India will play Adelaide day-night Test with Kookaburra

This isn’t India’s first dance with a day-night Test but the first such match in strange away conditions. India has a lot of selection dilemmas ahead of the first Test in Australia that is being played at the Adelaide Oval. Ordinarily, this would have been written about in passing, just another Test series between India and Australia, the two pre-eminent cricket powers in the world, no matter what the English think. Yet, as we all know, this has been no ordinary year and the very fact that India is ending 2020 playing a Test match might have seemed improbable back in July or August. But the Indian Premier League and the first half of the Indian tour of Australia have passed without much of a Coronavirus scare and India surprised punters by even being competitive in the white-ball matches. But the Test in Adelaide is a first for India as it is our first away day-night match and even though India played a day-night match against Bangladesh at Eden Gardens, this one is being played with the strange (to Indian players) Kookaburra pink ball and will be an unique test of skill.

It could also be a preview of future India-Australia series, with the day-night fixtures being far more attractive to Indian television audiences who will be spared a five o’clock alarm, given that the first session starts at a surprisingly attractive 2.30 PM India time. The fact is that more day-night Tests in Australia will allow for more viewers in India, thanks to the vagaries of time zones and ergo, more television (and online) advertising revenue for the rights holders. This could work well with day-night Tests in India with England as well. Few other global sports have innovated as much as cricket with three recognised and popular formats, and even changes to those formats. Purists might argue that the constant tinkering devalues the sport, but it also brings in a whole new fan base not just in established markets but across the world. The Financial Times recently reported that a new IPL-style franchise cricket league is being created in the United States and, with the significant diaspora population in the US, not just Indians but also those from the Caribbean and England, cricket is possibly the most innovative of all major global sports. If this day-night Test fixture between the top two cricketing nations works, the sky might be the limit.