Over the last several days, since they have had individual and collective trysts with the pink ball in preparation for the historic day-night Test against Bangladesh, India’s cricketers have spoken of the difficulty in sighting the ball during twilight and affirmed the hardships batsmen are likely to face during that phase and beyond.
On Thursday, a day before the game at Eden Gardens, Virat Kohli added a new dimension to the challenges the players will face. The Indian captain said fielding, and more importantly catching, won’t be as straightforward as otherwise.
“Catching the ball, we felt like how you feel like with the white ball in the afternoon,” Kohli said of India’s practice session under lights on Wednesday. “You don’t know how far the ball is and then it hits your hand very quickly. Even in the slips it was flying pretty fast. The extra glaze on the ball is making it travel faster, and it hits the hands very hard as well. It’s definitely much harder, and it felt a little heavier. Obviously, it can’t be a difference of weight, but for some reason, it felt heavier. Even the throws took a lot more effort than the red ball to reach the ’keeper.
Asked for specific learnings from practicing with the pink ball, Kohli elaborated, “Batting is something we were focussing on. As a batsman invariably you end up thinking a lot more about cutting down those errors when you're playing with a different-coloured ball. As batsmen, we were in the mindset of solidifying our games and our techniques. But the one thing that surprised me was the fielding sessions. The dip perception was very difficult when the ball went up in the air, so I think during the day, high catches will be very difficult. We had to watch the balls straight into our palms more often than not. With the red ball and white ball, you catch with the idea of how fast the ball is coming down, but this time, if you didn’t look down at the ball in your palms, it was gone. The fielding session for me was far more challenging. People are going to be surprised by how challenging fielding with this ball can be.”