Test Cricket will suffer if India remains a hermit kingdom and resists pink-ball progress writes Richard Earle
Cricket Australia’s chief james Sutherland face one of the biggest challenges of his career trying to convince Indian officials its in the best interests of the game to help the pink-ball progress.
Opinion
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Cricket Australia chief James Sutherland’s covert ANZAC week mission to combat India’s pink ball hostility carried the futility of a Gallipoli trench charge.
Sutherland ignored the doom, believing back-room diplomacy at the four-day ICC board meeting in Kolkata might sway India to play a pink ball Test against Australia in Adelaide.
Sutherland overcame push back from New Zealand, South Africa and England before securing Adelaide’s successful, groundbreaking day-night Tests that broadcasters demand and fans love.
History shows the unwieldy, contradictory, all powerful Indian Cricket Board (BCCI) stubbornly resists change before profiting from the pioneering vision and graft of others.
India’s aversion to change is explained on two fronts. Internal BCCI politics typically prevent a coherent, unified position from being adopted on key issues while there is a view that cricket outside the subcontinent is inconsequential.
Two days into this week’s International Cricket Council meeting in Kolkata India had seemingly abandoned trenchant opposition to day-night Tests and agreed to host a pink ball fixture against the West Indies later this year.
The BBCI committee of administrators led by Vinod Rai had previously opposed acting secretary Amitabh Chaudhary’s push to hold a day-night Test saying the India team management - code for Virat Kohli - should be consulted first.
Lobbying the BCCI is like negotiating shifting sands.
India agreeing to end a three-year boycott of day-night Tests against the Windies at Hyderabad or Rajkot would smooth the path to a pink ball Border-Gavaskar series opener in Adelaide from December 6.
India has form in opposing innovation and modernization that cricket craves – particularly the introduction of Twenty20 – now its favourite format and golden goose.
India only agreed to use the Decision Review System against England in 2016, eight years after originally trialling cricket’s electronic eye in a Test against Sri Lanka.
India initially backed 50-over matches as the vehicle of the masses and was cool on the Twenty20 concept when introduced by the England and Wales Cricket Board in 2003. In 2006 BCCI boss Niranjan Shah ridiculed a T20 format that India would never embrace. The Indian Premier League was established two years later, stung by the formation of the rebel Indian Cricket League in 2007.
The game’s ruler and paymaster had fallen in love with the format that proved India’s answer to the English Premier league after the country’s shock 2007 World T20 triumph under MS Dhoni. The IPL is now a sacrosanct tournament carved into the global calendar that commands elite players and takes precedence over international matches.
India’s obligation to play a day-night Test is an obscure blip on the BCCI agenda despite the phenomenal success of pink ball fixtures in Adelaide and capacity to reinvigorate the game.
Day-night Tests were created to address flatlining attendances and global interest in Test cricket.
“Either we do nothing, and let the appetite for Test cricket die, or deal with the problem head-on and with an innovative and proactive approach,” said ICC chief executive Dave Richardson.
There is no logical reason to singularly oppose day-night Tests as cricket’s version of a hermit kingdom when target audiences - women and families - want to watch Test cricket outside of business and school hours.
Imagine life without T20 and the DRS, for all its hiccups. To delay progress in a time poor world where fans are spoilt for choice is cataclysmic for cricket. Hopefully, the penny drops for India.
Originally published as Test Cricket will suffer if India remains a hermit kingdom and resists pink-ball progress writes Richard Earle