Pink ball fear cripples batsmen, 17 fall on Day 1

Sabi Hussain

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 23

Finally, the pink kookaburra ball made its much-anticipated debut in Indian cricket. The Duleep Trophy, which has been revived after being scrapped from the 2015-16 domestic season, got a major facelift with the hosting of India’s maiden first-class match under lights — the first of the four-match day/night series between India Green and India Red.

Though the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) had experimented with the pink ball during the CAB Super League in June, this has been the first time that the pink ball was earnestly introduced by the BCCI in a first-class competition.

There were two moot questions pertaining to the pink ball — whether it will last the full 80 overs without much wear and tear and how the seam would behave under lights when the dew will set in. If the opening day’s play was anything to go by, the ball not only lasted 80 overs, there wasn’t much lateral movement with a 4mm layer of grass on the pitch.

While there wasn’t much movement during the day time, the ball was doing a little more at dusk under lights. The India Red pace trio of Anureet Singh, Nathu Singh and Ishwar Pandey did manage to get extra swing and chinaman spinner Kuldeep Yadav extracted extra turn to flummox the India Green batsmen. An astonishing 17 wickets fell on Day 1 — however, reason for the dismissals was poor shot-selection and nervousness to face the pink ball more than anything else. This was true in the case of India Red batsmen, who seemed to be in an inexplicable hurry — Yuvraj Singh was caught at square leg the very next ball after hitting the four. Only opener Abhinav Mukund showed the stomach for a fight, scoring a gritty 77 off 116 balls.

India Red were bundled out for 161 in 48.2 overs, with pacer Sandeep Sharma (4/62), Ankit Rajpoot (2/16) and Pragyan Ojha (3/19) sharing nine wickets between them.