“I don’t want to go through my whole career without playing a day-night game”

Image courtesy of: Zimbio

South Africa pace maestro Dale Steyn has expressed his eagerness to play a day-night Test before his cricketing career comes to an end.

Australia want to play a day-night Test against South Africa in Adelaide from November 24 to 28 and while Steyn is all for the idea, he believes that the Proteas will need “one, maybe two first-class games” to get accustomed to playing with the pink ball.

Steyn’s exuberance is not matched by South Africa Test captain AB de Villiers though, as he recently voiced his concerns about playing a day-night Test.

De Villiers himself is not keen on the idea of day-night Tests and also claimed that some of the Australian players share his views.

But, Steyn pointed out that the inaugural day-night Test between Australia and New Zealand last November was a huge success.

“I don’t want to go through my whole career without playing a day-night game,” Steyn was quoted as saying by cricket.com.au on Wednesday. “How cool are they? I thought it looked awesome when New Zealand and Australia played one. It looked entertaining, there was a big crowd. The ball is pink — it’s something different. You want to test your skills with that whole thing and it’s very exciting.”

Despite his determination to feature in a day-night Test, Steyn made it clear that should the three-Test series be tied at 1-1 heading into the final Test, he doesn’t want to use a pink ball in the decider.

“The difficult part of it comes in if it’s one-all and we go into a decider and we play a Test match we’ve never really played before, we’ve never used the pink ball before,” Steyn said. “That could be a little bit of an issue for the guys. Australia, having played one before and having played a few first-class games, would have the upper hand on us in that sense. We’re not moaning about it, it would just not be a level playing field.”