After long advocacy of the BCCI president Sourav Ganguly, Virat Kohli-led team is playing its maiden pink-ball Test under the lights against Bangladesh at the Eden Gardens. Ganguly’s idea behind introducing the new concept for India is to bring spectators to the ground.
But Virat Kohli did not seem completely agreed with the concept of playing day-night Tests when he said, “You can bring excitement into Test cricket but you can’t purely make Test cricket based on just entertainment.
“The entertainment of Test cricket lies in a batsman trying to survive a session, a bowler trying to set up a batsman. If people don’t want to respond to that, too bad. If I don’t like Test cricket, you can’t push me to like it. Those who enjoy the battle between bat and ball and great session of Test cricket, in my opinion, those are the people that should come and watch Test cricket because they understand what’s going on.”
The former Indian cricketer Dilip Vengsarkar seemed happy and excited about Team India embracing the pink-ball test for the first time.
Vengsarkar said “If there is 5 Tests in a series then we can play 2 with the pink ball. I am really happy that we’re playing India’s first-ever Day/Night Test at Eden Gardens. It’s a fascinating innovation.” The online tickets have been completely sold out for the first four days as India lead the series 1-0. Even on the ground, there were long queues to get the tickets for the historic match in Kolkata.