Five Indian cricketers to practice with pink ball at NCA ahead of D/N Test at Eden Gardens

Team India will play the T20I series decider against Bangladesh in Nagpur on Sunday. After that, both the teams are scheduled to play a two-match Test series with the last match to be played under the lights. It will be the first time that players of both the side will feature in a Day-Night game in the longer format.

Meanwhile, five Indian players from the already announced Test squad will begin their preparations with the pink ball that will be used in the Day-Night match. The plan was to arrange a two-day practice at National Cricket Academy in Bengaluru in order to begin with the preparations for the landmark game.

But, due to the delay from the supplier Sanspariel Greenlands (SG) in order to deliver the first set of pink balls, it got shortened to a one-day session. The decision to practice with pink balls was taken by Rahul Dravid, in consultation with the Indian team management.

Five Indian players will begin their preparation for Day-Night Test at NCA

The players that will take part in the practice are Ajinkya Rahane, Cheteshwar Pujara, Mayank Agarwal, Mohammad Shami and Ravindra Jadeja. As per the sources, the session will take place on the center wicket and the former Indian skipper, Rahul Dravid will also take part in it. Also, the Karnataka State Cricket Association will provide bowlers for the net sessions.

“The practice will be on centre wicket where practice will be done in the form of match stimulation. Dravid, too, will be part of it. The Karnataka State Cricket Association will provide bowlers and fielders for the session. We wanted to have a couple of days under night but due to unavoidable circumstances it was decided to have only one day,” a source from the BCCI said as quoted by Indian Express.

The Indian cricket board was in some confusion about which ball to bring into play. Till now, in 11 D/N Test matches, only Kookaburra and Dukes balls have been used. But, BCCI has decided to go ahead with SG balls.

Earlier, Sourav Ganguly, the BCCI Chief had given his opinion that the Test series should be played with the same balls i.e SG. “No, it (Kookaburra) can’t be used, because the series has to be played with the same ball. It can’t be two different balls in the same series.” BCCI President said.

[interaction id=”5dad6c5d7bf76bf418bf701c”]