Brendon McCullum hailed the first day-night Test in Adelaide last winter as “a roaring success” – even though his New Zealand team lost to Australia inside three days.
Shane Warne enjoyed it so much, he called on Cricket Australia to change the playing hours of the iconic Boxing Day Test in his home city of Melbourne, so that the game could continue into the Victorian night.
And now floodlit Test cricket is heading to England – specifically to Birmingham – following the announcement that the first Investec Test against West Indies at Edgbaston next August will be played as a day-night match.
Neil Snowball, Warwickshire’s Chief Executive who has been a key figure in identifying the potential for the Edgbaston fixture to make history, admits that the similarities between Birmingham and Adelaide are not immediately obvious.
“But a lot of what made the first day-night Test in Adelaide so successful can be applied to us,” he enthused. “We’re on the edge of the centre of Birmingham, we’ve got 1.2m people in Birmingham, so if a lot of them could come after work or for a twilight period, the potential is really exciting. I know that’s why it was popular in Adelaide.
“It’s exactly the right time of year in late August – still summer, so fingers crossed we’ll have warm summer evenings, but well away from the longest day, so the nights are starting to draw in and we’ll have plenty of play with the floodlights taking effect.
“I think Edgbaston looks spectacular under lights, especially when it’s full, as we’ve seen with the NatWest T20 Blast Finals Day for the last few years. The prospect of the special atmosphere that is created for an Edgbaston Test, which is so popular with the England players, added to that floodlit spectacle, makes it really exciting not only for us in the Midlands, but for the whole of English cricket.”
Warwickshire have previous in terms of making history under floodlights. In July 1997, they hosted Somerset in the first competitive day-night county fixture in this country, in the old AXA Life 40-over League – and the instant success of the format, with an attendance of more than 15,000 and the hospitality boxes overflowing, ensured that county cricket would never be the same again.
But playing Test cricket under floodlights throws up very different challenges – notably the balls.
Whereas limited-overs matches, whether 40 or 50 overs or now T20s, are played in coloured clothing with white balls that have been designed to be visible in floodlit conditions, it is the red leather ball that has given Test cricket so much of its variety and appeal, whether swinging on a cloudy English morning, or deteriorating on an Indian dustbowl.
For almost a decade now, the challenge of developing a ball that would be suitable for floodlit Test cricket has been exercising some of the game’s finest minds – with the MCC playing a leading role. Pink balls were first used in the annual spring fixture between an MCC XI and the county champions in Abu Dhabi in 2010, and in 2014 Australia started the countdown to last November’s historic Adelaide Test when pink balls were used in their domestic first-class competition, the Sheffield Shield.
But the new balls that will be offered to the opening bowlers of England and West Indies at Edgbaston next August will be significantly different to the ones used by Australia and New Zealand in Adelaide.
They will be manufactured not by Kookaburra, but by Dukes in their factory in London’s East End – and have been chosen after successful tests in a Second XI fixture between Warwickshire and Worcestershire at Edgbaston late in the 2016 summer.
“We have been working on this for about four years,” explained Dilip Jajodia, the Indian-born owner and custodian of the Dukes Cricket Balls tradition that dates back to the eighteenth century. “I’m a great traditionalist, but I’m also inquisitive. The challenge is to try and find progress without impinging on the traditions of the game.
“For Test cricket, you have to have a ball that deteriorates. Red leather balls are unique. But I’m now satisfied that this ball will work pretty well in all conditions. It is slightly different to a red ball, but people have got to embrace that. But it will still be a hand-stitched ball, and the only difference will be in the leather that we’ve had to adapt slightly by applying a pigment to the surface.”
There will be other superficial changes – the thread will be black, as opposed to beige or gold on a red ball. And of course, the ball will be pink – “the brighter of the two types we offered for the trials earlier this year, almost a fluorescent pink,” Jajodia explains.
The statistics from Adelaide last winter underline the potential. A total attendance of 123,000, a record television audience of up to 3.19m, and a huge boost to the Adelaide economy. No wonder Pakistan are trying out a day-night Test in Dubai next week, against West Indies, while there will be two more in the forthcoming Australian summer – one against Pakistan in Brisbane in December, but first back at the Adelaide Oval against South Africa in November.
“It’s bloody beautiful,” one delighted Adelaidean told the city’s Advertiser newspaper on the historic first night last November. “There’s a lot of people from across Australia and New Zealand here enjoying our magnificent Oval. Where else would you test out a new game?”
The British answer to that question has now been confirmed as Edgbaston, and Birmingham. Tickets for the historic game go on sale on Monday at 10am.