Gabba dramas show why pink-ball Tests are here to stay – and could save the format
It took just six deliveries for Mitchell Starc to work his magic with the pink ball.The dismissal of Ben Duckett in the first over in Brisbane was the left-arm quick’s 82nd wicket in his 15th day-night Test.Starc would take another seven scalps in the second Ashes Test, as Australia romped to an eight-wicket victory at the Gabba.England’s belated resistance to begin day four ensured the hosts’ triumph was sealed under lights during the third session – when maximum eyeballs, for better or worse, would be locked onto the clash both locally and on the other side of the globe.England might be out to save Test cricket, or to at least reignite interest in it in their homeland.
But Australia’s embrace of a shift in the timing of the most traditional format – and the throwback to the tactics and tension of Test cricket that it brings – suggest that the one-time nocturnal novelty can have a longer-lasting impact on the game than any overhyped strategy ever will.The fresh nuance and swings in momentum that come with a pink-ball Test are something to be celebrated amid the fast-and-the-furious nature of the now dominant limited-over formats.A toss that hands one captain an undeniable opportunity to dictate the flow of the game.New questions mixed with old over when and how to make the most of batting in daylight, and plans abruptly put in place around when to protect wickets with the hope of bowling as dusk descends.Slow over rates might be best left to a bygone era, but belligerent schemes like calling for a fielder to wear a helmet for one-ball-only just add to the debate and drama around a game played under lights.
Australia have now won 14 of their 15 day-night Tests,Their near-flawless record is helped by appearing in 60% of the 25 pink-ball Tests played since their introduction in 2015, and the lessons that come with familiarity,They have had plentiful time in the middle to learn how to deal with the pink ball’s exaggerated movement in the air,To understand how to turn the unpredictability and chaos in their favour as they masterfully manage the game,For the tourists, the record now stands at two wins from eight Tests played with a pink ball.
The jury remains out on whether England will properly learn from the lessons presented in the latest loss,Australia, meanwhile, show all the signs that they are continuing to learn on the job,Stand-in skipper Steve Smith has taken to wearing black stickers under his eyes to try to reduce glare, and Nathan Lyon missed a Test on Australian soil for the first time in almost 14 years,It was a contentious call to leave the off-spinner out of the pink-ball Test in the Caribbean,It was the boldest of decisions to omit the 38-year-old from the XI for the second Ashes Test in Brisbane.
But, not for the first time of late, the Australia selectors were vindicated, this time as hometown hero Michael Neser all but wrapped up the match with a first Test five-for on day four.Starc and Neser, along with fellow pace bowler Scott Boland, were just as valuable for their contribution with the bat.The trio combined for 114 runs but just as crucially helped keep England in the field for more than three hours of play on day three.The witching hours might have scrambled the minds of the Australia batters who piled on 378 runs in 73 overs at a jaw-dropping run-rate of 5.18 the evening before.
But the next day the bowlers took back control and reminded both sides how to deliver on a ruthless pink-ball plan that placed the conditions, in theory, on their side.Australia were helped by England grassing five catches when the match was still on the line.Duckett and Brydon Carse spilled the easiest of those opportunities, with the effect of the night-time glare about the only excuse that might spare their blushes.The missed chances were among several reminders that the tourists chose not to play a competitive day-night fixture leading into the second Test, even if a game against a Prime Minister’s XI in Canberra was far from ideal preparation.The Gabbatoir can turn into a cauldron across seven-plus hours of play in horrific humidity or under a blazing sun.
The venue would likely sell out on each of the first few days of an Ashes encounter no matter what time the first ball is bowled.But 137,152 fans – the most for an Ashes Test at the Gabba since 2006 – walking through the turnstiles during the four days of the second Test only added to the atmosphere as the night sky closed in, while more people than in the past were able to tune in at home and in the early hours in the UK.Sign up to The SpinSubscribe to our cricket newsletter for our writers' thoughts on the biggest stories and a review of the week’s actionafter newsletter promotionTV viewership peaked during the third session across each of the first three days of the second Test, with the national average audience on Channel Seven hitting an average 1,411,00 on Friday, according to TV Blackbox (figures from Fox Sports/Kayo are not included).Even with Australia riding high after their first Test victory, an average 831,000 viewers watched the first session on Thursday with 902,000 tuning in on Channel Seven for the same period the following day.With families and children able to settle in for as much or as little of the seven hours of scheduled play as they are prepared to follow – without having to give priority to school, work and their own weekend sport – the future of Test cricket might just be built on an innovation that few beyond the Cricket Australia beancounters seem ready to fully grasp.
