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1st Test Match

Edgbaston, Birmingham

With many a song and dance and plenty of soundbites about History Being Made, day/night Test cricket arrives on English shores on Thursday, some two years after its inception, with an inaugural match under the lights of Edgbaston.  Four have been played worldwide to date, with Australia featuring in three; as this winter's Ashes will also feature one pink-ball outing, the reasoning is that it wouldn't do to send Joe and the boys into Adelaide unprepared.  (Or at least, any more unprepared than they're already liable to be).

In a nation that still routinely sells out its daytime Tests, and in which the climate is hardly conducive to sitting outdoors after 8pm unless you're wrapped up like Captain Oates on a skiing holiday, that is pretty much the only sound reason to be having this experiment.  The round of day/night county games in June proved a very damp squib, although tellingly, the pink ball caused top-order carnage at many a ground before the rains came.  The visitors have already had their baptism of fire on that front, having played a day/night Test against Pakistan last year which they lost; something they tend to do a lot these days.  It's been nearly three years since the Windies last won a Test series, and that against Bangladesh; for their last triumph over major opposition you'd have to go back to New Zealand in 2012, or perhaps even England in 2009.  To put it mildly, the boys from the Caribbean come here as cannon fodder, and it'll take a lot of pink-ball carnage to even up the odds in this one.

So, the summer of 1976 will feel a distant memory in all regards as a work-in-progress England take on a miracle-needing West Indies in the darkness of a Thursday night.  Still, if there's one place you can rely on the punters to tip back a few jars and make some noise regardless of the circumstances, it's Edgbaston.  We've got sun on the first day, cloudy weather the next two, a chance of rain on Sunday and then all fine for the last day, so there's a good opportunity to see how the ball behaves in all conditions.  And of course, to get the first win of this short series under the belt.

Play commences at 1400, 17th August 2017