D/N test gets nod but does BCCI have the balls?

The Bangladesh Cricket Board on Tuesday agreed to play the second Test against India at Eden Gardens under lights. This will be the first Day-Night Test for both teams and that too with pink balls.

BCCI president Sourav Ganguly has made this happen; it was he who goaded the Bangladesh Cricket Board into playing under floodlights in a bid to pull crowds into the stadiums.

The Indian team was earlier not keen on playing Day-Night Tests. India had previously dodged plans to play a pink-ball Test in Adelaide during their tour Down Under last year.

There was also reluctance on India's part when a move to host a DayNight Test against the West Indies at home was brushed under the carpet.

The big worry for BCCI is not only that Indian players have little or no experience of playing with the pink ball, but also that it may not have enough quality pink balls when they take on Bangladesh in the day and night test.

Ironically, it was Sourav Ganguly who had advocated that domestic tournaments be played with pink ball under the lights when he was the head of the BCCI's technical committee in 2016-17.

BCCI general manager Saba Karim, however, was not impressed and the tournament was soon back to the red-ball format. Little would he have known that Ganguly would return as boss of the BCCI.

Former BCCI treasurer Anirudh Chaudhry, who was also part of the Ganguly-led technical committee, said the current scenario could have been avoided had the BCCI staff shown better sense and not ignored the recommendations of the different committees. The BCCI is now in a situation where they would in fact be forced to speak to either Kookaburra or Dukes to provide it with quality pink balls.

Another functionary said that it will be almost impossible to provide umpires with substitute balls and that is another area of concern for the BCCI. In Day/Night tests, dew is one issue that can be problematic for the spinners. "We will make sure there's no dew. After all, day/night ODIs are played here. There's this dew treatment spray. Nothing will happen," Ganguly said.