Bad light meant the first day of the fifth Ashes Test was truncated before the tea break in Sydney
Cricket Australia’s frustrated chief executive Todd Greenberg has pledged to lobby the ICC for help to prevent bad light from marring Test cricket as it did on day one at the SCG.
Booing rang out around the sold-out Sydney crowd when dark clouds forced the sides off the pitch just before tea on Sunday’s first day of the Ashes series finale.
Some rainfall followed, though not the biblical downpour forecast, before sunshine began peaking through the clouds.
England and Australia were initially unable to return due to nearby lightning and play was abandoned at 5pm, when it was lighter than it had been just before tea.
It meant the SCG’s largest Test cricket crowd since 1976, some of whom paid $249 per seat, missed more than an entire session of play.
“There’s a lot of things I get frustrated with in cricket, bad light’s one of them,” Greenberg said on SEN.
“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.”
Greenberg said the bad light conversation could not just be had by Cricket Australia, which is subject to rules from the International Cricket Council.
The ICC’s Men’s Test Match Playing Conditions provide that “the decision as to whether conditions are so bad as to warrant such action (stopping play) is one for the umpires alone to make, following consultation with the ICC Match Referee”.
It means CA itself is not able to weigh into decisions about stopping play, though players and officials are able to accompany umpires onto the pitch for inspections during stoppages.
“We sit under the ICC rules and guidelines so we have to respect that, but I do think we can use our voice to advocate for a change,” Greenberg said.
“Let’s show a little bit of willingness to see if we can be better at this.
“I don’t have the answer for you this morning but what you can take from my comments is a desire to push at the global level of how we get better at these things. Because it felt like it wasn’t good enough (on day one).”
Switching to a pink ball could be one option, though Australian veteran Usman Khawaja notably pushed back on that idea when bad light struck the SCG Test in 2024.
Greenberg stressed cricket should only resume from bad light delays once safe for players.
“We’re in the entertainment business. I can’t think of another business that continues to walk off in front of its fans,” he said.
“Again, 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.”
2025-26 NRMA Insurance Men’s Ashes
First Test: Australia won by eight wickets
Second Test: Australia won by eight wickets
Third Test: Australia won by 82 runs
Fourth Test: England won by four wickets
Fifth Test: January 4-8: SCG, Sydney, 10am AEDT
Australia squad (fifth Test): Steve Smith (c), Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Brendan Doggett, Cameron Green, Travis Head, Josh Inglis, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Todd Murphy, Michael Neser, Jhye Richardson, Mitchell Starc, Jake Weatherald, Beau Webster
England squad: Ben Stokes (c), Harry Brook (vc), Shoaib Bashir, Jacob Bethell, Brydon Carse, Zak Crawley, Ben Duckett, Matthew Fisher, Will Jacks, Ollie Pope, Matthew Potts, Joe Root, Jamie Smith (wk), Josh Tongue
