BCCI requests BCB to play a day-night Test at Eden Gardens

The recently concluded Test series between India and South Africa saw the hosts dominate the proceedings with ruthless precision and relentlessness. But almost the entirety of the matches were played in near-empty stadiums, prompting nation-wide debates as to what should be done to bring the crowd back to Test cricket.

Skipper Virat Kohli had suggested the five traditional Test centers to attract the fans while the other discussions that have been doing the rounds are whether Day/Night Test cricket is the future? In what comes as a significant development, the Bangladesh Cricket Board has confirmed that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has requested them to play a day-night Test during the upcoming tour of India and they will respond after consulting their players and the team management.

“They have proposed us and we will let them know after thinking a while. We received the letter two or three days (ago) and we will take a decision in this regard. We have not discussed about it. We will let them know about our decision within one or two days,” Khan was quoted as saying by Cricbuzz.

Interestingly, the proposal comes after newly-appointed President of the BCCI, Sourav Ganguly spoke of his penchant towards Day/Night Tests while also revealing that current skipper is ‘agreeable to it.’ Ganguly, while speaking at his felicitation ceremony a few days back in Kolkata after having met Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma said he’s “a big believer of Day-Night Tests” and that something will be done about it.

“We all are thinking about this. We will do something about this. I am a big believer in day-night Tests. Kohli is agreeable to it. I see a lot of reports in newspapers that he is not, but that is not true. The game needs to go forward and that is the way forward. People should finish work and come to watch champions play. I don’t know when that will happen, but it will,” Ganguly said as quoted by Cricbuzz.

BCCI requests; BCB to take a call soon

Meanwhile, the BCB chief executive Nizamuddin Chowdhury said they wanted all their stakeholders on board before taking the decision.

“At first we have to take the consent of the players and members of the team management about it. It is totally a technical matter [playing day-night Test from skill perspective] and we have to consider that there is preparation required to play a Test with a pink ball,” Chowdhury said.

Interestingly, both India and Bangladesh had said no to the offer of playing D/N Tests, made by Australia and New Zealand in the past, citing that they needed to have practiced for a long time before adjusting to different conditions.

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