Dew is a grip problem long before it is a spin problem

The wet ball is discussed as a turn issue when the first skill it destroys belongs to the fast bowlers.

Around the fourteenth over of a night innings, on a ground near water, the ball starts coming back to the bowler heavier than it left. Everyone in the commentary box says the spinners cannot grip it. True enough. The bigger loss has already happened at the other end and nobody mentions it, because the seamer's problem is invisible on television.

A fast bowler's variations all depend on friction between the fingers and the leather. The cross-seam ball, the off-cutter, the knuckle ball, the slower one held across the seam: every one of them is a controlled slip of the fingers, and the control comes from a dry surface. Wet the ball and the slip stops being controlled. The delivery you meant to bowl at a reduced pace either comes out at full pace or slides out of the hand as a full toss, and a full toss at the death is four runs at best.

Which is why I think the towel is the least honest object in cricket. A towel dries the surface of a wet ball for exactly one delivery, and the moisture inside the seam and the leather is untouched. Everyone knows this. The routine continues because it is visible and because there is nothing else to do.

The other half of the effect gets ignored entirely. A wet outfield is a fast outfield. Grass that would slow a ball is flattened and lubricated, so shots that would pull up two yards short of the rope carry over it, and the batting side gets a boundary upgrade of a run or two an over without hitting anything better. Combine that with a bowler who has lost his slower ball and the second innings of a night match is a different sport from the first.

None of which is an argument for abolishing the second innings, but it is an argument against pretending the two halves are comparable. When a chase succeeds in those conditions the result gets read as a statement about the chasing side's nerve. Often it is a statement about humidity.

If administrators cared, they would move start times by an hour in the affected months. They will not, because the hour in question is worth money.