BCCI president Sourav Ganguly confirmed on Sunday that India will play a day-night Test during their much-awaited tour of Australia later this year. However, this comes a month after captain Virat Kohli said that they are ready to play a day-night Test anywhere in Australia.
“Yes, India will play a Day/Night Test in Australia. A formal announcement will be made soon,” BCCI president Sourav Ganguly said to the PTI.
Ganguly, the former India captain, also said that the second Test against England at home will be a day-night encounter. He further added that the Board will try to have at least one day-night Test in each series in the future as well. Meanwhile, India India played their maiden day-night Test against Bangladesh last year in November at the Eden Gardens where they won the match comfortably.
However, the day-night Test is likely to take place in either Adelaide or Perth. Hosting the game in one of these venues will be beneficial keeping the time slot for Indian broadcast time. On the eve of India’s three-match ODI series at home against Australia last month, India captain Virat Kohli had said that they are ready to play. Moreover, a Cricket Australia (CA) delegation recently met top BCCI officials in January to talk about the agenda.
“We’re ready and up for the challenge – whether it’s Gabba, Perth… it doesn’t matter to us. It’s become a very exciting feature of any Test series and we’re open to playing day-night Tests,” he said.
Although India earlier declined Australia’s offer to play a day-night Test in Adelaide in 2018-19 and gave the reason lack of experience.
“It’s become a very exciting feature of any Test series and we’re open to playing day-night Tests. We’re ready and up for the challenge – whether it’s Gabba, Perth… it doesn’t matter to us, we have the skillsets as a team now to compete against anyone in the world, anywhere, in any format of the game, whether it’s white ball, red ball or pink ball, we’re ready to play anything,” he again added.
