It's a remarkable situation, this - there are so many different things intertwined.
My understanding of it was that there has recently been a regulation come into red-ball cricket that once the floodlights are the majority source of light (ie when they are casting the shadows) then play must cease because it is unsafe to play with a red-ball in such conditions.
What I really don't understand is how all this bat-complain\field-complain stuff comes into it. So far as I'd heard (and of course we've read several contradicting ideas) there is still only provision to offer light to batsmen, on the grounds of either dangerously dark conditions or unfair playing conditions. Maybe that has changed.
I didn't realise, before Kyle mentioned it, that Umpires would be liable to be sued if injury were to occur, though when I think about it I can't see why I didn't - so I certainly don't blame them for erring on the side of caution in today's compensation-crazy World.
Either way, my take on the situation would be that there should be a standard light-reading where play is unfit once you go past it. This should be decided by scientific tests of the human eye and all the stuff that goes around the game (balls, light quality, etc.) I really don't know why the fact that every stadium is different comes into anything - so there are different things that block or allow light - do you know how these meters work? They simply take the light at a specific point and no matter what inputs there are on this light the intensity will be exactly the same, and you can use a meter to calculate that.
The problem with the current "use your eyes" system is that it's palpably clear that a Pakistani's bad light is an Englishman or Kiwi's clear-as-day, so you get these frequent good-weather-country Umpires taking Englishmen off the field when they play in that sort of light nearly half their domestic careers. Equally, you can get situations where Shep and BB find nothing abnormal about the light but South Africa and Australia find it freak darkness and insist that play shouldn't be happening.
A standard reading would take all this out of the equation. The notion that it's much different for batsmen and fielders is a little silly - sometimes fielders have to face balls coming even faster than batsmen. Especially that over-rates have much influence on the equation - bad light frequently comes into play at the start or in the middle of the day, you can't assume that it's due to not bowling the overs quick enough and always in the evening.
If you simply had a standard reading, too, it'd completely take away the captains' right to throw hysterics and try to get the Umpires off the field. So you'd not get matches like this Wanderers one.
