Day-Night Test: India to wear flannels floodlights

The ball would be first tested in Duleep Trophy at the start of the domestic season. Several factors can still prove to be a hurdle: Would the ball hold up for at least 80 overs? Would it help Indian spinners to turn the ball? Would the ball be visible to the batsmen under Indian conditions at twilight in the last session of play?

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“While we have not zeroed in on the venue, there are lots of factors that need to be taken into account. Things like dew factor, how the spinners bowl with the pink kookaburra on Indian pitches. These things we will get an idea during the Duleep Trophy,” said the BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur in Delhi. “We have decided that we will play one Day/Night Test match with pink ball against New Zealand later this year. Before that Duleep Trophy will act as a dress rehearsal for the Day/Night Test match.”

It’s an attempt to increase the glamour quotient of Test cricket to attract more eyeballs, and an understandable development in the wake of the popularity of the pink-ball Test held in Australia last November.

Incidentally, that match , that ended within three days, divided the cricketing world into two camps — those who love pink, and those who want to be in red. South Africa have refused to play a pink-ball Test suggested by Australia later this summer while Pakistan, who have experimented with pink ball in domestic cricket in 2012, and again in 2016, have agreed to play a Test.