How the pink ball has turned Test cricket upside down

For decades, perhaps even a century or more, the essential template for a day of Test cricket has remained reassuringly unchanged.

Upon starting a batting innings on a summer's late morning, the ideal was to make safe progress through the first session, consolidate with minimal wicket loss during the afternoon, and then make hay when bowlers are foot-weary and frustrated as evening draws near.

That blueprint was never going to fit neatly when the most radical change to the scheduling of Test cricket in almost 140 years was instituted in 2015 - the advent of matches played in both daylight and floodlights, with a luminescent pink ball adding further to its novelty.

But while the performance of the pink ball remains a hotly debated topic among purists and progressives, the most fundamental change is being revealed as the tactics that teams employ to best utilise the altered ambient conditions to their advantage.

In its initial phase, day-night Test cricket saw some strategic ploys that were previously only known in exceptional circumstances such as rain-affected pitches (where batting orders were inverted) or overhead conditions that tempted captains to bowl when they might otherwise have batted.

In the second day-night Test that Australia hosted, against South Africa at Adelaide Oval in 2016, Proteas' skipper Faf du Plessis foreclosed his team's first innings so unexpectedly early to take advantage of night conditions that Australia opener David Warner was caught short, given he was off the field at the time.

Under cricket's playing conditions, that meant Warner was unable to take his usual place at the head of the batting line-up when play resumed.

A year later, Australia skipper Steve Smith opted against enforcing the follow-on despite their 215-run lead over England and instead sent his own batters to face the shiny pink ball under lights, only to see wickets tumble and the state of the game change markedly.

But there have been fewer more graphic examples of the evolving tactical side of the day-night format than day two of the current Domain Test Series between Australia and New Zealand at Perth Stadium on Friday.

In searing heat that topped 40C an hour after play began, Australia were obviously keen to continue batting having resumed at 4-248, but the loss of their last two recognised batters in the opening session saw the pink-ball strategy laid bare.

Skipper Tim Paine and his deputy Pat Cummins effectively dropped anchor during a meandering middle session in which just 38 runs were added in more than 22 overs, even though New Zealand were hobbled by the loss of injured fast bowler Lockie Ferguson and harried by the extreme heat.

The rationale was as obvious as it proved effective.

Playing shots that might bring runs also carried the risk of losing wickets, and Australia were hellbent in the hellish conditions not to be forced into the field until the sun was dipping behind the new stadium's steepling stands, and the lights were working their magic on the pink ball.

As fast bowler Mitchell Starc later confirmed, having blasted through New Zealand's top-order with the new ball in the final session as per the plan to leave them teetering at 5-109 in reply to Australia's 416, decisions that were once based on the scoreboard are now being forced by the clock.

"If you look at it tactically, red ball to pink ball, it's very different when you're thinking about time of day," Starc said.

"We probably batted a bit slow through that middle session, but the plan was to get as close to the evening session as we could.

"Although it was pretty slow to watch and perhaps be a part of, it was certainly part of the pink-ball tactics to try and utilise the brand-new pink ball under lights.

"It's probably justified when you take five wickets in the last session."

While day-night Test cricket in Australia has only yielded six completed matches across four years, the learnings it has provided coupled with the experiences of numerous pink ball fixtures in the Sheffield Shield have helped hatch the new battle plan.

Only twice in the 20 night-time sessions completed in pink ball Tests have teams batted through without surrendering a wicket.

The first was during the Gabba's inaugural day-night Test in 2016 when Steve Smith and Peter Handscomb defied Pakistan's highly rated seamers, and the other came in Adelaide (against the same rival) two weeks ago when David Warner and Marnus Labuschagne made merry … and history.

But the average clatter of wickets during those floodlit sessions (excluding the few that have been truncated by rain) is roughly the five that New Zealand coughed up in a dramatic couple of hours on Friday night.

Part of the reason that Australia were so keen to bat out the day's heat, even though their fast bowlers had not before experienced the vagaries of the pink ball in the Perth Stadium hosting its maiden day-night fixture, was the evidence they had witnessed a night earlier.

That was when New Zealand's weary and depleted bowlers took the second new-ball, and seamer Tim Southee bent a delivery so far that Matthew Wade was left shouldering arms as it snaked past him and on to his stumps.

It was therefore not surprising that Southee was aware what Australia's strategy would be, even before play began under the scalding sun on Friday afternoon.

"We had a rough idea," Southee admitted at the end of a tough day for the world's second-ranked Test team.

"Our plan at the start of the day was to bowl them out as quick as we could, because we knew if we didn't, they were going to declare and have a crack at us under the lights anyway.

"So there is a lot of tactics that come into it, especially around that night session and it's a lot easier if you have a new ball in your hand when the lights go on.

'I'm sure that was a tactic of theirs - if they didn't get bowled out, they were probably going to declare.

"And they were probably trying to bat as long as they could to make the most of that last couple of hours under lights."

New Zealand's counter-ploy is now to ensure the bottom-half of their batting can similarly withstand two sessions of heat from Australia's attack (also likely to be a man down with Josh Hazlewood) before the lights come on Saturday night.

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