Cricket Australia got the ball rolling when it announced that it was actively contemplating day-night Test cricket, taking the traditional (or, more accurately, the oldest) form of the game along the path traveled successfully by the ODI version. CA CEO James Sutherland made the case:
"It makes sense to me that the game becomes more appealing by virtue of it being played at an hour where more people can come and watch and more people can watch it on TV," said CA boss James Sutherland."That's got to be good for cricket and that's got to be good for other member countries.
"Perhaps we can do some of that analysis just by looking at our TV ratings for Test cricket versus the one-day matches and the second half of one-day matches, which are in the evening.
"My anecdotal suggestions there would be audiences something like four times what they currently are for Test cricket," added Sutherland.
Australia skipper Ricky Ponting was among the first to sound a negative note.
Ponting said world captains have all been concerned about playing Tests under lights when the natural light starts to fade. "If they come up with appropriate measures to cope with a lot of things," he said, "we will start entertaining the idea a bit more."
A more practical objection came from ball-makers Kookaburra, who said making a ball to suit the format would be an impossibility.
Robert Elliot, managing director of Kookaburra, the traditional supplier of Test and one-day balls, claimed it was impossible to make a ball that could be seen at night while retaining the characteristics of a traditional red leather ball."It's been a contentious issue since the beginning of the Packer World Series Cricket," Mr Elliot said.
"Their ambitions were to do exactly the same thing, but the problem is that any appropriate ball has a life span of 25 overs before they get to a stage where they are hard to see. That issue isn't changed.
"We've spent 30 years working on it, we've had the best scientific minds in Australia and other parts of the world working on it."
Mr Elliot said Kookaburra could make a lighter-coloured ball that remained clean for longer but it would behave differently to a normal cricket ball.
"It would swing all day and it would not deteriorate and a fundamental part of cricket is the ball changing through the innings," he said.
The debate was fully joined; commentators as diverse as Tony Becca; Aussie selector Jamie Cox; Chloe Saltau (Her piece in the Age is headlined Seeing Red over a Fundamental Change; in SMH, it is 'We Don't Have the Balls for Night Cricket'); Mark Lawson and Peter Roebuck (one of the few voices in support, thus far) have weighed in on a debate that promises to get more heated as we go along.
So what do you think -- is this an idea whose time has come, or a case of commercial/television interests going nuts?
