Floodlit cricket has become central to the very existence of the game in recent times, such that all the major cricketing venues have pylons towering over them to facilitate day / night Tests, T20 and the Hundred.  

The idea for playing cricket in the evening came from Australia, when Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket pioneered the plan in the early 1980s. Installing floodlights for what then seemed at best a few days of use per summer was an expensive business, so it was some years before the likes of Edgbaston were kitted out. 

Nonetheless, having seen floodlit cricket on the TV, there was an appetite to see it in the flesh in this country, and so football grounds were employed instead, including The Hawthorns. 

On 29 July 1987, a meeting of India and Pakistan was arranged in aid of the Children’s Society and Imran Khan’s benefit. Imran was skippering the Pakistan side in England, having drawn the fourth Test at Edgbaston on the previous day, while many of the Indians were playing county or club cricket across England. 

The matting pitch was laid in the centre circle, lengthways, such that the batsmen were playing straight drives into the Brummie and the Smethwick, or looking to pepper the short boundaries of the Halfords Lane and the Rainbow Stand sides with hooks and cover drives. If ever a game was set up for the batsmen… 

Organised at very short notice, it unsurprisingly left a bit to be desired. Nobody had thought to provide a scoreboard – the half-time board in the Woodman Corner really wasn’t up to the task. Worse, neither side provided a scorer, so amid the orgy of runs, nobody was entirely sure what the score was. And after rain delayed the start, the sightscreen blew over. And so many balls were smacked out of the ground over the short boundaries that after one six sailed, quite literally, somewhere over the Rainbow, there had to be an appeal for the ball to be returned as they were running out of them. 

But let’s not lose sight of the fact that this was still a game between Pakistan and India, one that carried all the weight which that implies – it remains sufficiently important for the eventually decided upon scorecard of the game to still sit on the Pakistan Board of Cricket’s website. 

Pakistan batted first and in their allotted 35 overs, they smashed 278 for 6, Mansoor Akhtar top scoring with 73, Manzoor Elahi hit six sixes in an over, while Kirti Azad took two wickets for India in conceding 82 runs from five overs. India responded in fine fashion, Raman Lamba scoring 90, Dilip Vengsarkar weighing in with 72 as India won by four wickets with five balls to spare.  

As some of you are doubtless shouting at your screen now, The Hawthorns had hosted floodlit cricket prior to the meeting of India and Pakistan. We know, we know, but that’s another story for another day…