NEW DELHI: Former England fast bowler Stuart Broad feels England’s chances in the Brisbane Test will largely depend on how effectively they handle the “lottery” of the pink ball. The second Test of the five-match Ashes series begins on December 4 at the Gabba and will be a day-night fixture, following Australia’s eight-wicket win in the opening Test.Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW!“We know the pink-ball Test, having played a few ourselves, is a bit of a lottery,” Broad said on the For The Love of Cricket podcast. “Ultimately, the best team generally wins Test matches but this one, it’s on a bit more of a knife edge of conditions.”
England have yet to win a pink-ball Test, having suffered defeats by 120 runs in Adelaide in 2017, followed by losses of 275 runs and 146 runs in Adelaide and Hobart during their last Ashes tour in 2021.“If you can get a brand new ball under the floodlights at the Gabba, you should be taking wickets and you can break the game open,” Broad added.“It is all about timing a little bit of when you bowl with the brand new ball. That is why I don’t like bowling first in pink-ball cricket because you bowl with a brand new ball in daylight and it doesn’t do a lot.“By the time you get to the twilight period the ball is 60 overs old and doesn’t do anything – and the new ball comes too late in the day. Winning the toss and batting is pretty crucial in the pink-ball Test in my opinion. That is my feeling in pink-ball cricket. It is going to be one hell of a challenge.”Australia, meanwhile, have dominated pink-ball Tests at home, winning 12 of 13 matches, with their only defeat coming against West Indies at the Gabba last year.Out of eleven occasions, teams batting first have won six times, with the pink ball offering bowlers more assistance under lights.“I’m not the biggest fan (of pink-ball Tests) to be honest,” Broad said.“It’s quite situational dependent, so if you can manipulate the game to get a brand new ball in the twilight, you’ve got a great chance of doing really well because the ball just seems to zip around a little bit more.“There’s something about the pink ball, you just can’t pick it up quite as well. You get no clues as well, so the seam is black against the pink background, whereas with a red ball and white seam you might see Mitchell Starc’s in-swinger coming back into the stumps or scrambling around.“It’s just the lights are reflecting off the pink ball so it’s almost like a big planet coming flying towards you. It means you’re just judging it from the movement off the surface or reading off the movement of the ball, but at such pace it’s quite difficult to do. That’s why I think it is quite important to bat first because even if you are bowled out by tea when it’s starting to go dark, you have a brand new ball under lights. And if you bat well you can control when you bowl in the game and in the day,” he added.
