At first ruddy blush, pink-ball Test cricket belongs with the bionic ear, the Hills Hoist, the winged keel, Wi-Fi and plastic bank notes on the list of great Australian inventions. The robust contest was the cake, the grandstand finish and Australia's win the icing. The biggest non-Ashes aggregate attendance at the Adelaide Oval was vindication. It was a fillip for Test cricket, and timely at that. Expect the limited editions poster on the morrow.

More forensic judgments will be made in, well, the cold light of day, absent floodlights, absent the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd. As an antidote to 500-versus-500 Test matches, it was unarguable. But you imagine that in time, three-day, 200-versus-200 would begin to feel incomplete. This was on a ground where there had never previously been a Test without a 250-plus score, and where there has been at least one century in every match since 1993. The highest score in this match was 66.

The dramatic change to par was due to conditions carefully tailored to preserve the pink ball. The question for authorities now is whether they refine conditions and gamble on a ball that may coarsen and prove harder to see in them. New Zealand captain Brendon McCullum discreetly noted that lights and the pink ball were meant to facilitate the staging of Test cricket at night, not fundamentally alter it. But for now, no one is complaining. In any revolution, in any sphere, generally there is over-correction before a happy medium is found.

Certainly, day-night Test cricket has opened up not just a new vista for the game, but new prospects within games, calling for different ways of thinking. One is dusk, and the problems it poses for batsmen, making it pivotal. Like cloud at Headingley or dew at Mohali, it changes the physics of the game. Unlike cloud and dew, you can set your watch by it. It is much more than an incidental.