Perfectly manicured and covered pitches, balls that (generally) stay consistent for 80 overs, and more cricket bats to choose from than underwear. Test batsmen in Australian conditions have had it too easy for too long.
The complaints about the pink ball and its impact on the day-night Test format from the likes of Adam Voges and Mitchell Starc was an insult to every boy or girl who has ever played backyard cricket.
Who cares if the pink lacquer falls off the pill in the first session of the match and it starts to turn green? Don’t these guys remember when you’d tape up a tenno with electric tape and it was lucky to last 15 minutes?
These complaining players would have been all for innovation in backyard cricket in their childhood. One minute you’d be steaming in with a normal tennis ball, the next you’d pull out Shane Warne’s ‘Spinner’s kit’, which included a yellow rubbery ball with precise numbers indicating where to put your fingers to rip the perfect leg spinner like Warnie.
There were incrediballs and bouncy balls and sometimes even baseballs. The point was you had to adapt to the conditions, which meant a change every time some hero decided to hit a six over the neighbour’s fence or the bowler made some poor excuse that the current ball had a hole in it.
When the sun went down the various balls got tougher to see in the fading light, but you battled through. Spectators like mothers might struggle to see the ball from the kitchen window, but a mum always knew from the sound where it had gone, and the likely result of her garden being ruined from a straight drive.
If the match wasn’t abandoned due to camellia damage, there was no chance of bad light stopping play.
If you were unlucky enough to bat last, you knew you’d face a battle to pick Uncle Dave’s wrong-un out of his hand in the darkness. It was part of the fun – a chance to prove yourself in a tough situation.
We’re bound to hear a lot discrimination against the pink ball at the Adelaide Oval, either from the commentators or the players themselves: the pink ball doesn’t swing enough, the pink ball swings too much, the pink ball turns into a green goblin and is too hard for batsmen to see, the pink ball is a Jekyll and Hyde character masquerading as a standard piece of sporting equipment.
Whatever the talking points turn out to be in Adelaide, it’s unlikely the pitch will be the main focus, and I for one am glad we can talk about something other than how much of a road or a minefield it may or may not be.
Traditionalists who bemoan any change at all in Test cricket need to suck it up, they lost the battle decades ago when the idea of uncovered pitches went by the wayside.
It will be a new experience. It will create more interest in Test cricket. It will take players back to their backyard days, and just like those days it will be the players who relish the challenge that thrive.
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