In the pink Moeen riding high as England step into Test cricket’s new world
Day-night experiment is a fascinating prospect – but no one knows if is it the future of Test cricket
Four pink-ball Tests have been staged and, following the low-scoring inaugural daynight match between Australia and New Zealand in Adelaide in 2015, the balance between bat and ball – the essence of a game of cricket – has not been adversely affected.
But when the umpires call “play” at Edgbaston at 2pm tomorrow, it is asking too much of this new era of day-night Tests to regenerate the format in England. At night it is simply too cold. The pink-ball experiment has to be done, though, because the second Ashes Test will be a day-nighter in Adelaide in December – and playing at night in the rest of the cricket world is far more attractive.
As Stuart Broad has said, England’s first Test against West Indies will be a step into the unknown, because the only time the current make of pink ball has been used in first-class cricket in England was in the round of championship matches in late June – and that was heavily raininterrupted, so some counties had only two days adjusting to this novelty.
Based on this limited sample, the consensus among county cricketers was that the pink ball felt different, looked different, and moved around more when new. Otherwise, their testimonies sometimes contradicted each other, which is not surprising given that the matches were spread around the country and a ball’s behaviour is influenced not only by its colour but by the pitch, ground and overhead conditions.
As for the basic feel, Surrey’s bowling coach, Stuart Barnes, said: “It’s fairly difficult to look after because you don’t get that shine like you do with the red ball. It feels quite soft and light in weight.”
Jon Lewis, Durham’s head coach, said: “The seam is quite coarse and nylony so it gripped the pitch more when it was new and that created the early movement.”
Durham’s bowlers, in other words, found the pink ball seamed more than the red one – whereas other bowlers thought it swung more. Thus Luke Fletcher of Nottinghamshire, after bowling against Kent, said: “It was very different to the red ball as it didn’t shine up as much as the red Dukes. It swung throughout the [Kent] innings, so no real complaints from me at all.” But Fletcher was bowling at Trent Bridge, a ground renowned for swing.
Jason Roy, the white-ball opening batsman for Surrey and England, detected a visible difference when batting at Headingley. “You could see when the lights came on, it was like a light bulb, it was extremely shiny. After three, four, five overs it died down,” Roy said. “It felt terrible off the bat, you didn’t quite know when you’d middled it.”
Matt Coles, Kent’s seamer, saw the pink ball in a similar light. “Personally I think you can see a bit of a tail or something to it, and you can’t really pick it up in the field to certain shots.”
This might be a real difference, or a perception stemming from a lack of familiarity with the pink ball, which will be overcome in time. In the Edgbaston Test, meanwhile, fielders who drop catches may deserve a bit of slack.
Northamptonshire’s pace bowler, Richard Gleeson, thought the pink ball bounced more than the red after bowling against Leicestershire. “I think with this pink ball it tends to bounce a little bit more, so everyone has been saying you need to get the ball up there a bit more and not let players just hang back and that seemed to work. It’s more like the Readers club ball I used to use, the seam seems to stay up a little bit longer.”
As a spinner, Simon Harmer of Essex agreed about the extra bounce, after using a pink ball for the first time in their game against Middlesex. “There was a lot of bounce with the pink ball and it comes off the bat a lot better. All the bowlers felt there was extra bounce with it,” he said. But Harmer said this before the ball softened enough for Alastair Cook and Nick Browne to put on a record 373 for Essex’s first wicket.
Ben Duckett, an England batsman last year, decided to attack the pink new ball before twilight and the floodlights, scoring a blistering 112 for Northamptonshire. “The odd ball was a little difficult to pick up but I knew what to expect,” he said, after having played for MCC in their annual pink-ball fixture against Champion County in Abu Dhabi. Leicestershire’s opening bowler Dieter Klein, on the receiving end, said: “We always knew Ben Duckett was going to be aggressive and that’s maybe the way to go against the pink ball to get the lacquer off it.”
Attacking the new pink ball in the afternoon sun was also Worcestershire’s plan, as Steve Rhodes, their director of cricket, explained: “We felt we needed to get the ball soft by belting it a few times and also try to knock their [Durham’s] bowlers off their stride when the ball was at its most dangerous.”
In the first Test against West Indies, however, Cook and Mark Stoneman, who is making his debut, cannot be expected to throw their bats so that England are 120 for two after 20 overs, before the ball jags around at twilight.
Or can they? Tomorrow another new chapter opens in this sport’s 300-year-long history, and nobody really knows what will happen.