IAN CHAPPELL

The confusion surrounding the BCCI’S attempts to programme its first Day/night Test mirrors perfectly the state of cricket administration worldwide. The fact that cricket’s most prosperous - and therefore most powerful - administration, the BCCI, is beholden to a Committee of Administrators (COA) is a black mark on the game.

To then have the COA overrule the BCCI’S attempts to play a Day/night Test against the West Indies on the basis that any decision should include consultation with “the players, the administrators and the fans”, is even more damning. At a time when cricket needs clear-headed decision making and long-term planning, confusion seems to be the prevalent emotion. Consider the following:

Test cricket is a game in dire need of nurturing and one solution is to play matches under lights. So far the Day/night Test experiment has proved worthwhile but it needs the support of its biggest stakeholder. India’s current progress on programming a Day/night Test appears to be more akin to “fiddling while Rome burns”.

In recent weeks both Jos Buttler and Eoin Morgan have implied that Test cricket is in trouble. Buttler even predicted that down the road, cricket could become a purely T20 game. As if to confirm Buttler’s thoughts, England’s Alex Hales and Adil Rashid then opted to take whiteball-only contracts from their County and eschew the longer form of the game.

For some years now South