4 days ago
Why is more not being done to arrest the demise of the Dukes ball?
First, the fielding team moan among themselves. Then, the captain approaches the umpire, requesting to change the ball. If the ball fails the 'ring test', which involves passing it through a metal gauge to check if it remains round, it is deemed to be out of shape. Finally, a new ball is sourced.
This rigmarole has become a tedious feature of each Test between England and India this summer. Fielding sides' desperation to change the ball acknowledges a truth: batting in England has gone from one of the most treacherous challenges in Test cricket to one of the most gentle.
From 2018-21, the average runs per wicket in a Test in England was just 27.5. Since 2022, the average in England has soared to 32.7. Over a full four-innings match, the change equates to an extra 208 runs scored. In this period, the average runs per wicket in England has been higher than all countries to host Tests, bar Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
While England are batting much better since 2022, their improvements only explain some of the rise in run-scoring. Touring teams in England also average 60 runs more per two innings since 2022 than in 2018-21.
This rise reflects easier batting conditions. A series of hot summers, and a higher proportion of England Tests being scheduled in July, have abetted batsmen. Insiders believe that improvements in drainage systems at grounds mean that less moisture remains on the pitch, reducing the amount of seam movement. Some boundaries have become smaller too: at Edgbaston in the second Test, the size of the boundaries was scarcely above the minimum mandated by the International Cricket Council.
These shifts have also impacted the ball. 'The game has changed,'observes Dilip Jajodia, the owner of Dukes, who has worked in developing cricket balls for 52 years. 'People are hitting the ball harder. They're hitting it into the stands more often, when it's getting cluttered against all sorts of hard objects.' Drier outfields also lead the ball to soften more quickly, and potentially fail the ring test.
'It has to expand a lot for it to fail the big ring test,' Jajodia says. 'But occasionally it does, because mostly it's been smashed out of shape.'
Late last decade, particularly in 2018 and 2019, the Dukes ball was instrumental in batsmen struggling in England. The seam movement offered in 2018 was such that England requested that the 2018 batch be used in the 2019 Ashes, to provide home advantage.
A cricket ball is expected to change over 80 overs: the shift can help spin bowling and reverse swing. But, this summer, the ball continually goes soft, rendering it essentially impossible for any bowler to extract significant assistance.
No more spit and polish
The ban on saliva being applied to the ball, introduced for hygiene reasons in 2020, has contributed to less swing, Jajodia believes. ICC research when the ban was enforced suggested that saliva did not make swing more likely; in any case, fielders can still apply sweat to the ball. But even if the science is not clear, the saliva ban has added to the perception that bowlers in England now have a less friendly ball to contend with.
This has led to wildly oscillating cricket: bowlers initially rampant, and then nullified until the second new ball. In their first innings at Edgbaston, England were 108 for five after 25 overs, and then 376 for five after 80. At Lord's, India were 82 for seven after 25 overs of their run chase, yet reached 170 all out; the last three wickets survived 50.1 overs.
Overall this series, batting teams average 33.7 in the first 25 overs. This soars to 65.5 from the 26th over until the end of the 80th. From floundering against the new ball, teams are plundering the old.
A contrast with 2021, when England hosted India for four Test matches, is instructive. In the first 25 overs in those Tests, batting teams averaged 32.6 runs per wicket. From the 26th to the 80th overs, they averaged 34.1, almost exactly the same.
Variability is wired into the Dukes ball. While each ball adheres to a British standard, every one is the product of leather from a different cow, and then hand-stitched for four hours.
'No two cows are the same,' Jajodia explains. 'And then you've got the human factor. So if any one of those things in the mix are not quite right, it affects the product.
'The number of balls we throw out is just unbelievable. We believe in giving the consumer the very best result.'
Yet changes in the industry in recent years have made Jajodia's work trickier.
'People say 2018 was a great year. In the olden days, I could specify, I want Angus Heights – can't do that any more. A lot of slaughterhouses have closed down. The tannery could insist that they got a certain breed of animal. These days, you're lucky if you get what you're asking for, a certain thickness of height. Those are day-to-day problems which we have to cope with.
