Adelaide best place to play day-night Tests – Steve O’Keefe

The players have been vocal in their wariness over this change in format and have asked Cricket Australia to temper its excitement and treat this test as an experiment.

Changes are always welcome, but is this change worth welcoming? If that happens, the man behind its inception could be heralded as one of the most important figures in the sport’s 138-year history, a visionary at a time when, more than ever, Test cricket is struggling to capture the attention. “Every Test match then would have meaning”. “It’s going to nip around at night depending on the dew”. Let’s throw a few light and make a small introduction of the Pink Ball which first came into existence in a cancer charity event. Even as the ball progressed beyond the 70-over mark, it conspicuously retained its colour better than the one used a day earlier – and certainly more than when the Black Caps began their tour with a one-dayer in Canberra last month.

Wagner was the Black Caps’ standout bowler against WA, snaring five wickets.

“I welcome this decision to trial day-night Tests with a pink ball because we won’t know unless we try”. Experts’ opinions, match previews and reviews will come flooding in.

While red balls can be dyed, pink balls, like white ones, need to be painted to produce their colour, and then coated with lacquer to preserve that colour for as long as possible. “But I was not enjoying it anymore”, he said.

“That’s one thing that’s been very consistent over the past couple of years with the pink ball”. The time difference to Australia (Perth excluded) is brilliant for cricket fans, though bad for productivity.

“We head to Adelaide knowing not everything but knowing enough”.

This was the Australian reason for why the match will be held at Adelaide. Likewise, different test playing venues have their own pros and cons for their selection criteria of stadiums. There won’t be any difference left between bowling machines and the actual bowlers.

“Being able to get the ball to reverse, we’ve been able to do that here, to get the ball to move off the seam, when it’s hard it does and it still swings”.

Steve O’Keefe could hardly have been more glowing about his experiences at Adelaide Oval, but his degree of fondness for it will surely soar if on Friday it becomes the site of his first Test in Australia. It will be interesting to see how the Pink Kookaburra ball behaves.

Hesson says the touring party are raring to go ahead of the historic match, particularly due to the chance to play in front of a packed house for a Test match.