Aghastees,
Pup would never have had a bar of it.
Not one to try to channel Clarkey [he's too busy seeing his accountant, adjusting to having a wee bairn in the house, and learning how to sail a boat to Hobart], but if he was still the Strayan Captain, he would have seen straight through this day/night test cricket nonsense - "the pink stink" - for what it is - a money grubbing excercise of the highest, most flagrant order.
And he'd know.
[Let me explain here. Many years ago, a few of my friends hired a car, in Alice Springs if memory serves me right, and the only vehicle available was a bright pink VW beetle. After parking the car in the motel car park overnight, they awoke next morning to find a huge, freshly-laid, steaming human turd neatly curled up on the bonnet of the car - the vehicle became known, of course, as "the pink stink". Over the years the term "pink stink" has morphed into something that describes anything from a particularly foul smelling object, to any kind of cockup, usually rather minor and of little consequence, right through to a gigantic goatfuck in the affairs of state. Now we can add day/night Test cricket to the list].
Sure test cricket has evolved over time.
You have to remember that when the first Australian [all Aboriginal] team turned up in England in 1868, overarm bowling had had only been legalised for two years, after a long and bitter shitfight over the issue.
When the first Australian test team arrived nine years later, there would have been plenty of underarm and roundarm bowling still going on.
In fact lob bowling persisted in first class cricket right into the 1920's when it finally died.
With the way this pink ball swings which way and that at night, and loops, spins, bounces and goes round corners for the slow men, we might was well go back to the future by playing day/night test cricket with lob bowling on a hessian matting pitch.
At least that would be far more interesting.
The very first test of all was played over three days on little more than a used dog track, but as the art of pitch curation developed and the draw became the most common result, they went to the completely opposite extreme of timeless tests, which people soon got sick of, not because of the tedium, but because it took time as a factor out of the game - before they mucked about forever and finally settled on five days.
Got no problem with shortening test matches to four days, like other first class matches, but the first pink ball test lasted two days and five and a bit hours - and it was as boring as batshit.
Bugger the result, let's face it, who wants to watch a bunch of fairly ordinary bowlers get away with 1st degree murder?
Test cricket has long been a delicious combination of runs, wickets and time - all utterly unpredictable - long periods of slow play interspersed with extreme excitement and high drama.
You can even look at it as a Shakesperian play in five acts if you wish, and the Indian Hindu sect that has cricket as its cult take it to another level altogether.
But since when did the actual time of day become a major tactic in the Captain's arsenal, with the vast majority of the wickets being taken at night, when the batsmen can't see the pink ball - they can't even see the seam on the ball at any time of day.
To play the four innings would have been even shorter, except for the number of dropped catches - a direct result of the inability of the players to see the pink ball off the bat at any time, especially if it's hit hard into the slips cordon.
Even Skipper Smiffy dropped a few, and he must have among the best set of catching hands in the world game.
There was nothing unequivocal about Smiffy's disgust then he turfed what ordinarily would've been a sitter.
As for the true traditionalist and the die-hard, they would have been horrified by the demise of Australia's cream-coloured uniform; in day/night test matches, everyone plays in white.
As an experiment, it's a complete dud.
Could not stand how the commentators on Channel Grime continuously talked up the idea as if it was the best thing since bottled Scotch.
Really?
How many people pay Warney to say it is "amazing" "fantastic" "brilliant" ad nauseum.
He thanked everyone bar his grandmother for coming up with or encouraging the "most innovative" concept the game has ever seen.
Sickmaking.
Only Chappelli refused to tow the company line...you could hear in his voice he was desperate to mark the whole shooting match down as an epic fail.
Nearing the end of the game he actually said "at no time in this match has any of the batsmen had a genuine chance to really get settled".
Blasphemy! According to the edicts from on high.
Then there were the fudged crowd figures.
On the first two days official crowds of 40K+ were posted, but My Spy at the Ground says 15-20 thousand of those were out the back getting pissed as parrots in the salubrious surroundings of the manicured lawns of the Members relaxation area, [the number of Members far outweighing the number of available seats] featuring comfortable garden chairs and tables, fully stocked bars, picnic hampers etc.
Most, if not all, of these people never saw a ball bowled.
For the great unwashed in The Outer, they would have spent hours pre-loading in the many pubs that surround the ground before getting to the game for a 2pm start.
After the so-called "dinner break" [no one seemed to know what the breaks were actually called, probably because no-one at the powers-that-be had bothered to think up names for them], the entire crowd was as the newt.
It was if the good/bad old days had returned, when you allowed to take your own esky full of beer onto the old hill at Adelaide Oval, but at least back then they had the decency and sense to impose a 24 can limit, per person.
Yet it still only got a touch messy after tea.
My Spy at the Ground had vivid stories of hoards of legless drunks pouring and stumbling out of the ground.
Of course, you'd expect to see a few pot-bellied piss-suckers at any game - nothing wrong with that - but in this day and age - the whole crowd?
If it aint broke, don't fix it.
If it is, as the money changers in the temples seem to think it is, and you can't fix it with a good length of fencing wire, then it aint worth fixing.
And as the blokes who hired the pink VW soon found out - you can't polish a turd.
