Pink-ball Tests can be a lottery. This one hurt Test cricket

A young fast bowler called Mitchell Starc was one of the most vocal critics when a pink-ball Test match was first added to the Australian summer 10 years ago.

“Whether you have to start a whole new set of stats for the pink ball, as you do with the red and white ball, I guess it throws up a huge number of questions,” an unimpressed Starc said at the time.

Pink-ball Test matches can be a lottery for batters. Credit: Matt Willis

So sceptical were some players from both Australia and New Zealand – Brendon McCullum among them – that the game at Adelaide Oval was afforded a unique prize-money pot to ensure they took the field: $1 million split 60/40 between the winners and losers.

For Cricket Australia and its then chief executive James Sutherland, this was a small price to pay for the introduction of Test cricket in prime time, instantly adding a multimillion-dollar bounty to the rights fees paid then by Nine, and since 2018 by Foxtel and Seven.

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