Test cricket needs to hasten its slow walk into the light

Imagine you're attending one of those nostalgia trips beloved by Boomers, where exhumed 1980s pop bands perform in genteel garden settings at boutique wineries, and the show suddenly stops because the ageing guitarist can't read the set list because he's looking directly into the setting sun.

Or you've forked out for a night of opera, only to find act three of La bohème can't begin after interval because the third bassoonist has taken a wrong turn on the way back to the orchestra pit and is trapped on the fire stairs.

Under either scenario, should the interregnum loom for much more than a minute then the age-old entertainers' adage 'the show must go on' would be invoked before the audience became demonstrably restive.

But despite its standing as a loved and lucrative entertainment product, Test cricket has rather curiously reaffirmed in recent weeks it is not quite so adept at cracking on when playing conditions are anything other than pristine.

There was the comically farcical six-minute delay that prevented play resuming for the second session of day three at the MCG last week because third umpire Richard Illingworth couldn't be extricated from a lift after taking lunch in the stadium basement.

Yesterday, despite the presence of six imposing floodlight towers each of which is fitted with more than one hundred high-wattage bulbs, the third NRMA Insurance Test between Australia and Pakistan ground to a halt at 2.23pm because it was deemed too dark to play.

The 25,000-plus paying spectators inside the SCG at the time then spent around 45 minutes quizzically looking up at the lights that generate sufficient illumination for other forms of cricket to be played beyond sunset, but not a game that utilises a dark-red ball.

And perhaps most perplexingly, as sunshine and often blue skies replaced yesterday's tempest, today's action was stalled for five minutes when Australia batter Steve Smith spotted a small item of detritus lodged on the vast expanse of SCG sightscreen and asked that it be removed.

Given sightboards at international cricket grounds have evolved from mobile screens to small suburbs that engulf several bays of seating and rise to a height of a small apartment block, retrieval of the item causing such grievous offence was, in itself, a major exercise.

As everyone other than Smith strained their eyes to find the lump of discarded electrical tape that stood out on the billowing white background like a watermelon seed on a linen tablecloth, ground staff sprinted the length of the field to solve cricket's latest seemingly intractable problem.

These were the same overworked pitch maintenance folk who were forced into action on the game's opening morning when a length of flapping fabric on the same sightscreen mainsail caught the eagle eye of Pakistan's batters and the performance was again paused.

Cricket might be one of the few professional sports where additional time can be added to the playing schedule – invariably an extra 30 minutes each day because no team seems capable of bowling the require minimum of 90 overs in their allotted six hours.

But it also remains an outlier in the entertainment caper, in that the stars of the show routinely embrace any opportunity to prematurely draw the curtain if they feel conditions aren't nigh-on perfect.

Australia opener Usman Khawaja provided an interesting insight after rain saw play on day two called off an hour before the scheduled time for stumps.

The 37-year-old was asked his views on whether Test cricket needed the flexibility to use the readily-available pink ball in circumstances when the red version is deemed too difficult to see.

After jokingly suggesting any embrace of the pink ball (which historically helps swing bowlers dominate opening batters) would lead him to immediately retire, Khawaja added that "unless you can find a way to replicate the sun" red-ball cricket would remain a fair-weather feature.

The global science community is actively engaged in trying to harness hydrogen fusion that powers our solar system's life force, but sadly their endeavours remain singularly focused on addressing  anthropogenic climate change rather than ensuring Test cricket keeps going on cloudy days.

However, Todd Greenberg – chief executive officer of the Australian Cricketers' Association, of which Khawaja and his national skipper Pat Cummins are directors – concedes new thinking is needed to drag the 146-year Test format further into modernity.

"No-one loves the history and tradition of Test match cricket more than me and many others who are at the ground, but we also need to understand what business we're in," Greenberg told radio station SEN prior to play resuming at the SCG today.

"We are in the entertainment business.

"And geez, if we can put a man on the moon, surely we can find a way to get ourselves out on the field with lights, and figure out some sort of technology that will assist us to keep the players safe, ensure the battle continues in a fair and even contest, but also make sure that play continues.

"It just seems it seems like we're not moving with some of the challenges that we're facing."

While Greenberg's concerns specifically related to the issue of poor light preventing play at venues where permanently installed floodlights enable almost every other international sport to be played after dark, they might equally apply to the other reasons cricket regularly creates whereby the game gets stopped.

Khawaja thoughtfully articulated the bind Test cricket can tend to tie itself in through the competing frictions of historic precedence and contemporary relevance.

Having batted against balls of red, white, pink and even orange hues across his 15-year senior career, he is peerlessly placed to opine on the primacy of the Test game and the fact adherence to some seemingly arcane playing conditions often serve as its enduring point of difference.

And that, in turn, can partly explain the global game's reticence to hasten change that can seem so anachronistic to many.

"The beauty of Test cricket, and what I love about Test cricket, is it really hasn’t changed a lot in the last one hundred years," Khawaja said at the close of day two.

"The game hasn’t changed, but I think people maybe are just getting a little bit more impatient.

"It sucks (suspensions for bad light), but that’s Test cricket unfortunately.

"And when it rains or when you have bad light, you just have to cop it."

But as head of the professional players' union in Australia, Greenberg acknowledges his membership have a vital role to play in finding ways in which the game's traditions can be challenged to ensure the gradual demise of Test cricket some already fear doesn't gain pace.

He points out that players involved in that under-siege format might have to accept playing the game in conditions they regard as sub-optimal at times, in the interest of keeping the show on the road.

Or, at the very least, on the field.

"There's a lot of people looking at each other," Greenberg said when it was suggested nothing had changed in Test cricket's approach to playing conditions since poor light became a contentious issue during the corresponding Sydney Test a year ago.

"The way I'm told is the ICC is not so much a global governing body, but a variety of different member nations.

"So those member nations need to get together with the ICC and find a way to ensure that these things don't continue to happen.

"Clearly, you can't play in the dark … and the players are part of this, we've got to come together as well and we're going to find some way to ensure that we're back on the field.

"I can't think of another sport that will do this, consistently just walk off when the light's not good."

NRMA Insurance Test series v Pakistan

First Test: Australia won by 360 runs

Second Test: Australia won by 79 runs

Third Test: January 3-7, SCG (10.30am AEDT)

Australia squad: Pat Cummins (c), Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Cameron Green, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Mitch Marsh, Steve Smith, Mitch Starc, David Warner

Pakistan squad: Shan Masood (c), Aamir Jamal, Abdullah Shafique, Abrar Ahmed, Babar Azam, Faheem Ashraf, Hasan Ali, Imam-ul-Haq, Mir Hamza, Mohammad Nawaz, Mohammad Rizwan (wk), Mohammad Wasim Jnr, Saim Ayub, Salman Ali Agha, Sarfaraz Ahmed (wk), Saud Shakeel and Shaheen Shah Afridi