After two days percolating in the petri dish at North Adelaide, the day-night Test experiment is very much a work in progress.
New Zealand's considerably sub-par total after winning the toss and batting was partly due to their own deficiencies – chiefly impatience – and significantly due to Australia's disciplined and skilful bowling.
The Adelaide Oval pitch played true to its age-old reputation, despite the rumours of green grass being sighted before play.
On such rumours, spinners are left out of teams and, perhaps, on another occasion, Steve O'Keefe may have rejoined Nathan Lyon in a two-pronged slow bowling attack as they had in the UAE two winters ago.
The doubts about the greying nature of the pink rock and how difficult viewing might be while facing serious fast bowling may have also killed the leftie's chances. Selectors don't like to gamble with the national team, even if some of them do follow racehorses.
Orthodoxy was called for and duly delivered. The experiment contained enough unknowns as it was; there was no need for another X-factor.
On Friday the pitch presented straw coloured and evenly grassed and Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood soon found out the new pink Kookaburra didn't bounce any more than the former red one when introduced to one of the finest batting pitches in the world.
There was more surface grass than usual for an Adelaide Oval Test pitch given the desire for the outer coating on the ball to be chafed as little as possible, but there was little moisture beneath to soften the soil and help the seam bite and shift Brendan McCullum's thinking away from having a bat first.
The two pitches immediately flanking the Test strip had been returfed and were verdant, presenting well on television and helping prevent the worn, rough and bare pitches adding to the abrasions when the batsmen hit immediately onto them when playing strokes.
Worn pitches are also used by the fielding team to rough the ball by repeatedly throwing the roughing ball onto them. It was clear that, like any well-planned and expensive experiment, this one was being run under controlled conditions.
The visitors, so patient and determined in Perth, managed to get bowled out in 65 overs, thus ending the natural wear of the ball and not allowing phase two of the experiment to proceed: visibility of the fading ball at twilight. Without eyewitness testimony, it could not be concluded that any of the dismissals could be slated home to a failure of the batsmen's vision, but their decision-making might not get off without questioning.
The visibility of the ball is not just a function of the colour and the wear patterns in isolation. The lighting is a key part of the playability equation and there seems to be full agreement that, in broad daylight – which was mostly the situation in Adelaide, certainly for the full Kiwi innings – there were no issues.
Sunset was at 8.11pm and Australia had batted for the last 22 overs with stumps being called at 9.25pm.
Contemporary technology is light years ahead of the systems used in the late 1970s when day-night cricket began commercially and Adelaide has the most modern of luminance.
High-definition broadcasting requires full coverage of playing surfaces and the brightness around the ground cannot be faulted. It is quite likely lighting standards will continue to improve as other venues are updated.
Australia had batted under the lights against the new ball, facing Trent Boult who bowled with more purpose than he had offered under the noonday sun. He swung the ball in a display reminiscent of his deeds in home conditions and with the white ball in the World Cup and clearly more than he had delivered in Brisbane or Perth.
The hitherto unbeatable David Warner was good enough to get an edge to slip but how much did the time of the evening and the hue of the sphere have to do with it? Experiments ask questions about just such spells but Boult can swing red and white balls in similar vein.
Was the humidity, wind speed and direction carefully measured for past and future comparisons? I hope so.
The natural elements have such a fundamental effect on the progress of cricket matches, and especially the longer forms, that one hopes the details have become a part of the statistical analysis of this historic Test match.
Tim Southee at the opposite end also moved the new ball modestly in the air but there was precious little movement off the pitch, just as you would expect late on the first day of any Adelaide Test, even though the ball was new and hard.
On cursory examination of the observable data, there was nothing definitive to be proven from this spell apart from the fact that Joe Burns was a poor technician against the ball moving into him.
No doubt that the sample size so far is limited but the contest has been controlled by the players pitting their skills against each rather than the ball, the lights or the twilight being the influencing factors.
Importantly the crowds turned up in very big numbers so it can safely be said that one part of the experiment has been an unqualified success.
