There was a good article on Cricinfo about how people who run the game have forgotten what it’s like to be someone who books leave and pays for tickets. The way they were so quick on the light meter for that test was criminal.
A solution to this should be that you play every test from here out with a pink ball. That way if it gets dim, you just turn the lights on and kick on.
Pink ball eliminates the "bad light" fiasco that we've seen all too often in test matches around the world.
Just like the traditionalists in the UK were resistant to adopt the white ball and coloured clothing for ODIs in England until 1998, and day/night ODIs until 2000, if playing with the pink ball ensures that the "bad light" dilemma is solved (and also with the help of floodlights, most of the lost time that occurred earlier in the test match can be made up, compared to the red ball where you pretty much can only play until about 30 minutes before sunset) then I'm all for this change if it means avoiding the absolute mess that was created during this recent test match at Hampshire.
If you go to the Sky Sports Cricket YouTube channel, Ward/Hussain/Warne/Holding/Atherton were discussing this issue yesterday. I 100% agree with Nasser Hussain that there is still this lazy attitude in most of the cricket community (at all levels) regarding players and umpires wanting to go off when the slightest opportunity presents itself. However, with the current COVID-19 situation where the entire UK cricket season has been modified and shortened, ECB set to lose more than $100 million due to no spectators allowed at matches and loss of sponsorship, the organisers and players from both teams have had to adhere to strict COVID-19 protocol just to ensure the test match and test series goes ahead, play should've happened whenever possible. Completely farcical that play got called off the other day around 3pm or so, and then an hour later it was perfectly sunny for the remainder of the afternoon.
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