No Pink Ball for India’s Home Test Season This Year

Anurag Thakur, president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, said that the pink ball won’t be used in India’s home test this season. The pink ball was first used in an international test match in Australia. This match, which the Australians played against the Kiwis, was the first ever day-night test match. Mitchell Starc, Australian paceman, expressing his reservation on this use of this in a statement in June said that this Pink ball behaved “very differently” from the usual red ball. He also expressed apprehensions about the fact that the crowds might not be able to see the ball. Gautam Gambhir, the recent inclusion in the Indian test team after the injury of KL Rahul, has also expressed his views on the Pink ball recently. According to him, the pink ball behaves in “exactly the same way” as the red ball.

Anurag Thakur said that the pink ball has to go through more experiments before BCCI takes a call for using these balls in the tests. In the same breath, he also clarified that the use of these balls had proved to be successful in the Duleep Trophy.

In this context Thakur, while speaking to PTI, said, “It is too early to say anything (about pink ball). As far as trying it in Duleep Trophy under lights is concerned, it was a big success. But you need to look at the overall picture before you take the final call. I think we need to look into many areas before we take the final call. I would like to go into details in a scientific manner to take the final call. As of now, we are not ready to implement pink ball this season.”

This much talked about pink ball was expected to be used in the ongoing Test series against New Zealand but was not used in the game. There were also rumours of it being used in the upcoming home series against England and Australia. The Indian team is also scheduled to play a Test against Bangladesh.

India’s first match with pink ball was played in Kolkata on 18 July 2016. It was used in CAB Super League Final between Bhowanipore Club and Mohan Bagan. The finals were won by Mohan Bagan by 296 runs. Going by the feedbacks on this ball, because of the brightness of the colour of the pink ball, the team handling the camera is able to track the pink ball better than the red ball. On the other hand for the long shots during the daylight, the red ball was difficult to focus on.

BCCI president Thakur, further commenting on the pink ball, said, “One more factor to be considered is the role of the pink ball or red ball in terms of the seam, shine, turn, swing and late swing. With the red ball, you can have reverse swing after 20-25 overs, but with pink you can’t. So the challenge for batsman goes away.”