Kevin Pietersen and Michael Clarke express displeasure over day-night Tests
With more keen steps taken by the Cricket Australia, the first official day-night international Test match might be held next year involving the home side and their neighbours New Zealand.
The Australia Cricketers’ Association chief executive Paul Marsh expressed their players’ displeasure towards the developments raising concerns about the quality of cricket the pink balls will offer instead of the regular ones.
"The overwhelming majority of players believe the pink Kookaburra ball isn't yet ready for test cricket," he was quoted saying in ACA’s official website.
The latest to join the debate over the viability of the experiment is the former England international Kevin Pietersen.
"Day/night Test cricket - what a joke! Hope all statistics start again then!" the 34-year-old wrote on the micro-blogging site Twitter on Tuesday.
"Public don't watch cos there is too much cricket! And it's expensive! Play less & public will be more interested!" the right-hander further tweeted. Apart from expressing his own views the South-African born English cricketer with more than 13000 international runs retweeted his followers’ opinion that the pure form of the game should be left undisturbed.
Another tweet read: “Players are being flogged all around the world, all year round! Standard of cricket suffers too!”
The unorthodox stroke maker despite himself being a believer in new improvisations to keep the game moving forward, seems reluctant to accept the changes to the original form of the game. Finally before signing off, the player with 23 Test centuries invited his followers to express their stand and the public opinion went against the proposal.
Here we go - RT for NO d/n Tests and favourite if you'd like d/n Tests? This is the PUBLIC'S OPINION...
— Kevin Pietersen (@KP24) July 1, 2014
Australian captain Michael Clarke, in an interview to ESPNcricinfo on Monday, said that he didn’t feel the need for day-night Test matches to make the format survive. When questioned about whether he believes that the transformation is required to draw attendance to the grounds: “No, I don’t,” said the leader of the No.1 ranked Test nation.
“I think there is room for all three forms of the game that we are playing now – Test cricket, ODI cricket and Twenty20 cricket and I think it is great that we can play the ODI(s) either a day game or a day-night game, T20 the same – either a day game or a day-night game. (But) I’ve never experienced Test cricket at night, so I don’t know what it’s like. So, like I said it’s not fair for me to make that judgement until I experience it.
“But I don’t believe that we do need day-night Test cricket for Test cricket to survive,” mentioned the player with more than 8000 Test runs including 27 centuries from 105 matches.
“I think if you’ve watched any Test cricket over the past four months, (you would’ve seen) a lot of people off their chairs watching the game.
“So, long may it continue, whether it be during the day or at night,” the 33-year-old middle order batsmen signed off.