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

Kerry Packer's intervention led to the first day-night Test, revolutionizing cricket with pink balls and colored clothing.

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.

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.