Night Tests Just Not Cricket

Cricket Australia has been harping on about night Test matches for quite some time now. Up until now, no concrete timelines, plans or details of any significance have been offered as to how, when and where these random mutterings will come to fruition. It is with stark horror that I read that the sanctity of the purest form of the game will be audaciously challenged with the first ever day / night test match between Australia and Pakistan at the Adelaide Oval during November 2009.

IMHO, innovation in sport is great, as long as it does not debase the virtues of the original and the traditional. Night Test cricket is an assault on the very fabric on which cricket was created.

I can understand cricket's thirst for change in this product driven age where every moment must be entertaining, dramatic and seemingly better than the last. However, cricket has already slighted its loyal and traditional supporters by cowering to the entertainment product dollar by producing a version that is only marginally longer than your average Bollywood turnip. Surely, that is insult enough.

Test cricket will not be Test cricket without a red cherry that performs the feats all red cherries over the ages have performed. Lets just try and leave pink to Paris and her troupe of trailer trash.

There is a simple pleasure in sweating it out over a hot summer, watching two evenly matched prize fighters toughing it out. Test cricket is an entertainment product already. If people haven't yet realised, they probably never will - not at night and definitely not because of a florescent cricket ball. For these simple minds, we have 50 over cricket, and if that fails they can indulge in the sodomisation of this noble sport through T20.

If day night four day cricket has already been tried and rejected in Australia, why do we insist on applying this clearly infeasible concept to the peak version of the game? Something about inept administrators I hear?

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