Cricket’s pink revolution
Wickets tumble as counties stage first day-night matches
The clock ticked towards 9.30pm, the ball was pink and James Anderson was bowling to Jonathan Trott. Welcome to the first round of daynight championship matches.
As far as England are concerned the fact that Anderson was swinging the pink ball at night-time, pinning Will Porterfield lbw for a duck with a big inswinger – and even hitting Trott on the head with a bouncer – bodes well for the daynight Test match here in August, but as an experiment for the future of county cricket the floodlights did not catch on.
This was a classic spartan championship crowd, with those that turned up engrossed in their cricket but lost in the swathes of empty seats at a big Test venue like Edgbaston. Around 1,300 supporters were counted at the gate throughout the day, a number slightly larger than the usual Monday championship audience but there was no sign of the after-work crowd clubs hoped to lure in for the final session.
These matches were arranged to give England batsmen a chance to play against the pink ball before the West Indies Test at Edgbaston in August. There are no plans to repeat the experiment in the championship and England are unlikely to host another day-night Test at home before 2020. They do not need the novelty of floodlit cricket to sell tickets against India next year and Australia in 2019. Warwickshire believe it is working for the West Indies Test with the first three days close to being sold out already.
Warwickshire are tight-lipped on whether they have insured that Test against a two-day finish but given the state of West Indies batting, it must be a possibility unless they bring back Shivnarine Chanderpaul.
The ball could be pink, white, red, yellow with purple polka dots and Chanderpaul would still score runs. This was the 76th century of a first-class career that has spanned 26 years. Even his son Tagenarine, who played against England earlier this year, is older than his dad’s Lancashire team-mate Haseeb Hameed.
This was Chanderpaul’s third century of the season justifying Glen Chapple’s decision to sign a 42-year-old on a Kolpak deal. Chanderpaul has brought to Lancashire’s middle order the calm solidity of a player who has seen it all, even the pink ball. Chanderpaul scored a hundred against a pink ball in the domestic Caribbean first-class competition last year. This was a hundred quicker than usual with 14 fours as he reached three figures from 129 balls. He was dropped once on 47 by keeper Tim Ambrose off Jeetan Patel, a miss that cost Warwickshire as it would have opened up the innings and potentially avoided facing Anderson a little earlier before the floodlights took over.
Chanderpaul has been giving Hameed advice on his struggles this season but they continued here. He now averages 19 in the championship and looks nothing like an opener ready to play a Test match in a week’s time. He desperately needs a favour from the selectors.
Patience is Hameed’s strength so it was not unusual for his first four to take 53 balls but the slow-paced nature of the pitch (it was used for the Champions Trophy semi-final) made timing more difficult than usual and the pink ball was swinging for Warwickshire’s seamers. They continued to probe his off stump and eventually the mistake came with a catch struck straight to Ian Bell, who had brought himself in to short mid-off.
The second innings will be Hameed’s last chance to make a score before the England selectors meet to pick the Test squad but Ashley Giles, Warwickshire director of cricket who gave Hameed his chance when he was at Lancashire, believes his form rules him out.
“No. On this form I can’t see him being picked but he’s a class player and it’s up to him how he punches back,” said Giles. “It’s probably a case of it being his second season and bowlers having had a look at him.”