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A day-night match at Sabina Park has been a long time coming and, if recent form is a guide, the bowlers might enjoy themselves again when West Indies meet Australia later this week. It is only the second pink-ball Test ever held in the Caribbean, the first being Barbados 2018, when Sri Lanka and West Indies needed rain to drag the game into a fourth day.
Both camps have squeezed in just one proper session with the pink Dukes, so hard conclusions are tricky. For Australia, it is a new experience full stop – they have played 13 day-night Tests but never one outside their own back yard.
“There might be a few things going on at night with the pink Dukes,” Mitchell Starc said on Wednesday after facing a handful of overs. “It’s a new one for us as a group. I think Usman [Khawaja] is the only one who’s played with a pink Dukes, and it was an English Dukes, and he said the county game went for a day-and-a-half.”
During that short hit-out, Australia’s top order reported “swing and nip”, and the ball stayed firm – a welcome change after several soft, misshapen red Dukes were binned earlier in the series.
Starc’s own relationship with the pink ball is well documented. Seventy-four wickets at under 19 apiece is borderline absurd, and he needs only five more to bring up 400 in what will be his 100th Test. “I don’t think it’s poetic, but it’s quite funny that I’m playing [the] 100th in a pink-ball game,” he said, half-smiling.
The pitch, at least to the naked eye, looks the fairest of the tour. Variable bounce in Barbados and Grenada made life awkward for batters; this surface is greener yet more even.
“It looks like it’s probably the most even covering of grass we’ve had,” Starc noted. “It’s a bit of a lottery to see what the wickets do, but at first look it looks the best of the three.”
Local opener Brandon King offered a similar assessment. “Sabina Park is usually a decent wicket. It’s usually a balanced wicket, something for the bowlers, something for the batters. And that’s what you want,” he said after West Indies’ evening training.
Just getting to this point required a substantial retrofit. The new floodlights—lower slung than many modern rigs—were finished with barely any slack in the timetable. Lux levels do meet ICC standards, although two pockets, one near Kingston Cricket Club, the other at the Courtney Walsh End, remain a shade darker.
“Not anything too dark,” Starc said. “Just the different levels of lights were something that people were getting used to. But, overall, I think pretty good.”
West Indies have played five day-night Tests, winning only at the Gabba last December. Of that XI, as few as four may line up on Thursday. Their lone pink-ball hundred belongs to Darren Bravo, made way back in Dubai 2016; that statistic hints at the home side’s challenge.
Australia, beaten only once in 13 under lights, will start favourites. Yet a Dukes that stays hard, a surface that offers something for everyone and the quirks of a new lighting set-up could drag the contest anywhere. That unpredictability is half the fun.
