‘I don’t like it’: Aussies shut down Pollock’s pink-ball proposal

October 15, 2026 — 5:00am

Durban: Australia’s coach Andrew McDonald has shut down any prospect of the pink ball being subbed in for the red ball during a Test match to prevent play being lost to bad light, after the concept was given an extended airing during the Kingsmead Test.

Shaun Pollock, the former Proteas captain and longtime member of the International Cricket Council’s men’s cricket committee, has been outspoken in pushing for umpires to be empowered to switch the red ball to a pink one in full light during games to keep play going.

The idea has also had its backers in Australia, especially because of the bad-light delays that have blighted the Sydney Test in recent seasons.

In Durban, bad light prevented play from getting anywhere near the scheduled stumps time on the first three days, before improving towards the end of Australia’s 214-run victory. But McDonald was firm in expressing his team’s opposition to the move.

“I don’t like it,” he said. “We’ve got the option to play with the pink ball at the start of the Test match, so that’s an option if you feel as though bad light’s going to interfere within the hours of play. I think we got enough Test cricket in here. Unique scenario, early [in the] season here, so you traditionally don’t play Test matches here.

“But to change a red ball for a pink ball, I think it’s a bit chancy, really ... There’s so many layers to that. So I’ll leave that up for others to debate, but for us, it’s a no.”

The ICC recently approved a compromise, whereby teams can agree to switch from a red ball to a pink ball before a game if the weather forecast suggests the possibility of light interruptions. But Pollock is adamant that the regulations should go further, allowing the umpires to unilaterally change the ball.

“I’m not saying for one moment that we should have used the pink ball and played a day-night game,” Pollock said on day four of the Test. “I just believed we should have used the pink ball for the day game. It is not irrelevant because if you use the red one, all of a sudden you can’t play Test cricket past bad-light time. But if you use the pink one, you can.”

“If this was a final or a game where you had to win to make the World Test Championship final and it was one-all in the series, and Australia were playing South Africa and you said to them, ‘Let’s use the pink ball because [otherwise] we are going to lose 100 overs to bad light’, do you think they would agree or not agree?”

Pollock questioned player cynicism about the move. Proteas captain Temba Bavuma, as it happens, is also a member of the ICC cricket committee.

“There is a stigma that has been created around the pink ball,” Pollock said. “First of all, they say that it moves too much. But I tell you what, if Australia were 124 for 6 [their score on day one of the Durban Test] using the pink ball, everyone would have said it was the pink ball’s fault.

“There is another stigma around it – that the pink ball gets soft. If Australia were 124 for 6 and got to 390, everyone in South Africa would have said it was the pink ball’s fault and that it got soft. But the pink ball would have meant that we would have played 45 more overs of Test cricket if we had used it and that is why I am keen to introduce it.

“I am saying in a day game when light is going to play a part, don’t be scared to use the pink ball.”

Cricket Australia chief executive Todd Greenberg was in Durban for the Test match, and has also raised the question of whether the pink ball should be used for greater flexibility in playing hours.

“There’s a lot of things I get frustrated with in cricket, bad light’s one of them,” Greenberg said on SEN Radio in January. “I caution those remarks against the remarks of players who said they couldn’t pick the ball up and it was really dark and those sorts of things. But I get frustrated that we don’t have a solution to this problem.

“We’re in the entertainment business. I can’t think of another business that continues to walk off in front of its fans. I preface that by saying it has to be safe for the players, clearly, but we’ve got big light towers here and we’ve got technology. I’m sure there’s a way we can make our way through it.”