Day-night Test between India and Bangladesh next month appears extremely unlikely mainly due to lack of practice of the Indian
cricket team with the pink ball used in two different light conditions, sources in the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) said on Friday.
While BCCI President Sourav Ganguly is very keen about day-night Test, he needed to take the consent of India captain Virat Kohli and other BCCI members, the sources told Bangladesh Post.
Ganguly, they said, would like to wait for responses from Kohli and the Indian team management before taking a final decision.
The first Test against Bangladesh will be played at Indore from November 14 while Kolkata will host the second Test from November 22.
However, chances are remote about at least one of the two Test matches could be a day-night
event because the time left for the Test series, which is part of the ICC’s World Test Championship, is too short for adequate practice.
Besides, most of the members of the Indian Test team against Bangladesh will also be featuring in the three-match T20 series beginning on November 3.
The Indian team management had in the past voiced reservations about day-night Tests because the players are not at all familiar with the pink ball, according to sources.
The team requires enough practice with the pink ball before opting for day-night Test, they said.
When the West Indies toured India last year, the then BCCI acting Secretary Amitabh Choudhary wanted the first Test at Rajkot to be a day-night match but the Committee of Administrators (CoA), which was running the cricket Board at that time, shot down the idea, saying the players were reluctant. However, after taking charge of the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB), Ganguly had introduced pink-ball matches in cricket in Kolkata.
“Let’s see. Before talking to the team management, this needs the approval of the BCCI members. But I always believe that’s the way forward in Test cricket,” Ganguly had said last week.
What the former India captain feels is that Test cricket played in day time is getting increasingly less crowd and the number of spectators would go up if it begins late in the afternoon and continues into the evening because many people would be free from their day-to-day work to watch cricket.
Sources said that the pink ball did not get a good feedback from domestic players when it was used in the Duleep Trophy, a domestic competition.
