|
|
|
'Don't believe we need day-night Test cricket' - Clarke
|
Even as Cricket Australia pushes ahead with plans to play a day-night Test match within two years, the national captain Michael Clarke has admitted he does not think the five-day game needs to go nocturnal to survive.
Questions about the future of Test matches have led to numerous novel
ideas for widening the popularity of the format over the years, and CA
has been particularly eager to play for prime time television audiences.
A trial of Sheffield Shield matches under lights earlier this year met
with mixed results, with numerous reservations raised about the
longevity of the Kookaburra pink ball in particular.
When asked in New York by ESPNcricinfo whether Test cricket needed
day-night matches in order to remain vital, Clarke replied staunchly in
the negative: "No I don't. I think there's room for all three forms of
the game we play now. I think it's great that you can play an ODI either
a day or a day-night game, T20 the same.
"I've never experienced Test cricket at night so I don't know what it's
like ... but I don't believe we need to have day-night Test cricket, for
Test cricket to survive. I think if you've watched any Test cricket
over the last 12 months, there would have been a lot of people off their
chairs watching the game. So long may that continue, during the day or
at night."
The CA chief executive James Sutherland has been a vocal supporter of
the concept, and declared recently that the trial had been largely
successful. Tentative plans are in place for a day-night match against
New Zealand in Australia in 2015-16. Clarke, though, said he would need
to play under lights at first-class level himself before submitting to
those conditions for a Test.
"I'd have to try it first. I don't think it would be fair or right for
me to sit here and say yes or no [to playing a day-night Test]," Clarke
said. "I think I need to experience it, probably at first-class level,
before I could comment on that. They've done that in Australia, they've
used the pink ball during the second-last round of Shield cricket in
Australia. So when I get back home I'll have that conversation with a
few of the players and see what they think."
|
|||
The concerns around the ball went beyond its longevity to other areas,
including the fact that the white seam stitching on the pink projectile
was difficult to define, robbing batsmen of an important clue as to
which way it might swing, seam or spin. Brisbane, where Queensland faced
Tasmania, seemed the most helpful environment for preserving the ball,
while in Melbourne and Adelaide it deteriorated far more quickly.
"We clearly need to continue to improve the ball and to make sure it
behaves as closely as possible to the red ball," Sutherland said after
the trials. "But I have always said that somewhere along the way - in
order to get to that outcome - it may be necessary to reach some sort of
compromise on the ball.
"Perhaps what ball is used, how it's used and maybe for how long it's
used in an innings - whether 80 overs is the right time for a ball to
last, or whatever? They are all things we'll take into account as we
gather the feedback and other data from the trials."
The former England batsman Kevin Pietersen has been a an outspoken
critic of the idea, arguing that the variance in conditions from day to
night would be so drastic as to require the formulation of a new statistical database distinct from those for current Test match playing conditions.
There are numerous views on day-night Test matches even within CA, and
the chairman Wally Edwards has previously revealed he is "not a great
believer in it". "I think it's worth trying," he said during the South
Africa Test series. "You should trial it fairly rigorously, though,
before you start playing Test cricket. But potentially it fills grounds
up."
Before any day-night assignments, Clarke will be taking the Test team to
the UAE for two matches against Pakistan. Following a 5-0 Ashes sweep
and a rousing 2-1 defeat of South Africa away from home, Australia's
indifferent reputation against spin bowling and slower surfaces will be
tested by Saeed Ajmal and others.
"Facing spin bowling has been an area of an Australian cricketer's game
where we've had to continually improve," Clarke said. "We're fortunate
in Australia to have really good wickets that do have pace and bounce
and then later on in the game you get spin. But when you play in the
subcontinent, you're getting spin from ball one, you're getting less
bounce, you're getting more natural variation off the wicket.
"So the more we can experience playing in those conditions, the better
we'll become. I know our junior programmes do a lot more, in terms of
travelling to the subcontinent to learn about those conditions, than
what we did when I was a young player. Dubai and the UAE are going to be
an extremely tough series, Pakistan have a very strong team, and they
know those conditions."
Daniel Brettig is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo. @danbrettig
Feeds: Daniel Brettig
0 comments:
Post a Comment