Virat Kohli doesn’t want day-night Test cricket to become the long-form’s staple diet. He feels any move in that direction will dilute the sanctity of the game’s purest format. “This shouldn’t become the only way Test cricket is played. Because, then you are losing out on that nervousness of the first session in the morning. You can bring excitement to Test cricket, but you can’t purely make Test cricket based on entertaining people. The entertainment of Test cricket lies in the fact that the batsman is trying to survive the first session, the bowlers trying to set up a batsman; if people don’t respond to that, too bad,” Kohli said on Thursday. The hype around India’s first-ever day-night Test is going through the roof. Kolkata’s centre square has turned pink. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will jointly ring the Eden bell to start the second Test. Kohli compared the build-up with the India versus Pakistan World T20 fixture at this venue in 2016. “We are excited about the pink-ball Test anyway. The last time Eden had such a buzz, such excitement, was before the India-Pakistan T20 game (in 2016). There too you had VIPs and they were felicitated and the stadium was packed. I think the atmosphere will be similar. It can be daunting, intimidating, but very exciting as well. “As it is, playing with the pink ball is not that easy and bowlers will get a boost. I think the first hour will be very exciting because energy levels will be very high and the public will get what they paid for. Obviously, this is a landmark occasion in Indian cricket, and we are lucky that we are part of this start.” Test cricket is not in the pink of health. Save England and Australia, matches are usually played before empty stands. The ICC has introduced the World Test Championship, but the global body so hasn’t done any hard-selling to promote the event. The very idea of the pink-ball, day-night Test cricket is to draw crowds to the long-form. Even BCCI president Sourav Ganguly is of the view that day-night Test cricket is the “way forward”. Kohli, however, put things in perspective. “If I don’t like Test cricket, you can’t push me into liking it. If someone gets excitement or boost from watching the battle between bat and ball and a great session of Test cricket, in my opinion those are the people that should come and watch Test cricket.” READ | Kolkata a riot of colour as city turns pink for day-night Test Kohli called for bringing “more system” into the scheduling of Test matches to make the format spectator-friendly. He was categorical that day-night Test could be a happy detour, not the actual journey. “I think this (day-night Test) can be a one-off thing (in a series), it should not be a regular scenario.” Open to playing D-N Tests abroad Eden has set the ball rolling, and Kohli’s team are now open to playing day-night Tests away from home as well. But adequate preparation time is a pre-requisite. “One before the Test could be a pink-ball practice game. If it’s second or third Test, I would ideally like to have a longer break between the two Tests and have a practice game before the pink-ball Test whenever that is, obviously under lights. It can’t be a pink-ball practice tour game before the series and the Test is actually the third game. That wouldn’t make any sense,” Kohli said. Last year, India had refused to play a day-night Test at Adelaide. But as Ganguly said he received a positive feedback from the captain “in three seconds”, when he proposed that the Eden Test be a pink-ball affair. So what changed? “The thing was to experience the pink-ball Test in our own condition first…Then eventually going on to playing pink-ball Tests anywhere in the world. It can’t be a sudden thing. This one, we had been talking about for a while,” the skipper explained.
