Pink ball cricket: 'I couldn't see the ball,' says Mitchell Starc as scepticism remains

“I have always known I am colour blind,” 37-year-old Australian opening batsman Chris Rogers said in June last year. “It’s something you have to adapt to as you go along, but there’s no pink-ball cricket for me, that’s for sure. I would never play with a pink ball again. I played one game and didn’t see the ball at all, so it was a bit pointless.” “Thankfully I’ll be long gone before day-night (Test) cricket comes along,” he said. Incidentally, as Rogers prepares for his Test cricket swansong in England, Cricket Australia have announced that the first ever day-night Test match will be played in November this year between Australia and New Zealand at the Adelaide Oval. [caption id=“attachment_2319938” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Pink ball cricket is soon upon us. Is it here for the long-haul? File photo: Getty[/caption] The much-trialled, often-criticised Kookabura ‘Pink Ball’ will be used for the first time in an international match, and a few players have voiced their concerns about its suitability. Mitchell Starc, along with Shaun Marsh and Adam Voges, was involved in the most recent trial round of the pink ball in Sheffield Shield in November last year. Playing for New South Wales against South Australia at Adelaide Oval, Starc finished the match with an impressive seven-wicket haul. But he wasn’t very pleased. “It’s definitely not a red ball,” Starc told ESPNCricinfo. “It doesn’t react anything like the red ball, in terms of swing and the hardness of it anyway. It goes soft pretty quickly, I didn’t see a huge amount of reverse swing in that game and I don’t think it swung from memory too much until the artificial light took over. It definitely reacts very, very differently to the red ball. “There’s still a little bit of uncertainty I think,” Rogers told Cricket Australia website recently, resigned to the fact that despite his inability to play the format, change is understandable. “A lot of guys still haven’t had a lot of experience with it – I don’t think (Test captain) Michael Clarke has actually played in a pink ball game so I would say that uncertainty is probably the biggest word.” “But we all know that this is the way of the future so you have to embrace it, that’s a given. If it works that would be fantastic but we’ll have to see how it pans out,” Rogers added. ESPNCricinfo’s report states that Steve Smith and Brad Haddin are on board with the idea and “spoke enthusiastically about it, on the basis that now the decision was made there was no point in worrying.” Starc, however, remains sceptical. Admitting that he can see why this change is happening considering the need to draw more spectators to Test matches, Starc told the website, “Personally, I couldn’t see the thing at night on the boundary. I couldn’t see the ball. So I’m not sure how the crowd are going to see it. I understand the pink ball has changed a lot from when it first came in for trials. It’s improved a lot, so Kookaburra has done well there. But time will tell if it works with the crowds and the viewership and the way that cricketers respond to it.” Raising concerns that the day-night test was being pushed by Cricket Australia rather than ICC, New Zealand cricket board have voiced concerns about the format. “To play it under lights, with a pink ball, in conditions they’re not familiar with, makes [Aus-NZ series] feel like a bit of an exhibition, as opposed to part of a very intense Test series,” Heath Mills, NZ players’ association chief executive told AFP. He added that this ‘devalues’ a Test series that is seen as the most important by some of the Kiwi players. “The Kookaburra turf pink ball has been extensively tested over the past five years by the MCC, ECB, CA, and I believe the ball is ready for an international Test match,” Kookaburra managing director Brett Elliot said recently, adding that a lot of research has been done to finalise the correct shade of pink. Taking a realistic apporach, all-rounder Shane Watson said that, while lack of any pink-ball experience for most players is an issue, it was pointless to draw conclusions until the match had been played. “I’m sure we’ll only know by playing it either way whether it’s a great thing for the game of Test cricket or whether it’s not. So until we actually play I think it’s very hard to be able to make any judgements on because it’s really only the proof of how it pans out,” Shane Watson was reported as saying by ESPNCricinfo. However, if the recent Cricket Australia poll is anything to go by, majority of the fans can’t wait to see the first ever Test to be played under floodlights. Chris Rogers, for one, has to be content with the seat on the sidelines. Read the full ESPNCricinfo article here.