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Journalism of Courage
Sourav Ganguly might have convinced the Indian captain Virat Kohli in “three seconds” to play pink-ball Test under lights against Bangladesh in Kolkata but the new Indian board president is likely to have a hard time to convince the Indian team management again in the future. Sources in the Indian team informed that the ‘sighting’ of the pink ball under lights was one of the main challenges they faced in the Kolkata Test. It’s learnt that the Indian team is likely to oppose moves to have pink-ball Tests in overseas tours in the near future, and when the BCCI takes feedback from the team, it’s likely that players will tell them to stick to red ball in Test cricket.
The ‘hardness’ seems to have been an issue even in the Bangladesh camp. A couple of members had spoken about it when they were training in Indore with the pink ball. A Indian player agreed with that assessment after the Kolkata Test. “Yes, its too hard. Like a hockey ball, if you know what I mean. Something is not right with the way it feels in your hand,” a player said. “It would be silly if we go ahead with pink ball Tests in future,” he said.
Considering all that, the team management feel that playing abroad with the pink ball isn’t feasible as yet. Especially as the Kookaburra ball —the manufacturer of pink balls in Australia—doesn’t swing once the ball gets a touch old and especially if there is dew.
They had also feared the second session when lights take effect in a pink-ball Test. “If you see a Test in Australia, a majority of the day’s play during pink-ball Tests tend to be played in sunlight. Only the last session really is where the dew comes in, if at all. Indian Tests are usually played in winter and which means half-hour into second session, say around 4 or 4.30 pm, it will start to get darker. Dew comes in early. We have to factor in all that for the future,” a team-member had said before the Test.
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Early next year, India are set to play two Tests in New Zealand and the word is that New Zealand are likely to push for a pink-ball Test. End of next year, India will play a full Test series in Australia, who are definitely going to press India for a pink ball Test.
Australia’s captain Tim Paine had taken a cheeky dig at Kohli on the issue on Sunday. Asked whether he will push for a pink-ball Test against India, Paine said: “We’ll certainly try and we’ll have to run that by Virat (Kohli). We’ll get an answer from him at some stage I’m sure. That’s where we like to start our summer and it has been for a long long time except for last summer. We’ll ask Virat and see if we can get his permission to play here and maybe even get a Pink-ball Test if he’s in a good mood.”
A day before the Kolkata Test, Kohli had said that pink ball shouldn’t become the staple of Test cricket. “This shouldn’t become the only way Test cricket is played. 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 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 had said.
Now that the team have experienced first-hand a Test with pink ball, it’s likely that Indian camp will object to more pink ball Tests.
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