BEACHCOMBER

100 YEARS OLD AND STILL CONCERNED ABOUT CRICKET...

MUCH has been written in the popular press and several deep discussions have taken place on radio news programmes concerning England’s first day-night cricket Test match, that began yesterday. There has been much chat about pink balls moving through the air at various times of day and under changing forms of lighting, yet they all seem to have missed an extraordinarily apposite piece of research that appeared only last month in the journal Animal Behaviour.

Entitled “Effects of lifetime exposure to artificial light at night on cricket (Teleogryllus commodus ) courtship and mating behaviour”, it has left me gravely concerned about the effect prolonged exposure to day-night Test matches may have on the sex lives of our cricketers.

“Increasing evidence,” they report, “suggests that key fitness-related behaviours of animals related to courtship and mating may be disrupted by anthropogenic stressors, including artificial light at night.”

One may, of course, take issue with the researchers calling our cricketers “animals” but that is no reason not to heed their warning. The writers of the paper are, after all, a team of Australians from the University of Melbourne, so may be presumed to have a good deal of experience of day-night Test matches and their consequences.

“We found,” they say, “that lifetime exposure to brighter artificial light at night… influenced mate choice and mating efficiency in a sex-specific manner but did not affect the multivariate structure of male courtship calls.”

That is hardly surprising. When a cricketer has been on the pitch until ten at night, whether batting, bowling or fielding, of course it affects his mate choice. Asking a young lady whether she’d like to come out to dinner, then revealing that one will not be free until 10.30pm at the earliest, is bound to influence mate choice, and the exertions of a long day are surely liable to have some deleterious effect on mating efficiency.

No wonder the male has to make multivariate courtship calls on his mobile after the day’s play in order to facilitate his courtship activity. I would conjecture that many young ladies would reject any invitation out of hand when they hear that they must starve until 10.30pm, while others would try it once then tell the caller that last night was a great disappointment as their paramour fell asleep with exhaustion when they got back from dinner in the early hours of the morning.

Curiously, however, the researchers report, “For females, it appears that the presence of higher levels of artificial light at night… may reduce mate discrimination.”

I suppose at that time of night, the chances that anyone else will invite them to dinner are slim so they take what they can get. This is confirmed by their saying that “females remained with a male for 45min regardless of their initial preference”. I suppose that’s long enough to have dinner then say, “It’s late, I’m going home.”