Come 17 December and India will be playing their second Pink Ball Test—first away from home. From the quality of opposition to the continent where the match will be played, the difference between the two contests is like chalk and cheese!
India’s first pink ball Test was versus Bangladesh in 2019 at Kolkata. Needless to say, the match lasted only 3 days as the Indian pacers wreaked havoc and claimed all the opposition wickets. In fact, it was the first time that India won a Test match at home, without a single wicket being claimed by an Indian spinner.
More than a year on, India will now play their first overseas pink ball Test against a much sterner opposition— the Australians— at Adelaide. Just to put things into perspective, Australia have played more day-night Tests than any other nation. They have featured in 7 day-night contests and won all. To add weight to that statistic, their last wins over sub-continental sides, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, have been by an innings and more.
In the 2019 pink ball Test, the star for India was Ishant Sharma, who had a match haul of 9 wickets, including a fiver in the first innings. With the ‘Man of the Match’ in that game unavailable for this Australia series due to injury, it could be a telling blow on the Indian team. Though Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Shami are more than capable of dishing out the same chin music to the Aussies, that the Indian will receive from them, the onus of being an effective 3rd cog in the pace attack will now fall on the shoulders of Umesh Yadav, in the absence of Ishant. This is Umesh’s 3rd Test tour of Australia with the senior team, and he would do well to draw on his experience as well as his performance in that pink ball Test versus Bangladesh last year, where he claimed a haul of 8 wickets.
Enough said about the bowlers, the one aspect which may settle this contest and in the larger context, the series as well, is the batting resilience of both camps.
Both India and Australia are searching for answers at the top of the order. With Warner and Pucovski out injured and Steve Smith suffering an injury scare just a couple of days before the match, Australia will look to their youngsters to rise to the occasion.
For India, the conundrum is whether to have Prithvi Shaw or Shubman Gill partnering Mayank Agarwal at the top of the order. More on that in another piece, for now, let us focus on a star performer with the bat in the pink ball Test versus Bangladesh— Indian captain Virat Kohli. He was the only player from either side to score a ton in that match, as he carved out a majestic 136 of 194 balls to become the first Indian to score a hundred in a pink ball Test match.
Kohli will be playing just this one match of the 4 Test series before returning home to be with his wife for the birth of their first child.
India won the Test series the last time they were in Australia—their first-ever Test series win Down Under. But this series has an added edge to it. All match results add to the points tally for ICC Test Rankings that determine who will compete in the World Test Championship Final next year. Currently, Australia top the Rankings with New Zealand a close second and India in third place. Results of the next eight Tests for India will determine whether they will be one of the two teams competing at Lords in June next year.
The writer is a sports broadcaster and cricket commentator who has worked on assignments for leading sports network.