The story so far: The first Test between Australia and India, which ended much ahead of schedule at Adelaide on Saturday, has put into focus the pink cricket ball used in day/night matches once again. It is only the 15th Test to go pink; the other 2,381 have all been played with the more traditional red balls. Having made its pink ball debut last November against Bangladesh, this was the second Test for India, while it was the eighth for Australia.
Why are different shades of balls used for different formats of cricket?
Long-format matches — like Test and First Class — are played with red balls; since the players are required to dress in white, a normal red ball is used. Till the advent of cricket at night in 1978, there was no need to look beyond red when it came to the ball’s colour.
The colour of the ball through cricket’s history, which dates back to the 16th century, remained red till November 28, 1978. A different colour was needed when a rebel World Series one-day match between Australia and the West Indies was played under the brand new floodlights at the Sydney Cricket Ground. Thus a white ball was chosen, since it would be more visible at night. That required the players to don coloured clothing. Though the experiment proved a smashing success, with close to 50,000 fans turning up for the match and many more watching it live on Channel 9, it would take more than a decade for the coloured clothing and the white ball to gain wider acceptance — the World Cup of 1992, to be precise.
How did the pink ball enter the Test arena?
Though Test matches — they best bring out the aesthetics, techniques and the theatre of cricket — are still considered the purest forms of the game by most players and discerning fans, their popularity has been on the wane, more so in these times of instant gratification provided by the Twenty20 format in tournaments such as the Indian Premier League and the Big Bash League.
Test matches attract big crowds only in England and Australia these days. Besides, Australia’s time zone is not ideal for cricket’s largest television audience — the subcontinent, where the day would not even have dawned when a Test match gets under way at Melbourne or Sydney. So the cricket administrators in Australia and England began to think seriously about day/night Tests. They were backed by the International Cricket Council, too. The first day/night Test was scheduled to have been played in 2010 between England and Bangladesh at Lord’s, cricket’s Mecca, but the plan had to be abandoned because two county teams, Durham and Worcestershire, felt their First Class fixture was too important to be held as a trial game for pink-ball cricket. It would take another five years for the pink ball to land at the Test match wicket. That happened at Adelaide, in 2015, with the third and final Test of the series between Australia and New Zealand. But women had played an international game with a pink ball long before men, though — the one-day international between England and Australia at Wormsley in 2009.
Do the conditions have an impact on pink, red and white balls?
Unlike most sports, the conditions — the ground or the weather — play a crucial role in cricket. For instance, the ball tends to swing more in overcast conditions (though science has been able to explain the aerodynamic mechanisms of swing and reverse-swing, atmospheric conditions enabling swing have not been clearly explained). Even balls manufactured by different companies behave differently. White and pink balls are believed to swing more than the red one.
From the batsman’s point of view, the pink ball is probably the most difficult to handle, especially during twilight. Pace bowlers, however, relish the pink ball, especially when the lights are switched on as the shine lasts longer because of the lacquer.
While only one pink or red ball is used to bowl from both ends in a match, two white balls have been used in one-dayers since 2012 (the white ball becomes difficult to see once it gets dirty).
Do the pink, white or red balls have other differences besides colour?
According to the Marylebone Cricket Club, guardians of the laws of cricket, any international and First Class ball has to weigh between 156 grams and 162 grams. There is no difference in weight in either red, white or pink ball. But the colour of the seam varies: white seam for the red ball, dark green for white and black for pink.
Is there a difference between the Kookaburra, SG and Dukes pink balls in the way they are stitched and behave?
Dukes and SG are hand-stitched in all six rows of the seam. Only two rows of a Kookaburra ball are hand-stitched, while the four outer rows are machine-stitched. The Dukes and SG balls tend to swing more than Kookaburra.
Why is there a demand by some players to replace the red ball with the pink one in all Tests?
Australian spin legend Shane Warne claims that the red ball does nothing for the bowler, and that the pink ball is more visible and looks better on television. It remains to be seen how much support he receives.