Artificial intelligence research has a slop problem, academics say: ‘It’s a mess’
A single person claims to have authored 113 academic papers on artificial intelligence this year, 89 of which will be presented this week at one of the world’s leading conferences on AI and machine learning, which has raised questions among computer scientists about the state of AI research.The author, Kevin Zhu, recently finished a bachelor’s degree in computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, and now runs Algoverse, an AI research and mentoring company for high schoolers – many of whom are his co-authors on the papers. Zhu himself graduated from high school in 2018.Papers he has put out in the past two years cover subjects such as using AI to locate nomadic pastoralists in sub-Saharan Africa, to evaluate skin lesions and to translate Indonesian dialects. On his LinkedIn, he touts publishing “100+ top conference papers in the past year”, which have been “cited by OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Stanford, MIT, Oxford and more”
Cloudflare apologises after latest outage takes down LinkedIn and Zoom
Cloudflare has apologised after an outage on Friday morning hit websites including LinkedIn, Zoom and Downdetector, the company’s second outage in less than a month.“Any outage of our systems is unacceptable, and we know we have let the internet down again,” it said in a blogpost, adding that it would release more information next week on how it aims to prevent these failures.The outage on Friday came after Cloudflare adjusted its firewall to protect customers from a widespread software vulnerability revealed earlier this week, and was not an attack, it said. Earlier, it said a separate issue had been reported with its application programming interfaces.The issue, which affected 28% of its traffic, lasted for half an hour and was resolved shortly after 9am GMT, it said
‘Urgent clarity’ sought over racial bias in UK police facial recognition technology
The UK’s data protection watchdog has asked the Home Office for “urgent clarity” over racial bias in police facial recognition technology before considering its next steps.The Home Office has admitted that the technology was “more likely to incorrectly include some demographic groups in its search results”, after testing by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) of its application within the police national database.The report revealed that the technology, which is intended to be used to catch serious offenders, is more likely to incorrectly match black and Asian people than their white counterparts.In a statement responding to the report, Emily Keaney, the deputy commissioner for the Information Commissioner’s Office, said the ICO had asked the Home Office “for urgent clarity on this matter” in order for the watchdog to “assess the situation and consider our next steps”.The next steps could include enforcement action, including issuing a legally binding order to stop using the technology or fines, as well as working with the Home Office and police to make improvements
New York Times sues AI startup for ‘illegal’ copying of millions of articles
The New York Times sued an embattled artificial intelligence startup on Friday, accusing the firm of illegally copying millions of articles. The newspaper alleged Perplexity AI had distributed and displayed journalists’ work without permission en masse.The Times said that Perplexity AI was also violating its trademarks under the Lanham Act, claiming the startup’s generative AI products create fabricated content, or “hallucinations”, and falsely attribute them to the newspaper by displaying them alongside its registered trademarks.The newspaper said that Perplexity’s business model relies on scraping and copying content, including paywalled material, to power its generative AI products. Other publishers have made similar allegations
I spent hours listening to Sabrina Carpenter this year. So why do I have a Spotify ‘listening age’ of 86?
Many users of the app were shocked, this week, by this addition to the Spotify Wrapped roundup – especially twentysomethings who were judged to be 100“Age is just a number. So don’t take this personally.” Those words were the first inkling I had that I was about to receive some very bad news.I woke up on Wednesday with a mild hangover after celebrating my 44th birthday. Unfortunately for me, this was the day Spotify released “Spotify Wrapped”, its analysis of (in my case) the 4,863 minutes I had spent listening to music on its platform over the past year
Elon Musk’s X fined €120m by EU in first clash under new digital laws
Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, has been fined €120m (£105m) after it was found in breach of new EU digital laws, in a ruling likely to put the European Commission on a collision course with the US billionaire and potentially Donald Trump.The breaches, under consideration for two years, included what the EU said was a “deceptive” blue tick verification badge given to users and the lack of transparency of the platform’s advertising.The commission rules require tech companies to provide a public list of advertisers to ensure the company’s structures guard against illegal scams, fake advertisements and coordinated campaigns in the context of political elections.In a third breach, the EU also concluded that X had failed to provide the required access to public data available to researchers, who typically keep tabs on contentious issues such as political content.The ruling by the European Commission brings to a close part of an investigation that started two years ago
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