'Since Covid, there was a big disruption to production. Some of these boys who work in the industry have got a lot of stuff in their head. And I keep asking 'has it all been passed on?' It may be, if there is a problem with the leather, we have to get the old boys back to look at it, out of retirement.'
At the very same time as the Dukes in England are being criticised for doing too little, those in the Caribbean are being criticised for doing too much. In last week's Test in Jamaica with the pink Dukes ball, West Indies were bowled out for 27 against Australia, the second lowest total in Test history. A new ball is by definition new; as such, there is inherent uncertainty in how any ball in a Test match will behave.
After the Test series, Dukes will review every aspect of the ball, from materials to production. As is customary, there will also be a review of how the balls performed during the county season, with balls in each game marked by umpires and captain. The company will also discuss potential solutions with the England and Wales Cricket Board.
'It's been a nightmare,' Jajodia admits of the focus on the balls during the England-India series. 'They keep asking, 'what's wrong with the balls?' As though we're just sitting around, deliberately making balls that are wrong.
'I'm very happy with the balls when I supply them. What happens to them in the meantime, if there's something is being affected – I have to get to the bottom of it, and that can only happen after an extensive look, cutting the balls open, seeing where we think the problem is.'
In the past, Jajodia has even floated a radical suggestion: allowing the second new ball to be taken earlier. But this would risk nullifying spin. In the 1948 Ashes, when a new ball was allowed after 55 overs, spin was almost irrelevant.
Yet questions about the ball are not restricted to matches involving the Dukes. Indeed, the use of the Kookaburra ball – the same as that used in Australia – for four rounds this County Championship season has been heavily criticised for destroying any semblance of balance between bat and ball.
In the last round when the Kookaburra was used, Surrey amassed 820 for nine declared against Durham, the top score in the championship for 18 years. The overall average per wicket in matches using the Kookaburra this year is 44.2, 12 runs higher than for games using the Dukes. The contrast is particularly striking because it inverts the pattern in Test cricket in the past four years, when averages have been four runs higher in England than Australia.
'We've had mixed feedback – obviously, there's been some championship games where probably the balance was not right,' says Brett Elliot, the managing director of Kookaburra Sport. 'The pitch and weather conditions also contribute to this.'
Elliot cautions against simple solutions. For instance, it is sometimes suggested that a harder ball would not deteriorate in the same way.
'Increasing the hardness of a cricket ball could have significant consequences against fielders. Getting hit by a ball that's 20 per cent harder could be fatal. So we just need to make sure that we stick within the proven and tight criteria of ball specifications.'
The ball is perhaps the most important essential component to ensuring a compelling balance between bat and ball. Yet while billions of pounds are spent on watching cricket worldwide every year, those running the sport continue to pay strikingly little attention to the ball itself.
When teams are successful in requesting a replacement ball, for instance, there is little science to how it is chosen. The potential replacements are provided by each individual ground, rather than the host board. Umpires then select a replacement ball based on how it feels, and how old it seems to be – not how old it actually is. Sometimes, replacements transform the game. At the Oval in 2023, the replacement ball offered far more swing and seam than the old ball, contributing to Australia's collapse on the final day.
Like a series of cricket's perennial issues – time-wasting and over-rates, the use of substitute fielders for tactical reasons, debates about pitches – questions about the ball reflect the ICC's broader failure to regulate the game. The ICC's regulations for international cricket are clear about the weight and size of the ball, yet are vague about how the ball should play.
The regulations state that 'umpires shall periodically and irregularly inspect the state of the ball' to consider whether it needs to be replaced. The ICC was also initially ignorant about how the character of the white Kookaburra ball, used in all international limited-overs cricket, changed markedly from the end of 2020 to offer new-ball bowlers greater assistance.
Baseball, the world's second-most popular bat-and-ball game, hints at an alternative approach. In 2018, Major League Baseball spent $395 million on buying Rawlings Sporting Goods Company, the league's ball-manufacturer.
This purchase recognised the importance of the ball in shaping the quality of the game that spectators watch. Yet administrators in cricket, a game equally dependent on the quality of the ball, have shown no interest in doing the same.
