MasterstrokeMatch play and rules
Day-night Test
Test cricket played into the evening under floodlights with a pink ball that behaves differently at twilight. It changes the toss, the sessions and the plan.
A day-night Test is a Test match that starts in the afternoon and finishes under floodlights, played with a pink ball so it stays visible after dark.
The first was played at Adelaide in 2015. The sessions shift later, with the breaks becoming tea and dinner, and the pink Kookaburra ball carries extra lacquer to keep its colour. That coating makes it behave unlike the red ball: it stays harder for longer and tends to swing and seam more, especially under lights, when the twilight period just after sunset is notoriously hard for batting.
For a captain the format rewrites the timetable. Batting first is less attractive if it means your tail faces the lights on the first evening; a declaration is worth more if it puts the opposition in at dusk; a bowling attack may want its fastest bowler fresh for the evening session rather than the morning. The toss is not the only thing that changes: the whole day's rhythm does.
In Masterstroke: day-night Tests come with a pink ball under lights, in conditions the ground and the date decide.