Dubai: It will be a historic day of cricket at the Dubai International Stadium on Thursday when Pakistan take on West Indies on the first day of the first Test of the three match series. UAE will add another feather to its cricketing cap by staging a day-night Test match with the pink ball.
UAE — despite being a non-Test playing country — will thus have not only hosted all formats of the game but also become the first Asian nation to host a day-night Test and stage the most modern innovation in Test cricket.
For Pakistan it will be a special moment as it is their 400th Test match, a journey which began way back in 1952 when they played their first official Test on their first tour as a Test-playing nation to India. Sixty-four years later, scaling to great heights as the No. 2 ranked Test nation, Pakistan players will walk on to the field with pride. A victory here will be the icing on the cake.
The enormity of this historic moment can be understood from the fact that this Test match is only the second one to be played with a pink ball in Test cricket’s more than 140-year-old history. The first with a pink ball, which was the inaugural day-night Test match, was played at the historic Adelaide Oval in Australia between New Zealand and Australia. The Adelaide match was witnessed by 123,000 spectators, and hence cricket fans in the UAE should also turn up in large numbers to back this special innovation in cricket aimed mainly at attracting fans into Test cricket.
Organisers are hoping that fans will turn up after their office hours and during weekends they are expecting even a full house.
Pink ball is expected to be attractive for the spectators as pink balls have a strong colour finish to help retain maximum visibility in night conditions. The leather exterior of the ball is made of Australian hide, the balls are dyed — and to retain the visibility there is more lacquer on it than a red one.
As both the teams are playing day-night Test cricket for the first time, players are eager about whether they will be able to pick the ball clearly. Will it swing more or will the ball itself last long enough like the red ball? Batsmen have already found it difficult to adjust during the twilight period when the lights come on and hence the organisers have altered the timing of the match with two breaks of half an hour each after starting the match at 3.30pm.
Batsmen have revealed the seam of the pink ball is not visible — though makers of the ball had experimented with a white and green seam. More than seam or swing, what West Indies batsmen’s fear is how to handle the spin from Pakistan’s deadly spinners Yasir Shah and Zulfiqar Babar.
In the just-concluded Twenty20 and One Day International series, West Indies batsmen put up a poor performance. Many fear that if West Indies refuse to rise to the challenge, the Test match could end quickly without completing five days. According to the ICC, even if Pakistan beat West Indies 3-0 in the Test series, they will not be able to occupy the No. 1 rank occupied by India.
Though Pakistan’s star batsman Younis Khan will miss the first Test as he is recovering from dengue fever, the batsman they fear most now is young Babar Azam who hit three centuries in the ODI series and who has been included in the Test team.
Teams: Pakistan: Misbah-ul-Haq (captain), Azhar Ali, Sami Aslam, Asad Shafiq, Babar Azam, Sarfraz Ahmad, Mohammad Nawaz, Mohammad Amir, Wahab Riaz, Yasir Shah, Zulfiqar Babar, Rahat Ali, Sohail Khan, Imran Khan
West Indies: Jason Holder (captain), Kraigg Brathwaite (vice captain), Devendra Bishoo, Jermaine Blackwood, Carlos Brathwaite, Darren Bravo, Roston Chase, Miguel Cummins, Shane Dowrich, Shannon Gabriel, Shai Hope, Leon Johnson, Alzarri Joseph, Marlon Samuels, Jomel Warrican
Umpires: Richard Illingworth (ENG) and Paul Reiffel (AUS) TV umpire: Ian Gould (ENG)
Match referee: Jeff Corwe (NZL). Start time: 3.30pm
