.
While ODIs are the format that’s really feeling the heat from the brash new game, and more tinkering with that format seems unavoidable, Tests also stand to benefit from moving to a day-night format.
As a start, it would overcome problems surrounding failing light stopping play, and also stands to attract an after-work crowd both to the ground and to their TVs to watch the conclusion of the day’s play, which can only improve the game’s popularity.
Afridi is only the latest to add his voice to the throng supporting the staging of Test matches under lights, it’s now just a matter of the research catching up to the groundswell of support for the concept for it to become a reality.
Tags: