The pink ball cricket might be worth it for the colors alone. There is a photo from the very first day-night Test. The players in white, the turf in green, the Adelaide Oval in gray. And then there was the sky, bursting with red.
That match, between Australia and New Zealand in 2015, drew crowds that totaled 123,768 and a TV audience of 3.19 million in the final stages. An Ashes day-night Test holds the record for the highest attendance on the first day, this since this field was redeveloped in 2013: 55,317 people walked through the gates seven years ago. There is a strong possibility that number will be beaten when Australia hosts India for the second game of the Border-Gavaskar series.
Both teams’ practice sessions Tuesday were open to the public, and while there were a few people who enjoyed watching Usman Khawaja, Steven Smith and Marnus Labuschagne bat in the morning, India’s practice in the evening drew a crowd that filled not only the area next to the nets, but also three levels of catwalks in the stands above them. What will be the home team in Adelaide again?
India does not play this format very often. It has competed in four day and night Tests so far, and the last one was almost three years ago. In contrast, Australia plays one of these every season and has only been beaten once. So the work that Rohit Sharma and his men do over these three days, the insights they can pick up on the way the pink ball behaves, are crucial.
It’s just that they’ve had to do it against much louder noise than perhaps they could have anticipated, which may not have been ideal for them, but the families who came with their children, some of whom brought bats and jerseys to be autographed, will have gone home with a story to tell again and again and again, and stories like these often get better (and wilder) with each telling. Amit Mishra (not that one), who is part of Cricket Australia’s fan involvement arm, helped organize this.
India had an exciting three or four hours to familiarize themselves with the challenges they will face in the coming week, under eyes both watchful, with coach Gautam Gambhir rejoining the team, and stunned, as fans made their presence felt with every big shot that came out.
There was a moment when Rohit played his swivel shot, connecting it so smoothly that it flew out in front of the square, which brought the crowd to instinctive applause, which maybe, just maybe, brought a shadow of a smile to his face. They may have been a distraction, but the fans certainly contributed to the occasion.
Rohit and Rishabh Pant were the first to take a hit on Tuesday. This happened about half an hour earlier than planned; a quick little exercise in which the India captain seemed to be working on his front foot game against balls in the corridor of the stump. He had repeated chats with batting coach Abhishek Nayar who prodded Rohit, asking him to trust his method, prompting him with feedback like “that last over was classy,” and it was. He was choosing his length well and his balance at the crease, both going forward and backward, was there for all to see.
Then the whole team gathered at the main court and played foot-volley with a row of chairs acting as a net, and that led to some lovely little fights you see on every playground, on the line calls. Being a sportsman must be the closest thing to being Peter Pan. There are times when you can just be a child. A child with advantages. Because now you can cuss like KL Rahul did when he was hustled by Akash Deep, whose speed and lateral movements off the field made him a real threat.
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