A fix looking for a problem: Why the Ashes doesn’t need a pink-ball Test

3 months ago 11

Opinion

December 4, 2025 — 5.30am

For England, proceeding from a two-day Test in Perth to a pink-ball encounter at the Gabba must seem like jumping from frying pan to fire, albeit that their whole Bazball shtick is to play with fire happily anyway.

But to take the venerable Usman Khawaja at his word, the Perth coals were bit hot under Australia’s feet, too, until Travis Head leapt over them in a single bound. They also will have apprehensions about the pink ball in Brisbane’s humidity under the Gabba lights. Pink is the colour of tender.

Jofra Archer trains with a pink ball in Brisbane.

This raises a question about why this day-night Test is in the schedule at all. The Gabba can be a cauldron day or night, which increases the risk of another drastically abridged Test match. The Ashes would begin to look not so much like a series as a sequence of cameos. Fans were well advised to shop early.

And as the world turns, it is not as if the Gabba is the fortress it once was for Australia; they have won just two of their past five Tests there.

Of course, all this is putting the cart before the horse. With cooperative weather, and if the pitch is “just right” on the Goldilocks scale – it can go either way at the Gabba – the second Test could still be a beauty. Let’s hope so. But this is an opportune moment to contemplate the place and purpose of pink-ball Test cricket.

When pioneered by Australia in 2015, then Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland argued for day-night cricket as a kind of value-added product, not an every-season staple. Its novelty would serve to bolster attention to lesser-drawing fixtures. And it might speed up the game to match the times.

Adelaide Oval is a preferred venue for day-night Tests.

But India last summer and England this summer scarcely need a marketing gimmick. Both series were effectively sold out well in advance, no steak knives necessary. And faster, lower-scoring matches are happening naturally anyway as Twenty20 skills meld with Test gravitas. On average, a day-night Test lasts just one session shorter than its daytime cousin. It’s sensible to try to recalibrate the bat-ball balance in Test cricket from time to time, but day-night Test cricket sometimes seems like a fix looking for a problem.

There is only patchy evidence that day-night Tests have fortified crowds and ratings. Do people rush in significant numbers to the cricket after work? And do more schoolchildren attend or switch on? Most of the Test program takes place in holidays anyway or in the dead period that precedes them. It’s notable that when it comes to the two marquee Tests of every summer – Boxing Day in Melbourne and New Year in Sydney – only the late cricketer/showman Shane Warne ever has called for a pink-ball staging. But those matches don’t need contrivances.

Adelaide, with its ideal mix of pitch, climate and aesthetics, did a great job of blazing the day-night Test trail. But its blessings always were mixed. It might have made for more exciting games, but it also muted the carnival atmosphere for which the Adelaide Test was and is justly famous. By the time the nightlife begins, the night is half over – at least for the respectable. Head, who has urged SA Premier Peter Malinauskas to reassert Adelaide’s claim on day-night cricket, speaks for the rest – and right now with overwhelming moral authority.

Mitch Starc was man of the match in Perth.

Day-night cricket is Australia’s domain. Of the 24 day-night Tests played to date, Australia have featured in 14 and won 13, losing only to the West Indies in Brisbane two years ago (and Shamar Joseph’s memorable winning spell in that match was bowled entirely in blazing daytime sunshine).

England’s record in day-night cricket is 2-5 and includes three thumping losses to Australia here. All things considered, it is a wonder England or India consent to play pink-ball Tests in Australia at all. I know, I know; there are contracts to be obliged and broadcasters to be propitiated. But it’s hard even to buy that there is an imperative to screen Test matches in prime time. Those who care will watch whenever it is on. Those who don’t will not watch anyway.

England opener Zac Crawley might be going from the frying pan into the fire.

Without doubt, day-night cricket and its daily witching hour introduces another variable into a game of variables. You can argue about whether this is a good or bad thing. Sometimes, it adds to the frisson. Sometimes, it reduces the game almost to farce. When it was first played, Mitch Starc suggested it was almost another form of cricket, needing its own categorisation. In time, he has become measurably the most successful bowler in the format and has modified his outlook, but the observation stands.

In a notional day-night match in Jamaica this year, Starc took 6-9 and Scott Boland took a hat-trick as the West Indies were shot out for 27 and Australian coach Andrew McDonald said it “it didn’t look like Test cricket”. Picking up his theme in his column in the West Australian last week, former tearaway Mitch Johnson wrote: “Pink-ball cricket under lights has never looked like real Test cricket to me. And regardless of whether it’s a pink Dukes ball or a pink Kookaburra, Test cricket would be better off without it.”

It won’t come to that. It would be pointless and reactionary to write off day-night cricket altogether. The way forward is not back. But just because we can stage day-night Tests doesn’t mean we always must. And for all the fun-of-the-fair spectacle it creates, it still pales beside the majesty of Test cricket in daylight glory. Besides, as well as being the colour of the sore, pink is also the colour of the overfed.

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