The Pink Ball and Day-Night Test Cricket in Australia

The pink ball Test is an Australian invention that the rest of the cricket world has mostly declined to adopt, and Australia has been close to unbeatable in it. Adelaide Oval staged the first day-night Test in November 2015, when Martin Guptill faced Mitchell Starc under lights and Australia beat New Zealand by three wickets in a tight, low-scoring match. In the decade since, Australia hosted thirteen day-night Tests and won twelve of them, including two by an innings and three by more than 250 runs, before adding an Ashes win at the Gabba in December 2025.

That record is not a coincidence and it is not entirely a matter of the ball. It is the product of a country that runs pink-ball rounds in its domestic first-class competition, that has grounds where evening dew is rarely severe, and that has spent ten years learning what the twilight session does to a batting order while touring teams arrive with two or three days of practice. Australia's opponents keep arriving unfamiliar with a set of conditions Australia sees every summer.

This guide covers why the format was created, how the pink ball differs from a red one, what the twilight period actually does, every day-night Test played in Australia and how it finished, why the rest of the world has largely stayed away, and what to expect if you are going to one. The ball itself is covered in more depth in the Kookaburra ball guide, and the surfaces in the Australian pitch conditions guide.

The problem the format was built to solve

Test cricket is played on weekdays in daylight hours, which is exactly when most of its potential audience is at work or at school. For decades that produced the same picture at grounds around the world: a large Saturday crowd, a decent Sunday one, and thin attendances on days one, two and five. Broadcasters had the same problem in reverse, with the best television window sitting after the day's play had already finished.

Limited-overs cricket solved this in the late 1970s by moving under lights with a white ball and coloured clothing, and the change transformed the economics of the one-day game. Test cricket could not follow, because a white ball against white clothing is unplayable and a red ball under lights becomes progressively harder to see as it scuffs. The problem was a ball problem, and it stayed unsolved for close to forty years.

Cricket Australia and Kookaburra worked on it for years before the 2015 trial. Development ran through a long sequence of shades and finishes before the manufacturer settled on a pink that stayed visible from the players' point of view, on television and from the top of a stand, all through a fading Adelaide evening.

Adelaide, November 2015

The first day-night Test was played at Adelaide Oval against New Zealand, and it worked on both of the measures that mattered. As cricket, it was tight and low-scoring and finished inside three days, with Australia winning by three wickets. As an event, it drew crowds Test cricket in that period had stopped expecting, particularly in the evening sessions.

Adelaide was the right choice for reasons beyond willingness. South Australia had already been running pink-ball Sheffield Shield matches at the ground to gather data on how the ball behaved after dark. The 2014 redevelopment had left the venue with modern floodlighting. And Adelaide's summer evenings cool without producing the heavy dew that would later cause problems elsewhere.

The fixture stuck. For most of the following decade the pink-ball Test has been Adelaide's, generally the second Test of the summer, and the ground has become the hardest place in world cricket to bat in a fourth innings.

How the pink ball differs from a red one

Three changes, all made to keep the ball visible. The leather is drum-dyed so the pink penetrates the skin rather than sitting on the surface. Additional pigment is applied over the grain, and a nitro-cellulose lacquer top coat goes over that to preserve the colour through twilight and through the abrasion of an innings. And the seam is stitched in black thread rather than the white used on a red ball, chosen after testing because the contrast makes the seam easier for batters to pick up.

None of those changes were made to alter how the ball behaves, but they alter it anyway. The heavier lacquer means the pink ball holds its shine longer than a red Kookaburra, and a shinier ball swings for longer. That is the most commonly cited explanation for why pink-ball Tests produce more movement in the evening than an equivalent red-ball day would.

The counterweight is that the same coating makes the ball harder to shine up manually and, some bowlers argue, less consistent in what it does. The complaint about the pink ball is rarely that it does nothing. It is that what it does is not always predictable.

