England’s hopes at mercy of pink-ball lottery – Broad

Former bowler Stuart Broad says a pink-ball “lottery” is essential for England’s chances of leveling off against Australia.

Following an eight-wicket win for Australia in the first test, the second Test begins on December 4 with a day-night fixture at the Gabba.

It means that each day begins in the natural world and ends with a pink ball rather than the customary red ball from a test match.

On the For the Love of Cricket podcast, Broad stated that “we know the pink-ball test is a bit of a lottery because we’ve played a few of it ourselves.”

The best team typically prevails in test matches, but this one is more of a knife-edged situation.

England have lost all three of their Australian day-night Test matches.

Before suffering 275-run and 146-run defeats in Adelaide and Hobart on their final tour in 2021, they were defeated by 120 runs in Adelaide in 2017.

You should be taking wickets and opening up the game at the Gabba, according to Broad, “if you can get a brand-new ball under the floodlights,” she said.

“It all depends on timing, a little bit, on how you bowl with the brand-new ball.

Because you bowl with a brand-new ball in the middle of the day and it doesn’t do much, I don’t like bowling first in pink-ball cricket.

The ball is 60 overs old and doesn’t do anything by the time the ball is “twilight,” and the new ball arrives too late in the day.

Australia has won 12 of its 13 day-night Tests in home settings, with their only defeat coming against West Indies at the Gabba last year.

In 11 of those games, the sides have chosen to bat first, with six going on to win.

I’ll admit that Broad “added that I’m not the biggest fan” of pink-ball tests.

You have a great chance of doing really well because the ball just seems to zip around a little bit more in the second half of the game because it’s quite situational dependent.

You just can’t pick up the pink ball quite as well, they say. You also don’t see anything, so the seam is black against the pink background, but Mitchell Starc’s in-swinger might come back into the stumps or run around.

It’s just that the pink ball’s lights are reflecting off, making it almost seem like a large planet is coming your way.

“It means you’re just judging it from the ball’s movement, not from the movement of the ball, but moving at such a fast pace is quite challenging to do.”