Neil Bramwell: Floodlit game an enlightened way to a bright future

24 July 1997

Floodlit game an enlightened way to a bright future

Neil Bramwell

LIGHTS, camera, action - at long last.

There has been much back slapping at Warwickshire and Lancashire in recent days after staging hugely successful day-night games.

But that deserved praise should be tempered by the question: Why has it taken so long?

Kerry Packer was visionary enough to see that cricket must adapt to survive 20 years ago in Australia.

And while the English climate means that the development of this form of cricket has to be handled with care, I pray it does not take another 20 years for the powers that be to realise that the game must adapt in other ways.

The common consensus - ignoring the fossils who still regard batting helmets as a sign of society's moral decline - seems to be that the day-night game is all well and good as long as it does not contaminate 'proper' cricket.

But the generation that grew up with and supported the purist's form of the game is dying off.

Attendances at county championship games are quite simply embarrassing.

The razzmatazz, hullabaloo, rock music and pyjama strips, however, are obviously appealing to a younger audience.

So every possible means should be used to lock this new age cricket fan into the game.

Test match cricket, when the Aussies or the West Indies are in town, is flourishing. But a day at the Test match is increasingly a convenient excuse for a day's drinking.

And when the less glamorous Test nations are in town, crowds across the world are shrinking.

There therefore has to be a concerted worldwide effort to effectively market the four and five-day game.

A world Test championship or ladder system is a splendid concept.

And let's hope that we do not again fall 20 years behind the pack.

Today's events at Headingley in the fourth Test, and the rest of this series, will serve to illustrate that we are still light years behind the top Test nations in playing standards.

So why doesn't the country that invented the game, grasp the nettle and propel cricket into the new millennium?

That doesn't mean tampering with the structure of local league cricket.

It most certainly does mean the creation of a two or three division county championship.

But it may also mean the adoption of modern gimmickry in all forms of the game.

Why not play all cricket with a white ball and black sightscreens? That would at least eradicate the intensely irritating bad light rule.

Starting games late in the afternoon would give school kids and office workers the chance to see the majority of a day's play.

And, personally, I have no objection if they play the 1812 Overture, the Top 40 or Fraggle Rock from first ball to last.