ADELAIDE: Cricket Australia (CA) is confident that India will agree to play a day-night Test match in Adelaide next year, chief executive James Sutherland said on Sunday.

India have been reluctant to embrace the playing of the longest format of the game under lights and are the only major cricketing nation yet to participate in a pink-ball Test.

Virat Kohli’s team are scheduled for a four-Test series against Australia late next year, with Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Adelaide expected to be the host venues.

Adelaide is this week hosting a day-night Test for the third year in a row with Australia playing England in front of record crowds for cricket at the ground.

Sutherland said he was confident India’s governing body, the Board of Cricket Control India (BCCI), would agree to make it a fourth straight year for pink-ball cricket at the picturesque venue.

“I would anticipate there’s not going to be too much problem there,” Sutherland said in an interview with ABC Radio. “As we’ve discussed at ICC [International Cricket Council] level, it’s very much in the hands of the home country to make judgments on what they think is best.

“Certainly it’s pretty well telegraphed that from our perspective we’d be playing at least one day-night Test match every summer.”

As well as four Tests against India, Australia will also host two Tests against Sri Lanka next season.

“Certainly India, we would expect to draw a bigger crowd,” Sutherland added. “It’s not all about that, it’s also about how it fits and there are considerations like weather in different parts of the country at different times of the year.

“They’re all the things we need to balance and make a call on over the course of the next few weeks before announcing that final schedule.”

Published in Dawn, December 4th, 2017