December Fog and the Measure of Light: The Journey from Delhi to Visakhapatnam

On the afternoon of 5 November 2026, a BCCI media advisory lay open on my desk in Manchester. It stated plainly that the first ODI of Sri Lanka's tour of India, scheduled for 13 December 2026 at Delhi's Arun Jaitley Stadium, would now be played at the ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium in Visakhapatnam. It was an administrative announcement, and the first thing I did was write down a number—five weeks. The decision was announced exactly five weeks before the match. The Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) had requested it, and the BCCI approved. There were two reasons: potential weather disruption and ongoing renovation work at the stadium.

When I dig through old cricket calendars in London, I keep noticing this—December in India has never been just a cricket month. It has been a month of fog, mist, and poor light at North Indian grounds. December mornings in Delhi are often such that bowlers begin their run-up and the wicketkeeper has to squint to see the stumps. This is not new. But what is new is that a board is now taking pre-emptive action—not reacting, but planning ahead.

The Administrative Process: What Is Visible and What Is Not

To understand this BCCI decision, we first need to see how it happened. The DDCA requested, BCCI Honorary Secretary Devajit Saikia approved, and a formal media advisory was issued. This is the textbook model of Indian cricket administration—a state association asks, the central board approves. There is no conspiracy here, no controversy, and no behind-the-scenes story. But this very cleanliness is the biggest story of the decision—for the first time in Indian cricket, weather has been acknowledged as a public, acceptable, and documented reason.

I remember watching the 2026 Women's World Cup final at Eden Gardens in Kolkata. There were eighty thousand people in the stands that day, but only nine journalists in the press box. Not one of them—I repeat, not one—had bought their own ticket. I had paid for my own flight. My report ran at four hundred words in a Manchester evening paper. My original three-thousand-word draft is still with me. That day I learned that history without a record erases itself. So when the BCCI issues a clean media advisory in 2026 with clearly stated reasons, I don't treat it as just an administrative announcement. I treat it as a document that becomes evidence for the future.

The Visakhapatnam Pitch: A Batsman's Paradise, A Bowler's Challenge

Now to the real cricket question. The ACA-VDCA Stadium in Visakhapatnam is counted among the subcontinent's more batting-friendly grounds. The pitch is generally flat, the ball comes on nicely, and fast bowlers don't get much swing or seam movement after the initial overs. During my 2026 empty-stadium phase, when I re-watched about 140 women's matches and coded 6,200 deliveries by field position, I found that on coastal subcontinental grounds spinners don't get much bounce in the second innings—the ball skids, and batsmen are comfortable playing cut and pull shots against them.

A December pitch in Visakhapatnam typically offers a surface where scores above 300 are considered normal. This is a completely different picture from a Delhi ground where the cold December air can help the ball float, and where morning fog can delay play by hours. In Delhi, a fast bowler would get help in the morning session—the ball would move in and out, and batsmen would have to adjust their timing. In Visakhapatnam, the same bowler will feel more straight and flat. This change is not directly about any one player—it's a question of team balance.

If the Indian team plays in Visakhapatnam, it faces a clear strategic question: does it increase its number of fast bowlers or prioritise spin options? In Delhi, three fast bowlers and two spinners would be a logical combination—fog and cold would favour the quicks. In Visakhapatnam, the opposite logic applies: more spin, and deeper batting. This is the same difference that existed between the grassy Eden Gardens pitch of 2026 and the flat Visakhapatnam surface of 2026. I have seen both, and I know that when the pitch changes, the entire story of the match changes.

Is This Decision Good for Cricket?

But here's a counter-question, and I'm raising it because I don't think anyone is talking about it. When we change venues because of weather, are we not weakening the very element that makes cricket different from other sports?

I don't mean that playing in fog is good. Obviously, safety comes first, and if spectators can't see anything from the stands, the joy of the game is gone. But I will say that weather has always been part of cricket. In England, rain stops play; in Australia, heat cracks the pitch; in India, fog reduces visibility. These are all part of the story of the game we love. When we start removing all of this in advance, cricket becomes a controlled laboratory—everything ideal, everything predictable.

But it is also true that a match with good weather is better than a match with bad weather, even if it's in another city. This is the tension that exists in today's cricket administration—between tradition and pragmatism. I don't call it wrong, but I do call it a compromise. And every compromise has a cost. The Delhi audience has lost a home international. This may seem like a small thing, but when you talk to that Delhi family that bought tickets months in advance, it doesn't remain small.

Tickets, Hotels, and That Invisible Economy

There's another angle to the Visakhapatnam switch that I've written about extensively over the past few years—the economy around cricket. What happens to the tickets already sold in Delhi? What happens to the hotels already booked? How will local sponsors who had already allocated their branding budgets for the Delhi match now put up their posters in Visakhapatnam? None of this is written in the administrative announcement, and I won't estimate the economic loss here. But I will say this much: whenever a match moves from one city to another, an entire small economy moves with it—and that economy is never accounted for in any spreadsheet.

After England won the 2026 Women's World Cup, I spent six weeks counting every newspaper article about the tournament. Eleven articles. In six weeks. I counted not because I wanted to complain, but because I wanted to prove I hadn't imagined it. When you speak in numbers, no one can tell you that you're exaggerating. I applied the same method to this Delhi-to-Visakhapatnam decision. Announcement on 5 November, match on 13 December—a five-week gap. This gap indicates that the BCCI and DDCA had already completed an internal feasibility review—broadcast, ticketing, hotels, security, everything. If this had been a last-minute decision, the announcement would have come two weeks before the match, and the potential for controversy would have been much higher.

The Structural Signal No One Is Seeing

Here I want to say something that I believe is the most important part of this entire announcement, and which no one has noticed. This is not the first instance of December matches in India being shifted to southern or coastal cities, but it is the first instance where it has been announced with such clarity and so far in advance. If this pattern repeats—and I believe it will—then over the next two to four years we will see that no international match in North Indian grounds in December will be scheduled without second thoughts. This is not just about one match; it's about the structure of the Indian cricket calendar.

I don't have data on how many matches in Delhi have been affected by fog in December over the past ten years. But I have my eyes, and I've seen those matches where the stadium lights were on and the bowler paused before delivering because he couldn't see the wicketkeeper. That is not cricket. That is a game held hostage by weather. If the BCCI is taking pre-emptive steps to avoid this, it's a good move. But good moves remain incomplete until they are recorded. I would like the BCCI to also state which matches are scheduled in Delhi next December and what weather-risk assessment is being done for them.

The Road Ahead: When Weather Changes, the Calendar Should Too

When I first read this media advisory, I thought it was just a small administrative news item. But then I pulled out my old diary—the one where I've recorded every match since the nineties, indexed by bowler and by over. I started leafing through it and found a 2026 match played in Visakhapatnam that was interrupted by rain. Then another from 2026, same city, same weather, same story. And I remembered that when I was in London compiling a list of rain-affected matches, an editor once told me, "Why do you keep counting all this? This isn't cricket, it's paperwork." I told him, "This is the real cricket. What isn't visible on the field should be visible on paper."

This journey from Delhi to Visakhapatnam is a small story, but it contains a big lesson: cricket is now beginning to take its weather seriously. In the times to come, when we see more announcements like this—and I am confident we will—we should remember that behind every decision there is a reason, and behind every reason there is a person sitting in a corner doing the math. I don't know that person, but I am grateful. Because the people who do the math are the ones who change things.

And if you ask me what struck me most about this entire episode, I would say—that five-week gap. That is the time that tells you someone thought, planned, and then decided. That is the method I learned from 2026: count first, then write. And when a board starts counting in advance, know that the game is moving forward. The first ODI of Sri Lanka's tour will be played in Visakhapatnam, and I will be glued to my screen watching—to see whether that flat pitch, that coastal breeze, and that December sunshine can give the game the form we are searching for.

The author has been writing on cricket for fifty years and is an independent, outspoken voice in women's sport. This article represents his personal views.