The twilight session

Every player who has been asked about day-night Test cricket names the same passage: the forty minutes to an hour when natural light is going and the floodlights are taking over. The background changes, shadows lengthen and then vanish, sightscreens work differently, and the ball becomes genuinely harder to pick up against a darkening sky.

Batting sides plan around it. A team that gets through the twilight with wickets in hand has usually earned an easier passage afterwards, because a fully lit night session with a settled sightline is more manageable than the transition. Captains time their declarations, their bowling changes and their second new ball to hit the opposition during it.

It is also the reason the toss carries unusual weight in a day-night Test. Winning it and batting means facing the twilight on day one with a hard new ball in a bowler's hand, and there have been Adelaide Tests where the first evening effectively decided the match.

1. 1First sessionPlay begins in the early to mid afternoon in full daylight, with conditions closest to a conventional Test morning.
2. 2TeaThe first interval, taken in daylight, in the slot a conventional Test would use for lunch.
3. 3Second sessionRuns through late afternoon into the twilight period, which is the passage most likely to decide the match.
4. 4DinnerThe second interval, usually taken after dark or as the light goes, replacing a conventional tea break.
5. 5Third sessionPlayed entirely under lights, with the ball at its most visible on television and the crowd at its largest.
6. 6StumpsPlay ends at night, some hours later than a conventional Test, which is the whole commercial point of the format.

The structure of the playing day rather than exact clock times, which differ by venue, time zone and season. Cricket Australia publishes precise session times with each fixture.

Australia's home record, match by match

The table below lists every day-night Test played in Australia. The pattern is easier to see laid out than described.

Season	Venue	Opponent	Result
November 2015	Adelaide Oval	New Zealand	Australia won by 3 wickets
November 2016	Adelaide Oval	South Africa	Australia won by 7 wickets
December 2016	The Gabba	Pakistan	Australia won by 39 runs
December 2017	Adelaide Oval	England	Australia won by 120 runs
January 2019	The Gabba	Sri Lanka	Australia won by an innings and 40 runs
November 2019	Adelaide Oval	Pakistan	Australia won by an innings and 48 runs
December 2019	Optus Stadium	New Zealand	Australia won by 296 runs
December 2020	Adelaide Oval	India	Australia won by 8 wickets
December 2021	Adelaide Oval	England	Australia won by 275 runs
January 2022	Bellerive Oval	England	Australia won by 146 runs
November 2022	Adelaide Oval	West Indies	Australia won by 419 runs
January 2024	The Gabba	West Indies	West Indies won by 8 runs
December 2024	Adelaide Oval	India	Australia won by 10 wickets
December 2025	The Gabba	England	Australia won by 8 wickets

Twelve wins from thirteen before the Ashes match at the end of 2025, then a thirteenth. Two of those wins came by an innings or more and three by margins above 250 runs, which is a distribution you do not see in ordinary Test cricket. Australia has not simply won day-night Tests. It has frequently ended them by the third evening.

• Adelaide Oval61.5%
• The Gabba23.1%
• Optus Stadium7.7%
• Bellerive Oval7.7%

Venue distribution of the 13 day-night Tests Australia had hosted going into the December 2025 Ashes match at the Gabba, which took Brisbane's total to four. Counts come from Test scorecards.

Show the numbers

Australia's first 13 home day-night Tests by venue

Item	Value
Adelaide Oval	8
The Gabba	3
Optus Stadium	1
Bellerive Oval	1

Adelaide Oval, the home of the format

Eight of Australia's first thirteen day-night Tests were played at Adelaide, and it is the ground people mean when they talk about the pink-ball Test. The reasons are practical rather than sentimental: it hosted the first one, it had already trialled the ball in Shield cricket, its floodlighting is good, its evenings are dry, and it has drawn strong crowds every time.

