A hard day's night

Yousuf Youhana could hardly have faced a better first-up delivery in his relatively lengthy career. Against England at Cape Town, Youhana looked to play forward to a full James Anderson delivery angled in with the arm - except, when he probed forward, the ball wasn't there. It had already swung back towards off, clipped middle and off, and sparked off considerable celebration on the field, most of it centered around the young English medium-pacer.

Anderson certainly bowled well on the day, but how much he was helped by evening conditions - just as, presumably, Ashish Nehra and Chaminda Vaas were in other matches - is yet another subject of heavy debate in the 2003 World Cup. Only one team batting second under lights has yet won a match in the tournament, and that team - Kenya - edged home against a less-than-mediocre Canadian bowling attack by four wickets.

The physics of it are simple. Under lights, South African grounds become sinks of water-vapour, humidity descending rapidly post-twilight and conceiving conditions that are tailor-made for medium-fast bowlers like Vaas, Nehra and Anderson, who can swing and seam the ball at a good pace. Consequently, chasing under lights - already a pressure-cooker situation in the making - becomes a hugely difficult task.

This dominance of natural conditions would pose little problem if it weren't so one-sided, and especially in South Africa, the result of a day-nighter is virtually decided by the toss of a coin, for the lucky captain will have little hesitation in gleefully opting to bat first. Former South African coach Bob Woolmer, one of the foremost analysts of the modern game, has noted as much. "It would seem, judging by the few games that have been played under lights, that the bias is too much weighted towards the side batting first," Woolmer told Reuters. "The subject of day-night cricket during a World Cup will now have to be put firmly on the agenda for the next International Cricket Council (ICC) playing affairs committee."

Woolmer refers to World Cup tournaments in particular just because, in such an evolved format, one game could - and has, in the case of Pakistan for example - make all the difference in qualifying for the next stage. By extension, however, few one-day games at all should be decided by the toss, so at least for conditions like those that prevail in South Africa, there have been calls for the day-night cricket to come under serious review.

The format started, like so many other innovations that have come to stay in one-day cricket, with Kerry Packer's "pyjama cricket." Day-night games that started in late afternoon and stretched past 10 p.m. occupied the all-vital prime-time slot on television, attracting advertising revenues by the barrel. The excitement factor also shot up; two batsmen chasing under the glow of floodlights, surrounded by thousands of vocal spectators who poured into the stadiums after work, gave the game the appearance of a gladiatorial contest of old. All that was missing, some would argue, was the caged tigers.

And as the one-day game grew in popularity, it made more financial sense to continue with the day-night system, and by the 1996 World Cup, it had settled into popular acceptance. Both semi-finals and the final of that World Cup were played under lights, and if the next edition, staged in England, did not boast as many floodlit fixtures, it was only because the long English summer evenings had deterred the installation of unnecessary light-towers.

The popularity of the format continues, as a CricInfo poll suggests; only 30.4 % of voters thought that day-nighters in the World Cup should be scrapped - and this after the clear advantages bestowed on sides bowling second under lights in earlier games. There are two day-night games scheduled for the Super Six, as well as one of the two semi-finals, and the venues - Durban and Cape Town - have already demonstrated the disparity in playing conditions that Woolmer speaks of.

The preliminary matches have also made the cricketers themselves extremely wary of day-nighters. In a crucial Pool B game under lights, West Indies skipper Carl Hooper looked dejected when he lost the toss - and the game had not even started! Pakistan captain Waqar Younis urged organisers to reconsider the semi-final fixture, stating: "I would say any team which wins the toss has won the match 75 percent (of the time) and that is grossly unfair."

Australian coach John Buchanan has also gone on record as wishing to avoid the Durban semi-final. "The point is, even if it is only partially accurate, you are still unsure what you should do at the toss because there are elements that might affect the game," said Buchanan to Reuters. And when the coach of the present, seemingly indestructible, Australian side starts worrying, there must truly be something amiss!

Much of the carping may have to do with sour grapes. After their win against Pakistan, England's newspapers hailed Anderson as a fast-bowling wonder, but when Nehra scalped six in similar conditions against a clueless English batting line-up, issues about day-nighters were raised instantly. But there is no denying that, at least at some venues, conditions at night skew the game significantly. And while the ICC playing affairs committee may not actually go with Christopher Martin-Jenkins' suggestion in The Times to play the game in four sessions of 25 overs apiece, they may have to start closely examining individual ground conditions before allotting day-night fixtures.