The Adelaide Oval surface has contributed as much as the schedule. The drop-in square installed with the 2014 redevelopment offers more seam movement and more consistent carry than the flat batting pitch the ground produced for a century, and under lights that becomes something else again. India's 36 all out in December 2020 remains the extreme example, but the pattern of a batting side losing a cluster of wickets in the evening has repeated across the Adelaide fixtures often enough to be a planning assumption rather than a surprise.

Touring captains now treat the toss and the first evening as close to the whole match. That is a striking thing to say about a ground that used to be a byword for draws.

Brisbane's two pink-ball stories

The Gabba has had a more complicated relationship with the format. It hosted a day-night Test against Pakistan in 2016 and one against Sri Lanka in 2019, both won by Australia, and Brisbane's humidity meant dew was a bigger factor than it had been at Adelaide.

Then came January 2024, and the only home day-night defeat Australia has suffered. The West Indies set Australia a modest target and Shamar Joseph, in his second Test, took 7 for 68 in the fourth innings with a long unbroken spell of consistently fast bowling, despite having had his foot struck by a Mitchell Starc yorker while batting the previous day. The West Indies won by eight runs, their first Test victory in Australia in more than a quarter of a century.

Brisbane's fourth day-nighter, in December 2025, restored the pattern. Australia beat England by eight wickets inside four days to go two-nil up in the Ashes, with Michael Neser taking five wickets after a spell under lights on the third evening and Steve Smith taking a one-handed catch in the cordon. That match was the twenty-fourth day-night Test played in the men's game anywhere.

Perth and Hobart

Two grounds have hosted a single day-night Test each. Optus Stadium staged one against New Zealand in December 2019, which Australia won by 296 runs — one of the three margins above 250 in the whole set. Perth's dry evenings and fast surface made it an obvious candidate, and the result was less a contest than a demonstration.

Bellerive Oval in Hobart hosted the fifth Test of the 2021-22 Ashes in January 2022, moved there at short notice, and Australia won by 146 runs. Hobart is the coldest venue of the four and its evenings are the sharpest, which changes the experience for spectators considerably more than it changes the cricket.

Neither ground has become a regular host. The scheduling logic in Australian cricket keeps returning the pink ball to Adelaide and, increasingly, to Brisbane.

What the numbers say about bowling

Across day-night Tests since November 2015 the overall bowling average sits at about 25.4 runs per wicket, roughly seventeen per cent better than the red-ball Test average over the same period. Restrict it to pace bowlers and it improves further, to about 23.8. Those are large gaps by the standards of Test cricket, where aggregate averages move slowly.

Three things contribute and it is difficult to separate them. The ball holds shine longer and moves more. The twilight period produces a concentrated passage in which batting is genuinely harder. And a disproportionate share of all day-night Tests have been played in Australia, on surfaces that favour fast bowling regardless of what colour the ball is.

That third factor is worth holding on to, because it means the pink ball is not necessarily as hostile as the aggregate suggests. Some of what looks like a pink-ball effect is a Perth-and-Adelaide effect.

All bowlers, day-night Tests25

Pace bowlers, day-night Tests24

Aggregate day-night Test bowling averages as reported in ESPNcricinfo's ten-year review of the format, rounded. These are averages across all day-night Tests worldwide, not Australia-only, and a lower number means bowlers did better.

Show the numbers

Test bowling averages with the pink ball

Item	Value
All bowlers, day-night Tests	25
Pace bowlers, day-night Tests	24

Why the rest of the world stopped

Of the roughly two dozen day-night Tests played in the men's game, more than half have been staged in Australia. That imbalance has widened rather than narrowed, and the reasons are practical.

Dew is the biggest. In humid conditions a heavy evening dew soaks the ball and the outfield, which stops the ball swinging, makes it difficult for bowlers to grip and effectively hands the advantage to whichever side is batting at night. That removes the tactical interest that makes the format worth staging.

Temperature is the second. Evening cricket is unpleasant to watch and to play in cold conditions, which rules out a large part of the calendar in England, New Zealand and South Africa. And there has been persistent player resistance, with senior international batters questioning publicly whether the pink ball produces a fair contest — including during the 2025-26 Ashes, when England's most experienced batter queried the need for a pink-ball Test in the series at all.

Australia has none of those problems in Adelaide, Perth or Hobart, and manageable versions of them in Brisbane.

The Sheffield Shield pink-ball round

The least visible reason for Australia's record is the domestic competition. Cricket Australia has run day-night rounds in the Sheffield Shield since before the first pink-ball Test, initially to gather evidence about the ball and now as a settled part of the season.

The effect on preparation is enormous. An Australian Test player arriving at Adelaide in December has likely played several first-class matches with a pink ball under lights. A visiting player has, at best, a warm-up fixture and a couple of net sessions. Every part of the skill set that matters — picking the ball up in the twilight, judging the extra movement, knowing how the ball behaves at over forty — is something Australians have practised and opponents have not.

Cricket Australia has also used the Shield to test successive versions of the ball, feeding data back to Kookaburra. That iterative loop between manufacturer, domestic competition and international team does not exist anywhere else.

What it means for selection

Day-night Tests change team sheets. The premium on new-ball bowling rises, because the ball does more and the twilight sharpens it, so sides tend to pick their fastest and most skilful seamers and use them in short bursts around the light transitions. Spinners get less work in the evening, because grip becomes an issue if there is any dew and because captains would rather have pace at the batter under lights.

Batting selection tilts towards players who can defend for long periods, because the survival phases matter more than the scoring phases. And keeping becomes materially harder, which is a small factor that occasionally decides a close match — a dropped chance in the twilight is worth more than one at three in the afternoon.

Australia's advantage compounds here too. A selection panel choosing for a pink-ball Test in Adelaide has a decade of domestic evidence about which of its players cope with the conditions.

The Ashes and the pink ball

England have now played several day-night Tests in Australia and lost all of them: Adelaide in December 2017 by 120 runs, Adelaide in December 2021 by 275 runs, Hobart in January 2022 by 146 runs, and the Gabba in December 2025 by eight wickets. That record has become part of the psychological furniture of an Ashes tour, and it is a large part of why England's senior players have been openly unenthusiastic about the fixture.

The Australian view is straightforward: the format sells tickets, fills evening television slots and produces results, and there is no obligation to remove a home advantage that has been legitimately built. The English view is that a Test series should not include a match played with different equipment under different conditions from the other four.

Both positions are reasonable. What is not in dispute is the scoreboard.

The sixteen shades problem

Getting the colour right took Kookaburra years, and the process was a good deal less scientific than it sounds. The manufacturer worked through a long sequence of shades — reported at the time as running to around sixteen versions — testing each for visibility from the batting crease, from the boundary, from the top of a stand and, crucially, on television, where a ball that reads clearly to the naked eye can disappear against a green outfield.

A darker pink held its colour better through wear but was harder to pick up against the pitch. A lighter one was easier to see but faded to a dirty off-white by over forty. The version that eventually went into the Adelaide Test was a compromise, and Cricket Australia has continued to trial modified versions of the ball in Sheffield Shield rounds since, feeding the results back to the factory in Melbourne.

It is a reminder that the pink ball is a manufactured object being iterated on, not a fixed part of the game. The ball used now is not identical to the one Guptill faced in 2015.

Who thrives with a pink ball

The bowlers who have done best in day-night Tests tend to share a profile: genuine pace, a repeatable wrist position at the seam, and the ability to bowl a full length without giving away width. Left-arm pace has been particularly effective, because the angle across a right-handed batter combines with the extra movement the pink ball offers to produce edges that would not exist with a softer red one. Mitchell Starc, who bowled the first ball in day-night Test history, is generally cited as the format's leading wicket-taker.

For batters the pattern is less about style than about temperament. The players with the strongest pink-ball records in Australia have generally been the ones prepared to bat through a difficult hour without trying to break out of it, then score quickly once the ball softened and the light settled. Marnus Labuschagne and Steve Smith have both built substantial pink-ball returns that way.

The players who have struggled are the ones whose method depends on scoring through the off side early in an innings, because that is precisely the shot the extra movement punishes.

The pink ball beyond the men's Test team

Day-night Tests are not exclusively a men's format in Australia. Women's Ashes Tests played here in recent cycles have also been staged as pink-ball day-nighters, on the same reasoning: a single Test in a multi-format series draws a far better evening crowd and a better television slot than a weekday afternoon would. The evidence base there is thinner, because women's Test cricket is played so rarely that a handful of matches cannot establish a pattern.

Below the first-class game the pink ball has had limited uptake. Grade and premier competitions in Australia are overwhelmingly daytime cricket played with a red or white Kookaburra, and the equipment cost of pink balls is high relative to what a club can justify for a format it plays once a season. Where you do see it is in second XI and pathway fixtures scheduled deliberately to give emerging players the experience Test selection will eventually require.

That pathway effect is one of the more deliberate things Cricket Australia has done with the format, and it is another quiet reason the national side keeps arriving better prepared than its opponents.

The case against the format

The criticisms are worth stating properly, because they are not frivolous. The strongest is that a five-Test series played with four red balls and one pink one is not a consistent test of the same skills, and that the pink-ball match is effectively a different sport dropped into the middle of a series. England's senior batters have made a version of that argument publicly during recent Ashes tours.

The second is that the movement the pink ball offers under lights is inconsistent rather than simply greater — that it can go from doing nothing to doing a great deal within a session, which rewards luck as much as method. The third is about the twilight specifically: a batter who happens to be at the crease during the transition faces a materially harder task than one who is not, and no amount of skill removes that.

The counter-arguments are the crowd figures, the television audience and the fact that day-night Tests very rarely end in draws. Both sides have a point, and the argument has not moved much in ten years.

Going to a day-night Test

Practically, three things matter. Bring warm clothing, because the temperature at an Australian ground drops sharply after sunset even in December and the third session is played at night. If you can only get to one session, pick the second, because it contains the twilight and the passage of play most likely to decide the match. And check the session times for the specific venue, because they differ between Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth.

Crowds have generally been strong, particularly in Adelaide, and the evening atmosphere at a pink-ball Test is closer to a one-day international than a conventional Test day. Ticketing and broadcast detail for the summer sits in the how to watch cricket in Australia guide, and the venue pages carry seating and transport specifics.

What has changed about the format since 2015

Three things, none of them dramatic. The ball has been revised repeatedly, with modified versions trialled in Sheffield Shield rounds and the results fed back to Kookaburra, so the pink ball in use now is not identical to the one used in the first Adelaide Test. Session timings have been adjusted at individual venues to move the twilight period into a more predictable part of the playing day. And the scheduling has settled: what began as an experiment in one summer is now a fixed feature of the Australian season, with the pink-ball Test typically placed early in a series rather than at the end.

What has not changed is the underlying tactical shape. The toss still matters unusually much, the twilight is still the passage everything turns on, and touring sides still arrive with far less exposure to the conditions than the home team has. Ten years of evidence has made all of that more obvious without making it any easier to counter.

Where the format goes next

Ten years in, the day-night Test is not the global revolution it was pitched as. It is an Australian speciality, a fixture in one country's summer that other boards schedule occasionally and reluctantly. The dew problem has no obvious solution and the ball still divides opinion among the people who have to face it.

What it has done is make Test cricket viable on a weekday evening in Australia, which was the actual objective. Whether it spreads further probably depends less on the pink ball than on whether anyone finds a way to make it work in humid conditions, and there is no sign of that yet.

For the broader picture of how the Australian summer is built, start at the cricket in Australia hub, the Australia index or the history of Australian cricket, and for the ground that made all of this happen, the Adelaide Oval guide covers the venue in full.