And so it came to pass, an hour into the third day’s play, the first sight of Umpire Paul Reiffel fiddling with his ring-piece, brandishing his ball handcuffs and spending five minutes of an extended towel and chill break worrying about gauge, swelling and improper engorgement.
Ball anxiety has been a frustratingly prominent feature of the England-India Test summer. Has any other series been so defined by concerns over the ball? Not chicanery or tampering, but complaints, bitching and even punishable dissent over its general condition and the possible need to change it?
This has been the backbeat to summer, rather than Bazball, friction between the teams (we miss you Virat) or even old favourites such as the death of Test cricket or the undue influence of the Board of Control for Cricket in India. The visitors seem most bothered, with Rishabh Pant by far the most vocal critic of the Dukes ball, regularly appalled by its performance, fined for hurling it to the ground at Headingley, and even moved to return to the subject before this Test.
India got the ball changed twice on the second day here, but only after a lot of chat and frowning consultation of the silver bracelets. England are concerned about it too, although less so on balance. Joe Root has suggested a three-complaint limit for fielding teams, as though ball-complaining is now an established tactical feature of the game.
Why is this happening? Cow diet, modern drainage, global warming and the decline of the global north have all entered the chat at various points, all of it entirely speculative. In that spirit here is another interesting confluence of circumstances, one that some might choose to make undue mischief with, but also some facts that are demonstrably true. The ball used in England is made by Dukes, a British company. Dukes is competing for a BCCI contract to become official ball supplier to Indian cricket. Their chief competitor is Sanspareils Greenlands, or SG, who have been the monopoly suppliers since 1994.
This is a massive deal for a sports manufacturer, the key piece of equipment in the game’s undisputed honeypot. Little wonder Dukes and SG are keen to secure it. There are fortunes to be made and retained here. And here’s another thing. Take a guess who SG’s most visible brand ambassador is? Yes. It’s Rishabh Pant.
The guy tearing apart your ball also happens to be a paid employee of the other guys. The player describing the ball as “a big problem” and “not good for cricket” is on the payroll of the company Dukes is threatening with its planned expansion into India.
When Pant threw the Dukes ball on the turf in disgust he was wearing a pair of SG gloves. The next day he was posted on the SG Instagram account cradling an SG bat, looking chic and sultry and loved-up. This is the vice-captain of the India team. Good luck with that contract, chaps.
In reality, nobody is seriously suggesting these two things are linked, that Pant is involved in some kind of plot to defame the Dukes just because the BCCI contract is huge and because SG pay him to promote their products. It is seriously reaching to imagine any kind of conspiracy angle here. Stuart Broad has also been hugely critical of the Dukes. Is he also in the pay of Big Ball? Has the lacquer-industrial complex got to Broady?
To put this in context, Pant is sponsored by at least 35 different brands. There’s a Pant noodle supplier, a Pant meat delivery wholesaler, Pant chocolate, Pant soap, Pant-approved toughened glass. Can he even remember all of them off the top of his head? Does he have any idea Dukes and SG are in a hard-edged commercial face-off (answer: come off it)?
Still, though. It doesn’t look ideal from a distance. It would perhaps be good just to be aware of potential conflicts of interest and how this could be seen to the outsider. On the other hand where does this end, in a world of big money, intertwined interests, and only a few really stellar names.
Cricket is crammed with this kind of crossover. Even the great Sunil Gavaskar has weighed in. Gavaskar sees an English media conspiracy around the ball. This is not news in itself. Unless specifically stated otherwise, it is safe to assume Sunil Gavaskar is, at all times, seeing an English media conspiracy. But he also said the 10-over Dukes looked like a 20-over ball. And guess what? Gavaskar is an SG man too, up there on the website Hall of Fame.
Again this is simply coincidence, an example of everyday overlap. Nobody at Dukes has suggested anything untoward, or objected to having their product disparaged by ambassadors of the other guy. Dukes also point out they can not comment on any of this as they have not seen the state of the balls and are entirely reliant on hearsay, as we all are beyond the boundary.
In the event, the third afternoon here was relatively quiet on the ball-aggravation front, with England in the field and wickets falling steadily. Hopefully the ball stuff will even die down a little. Sport is always hostage to hype, fads, squalls of sudden excitement. Plus, it seems fairly obvious what the real issue is if the ball is indeed falling apart.
Cricket balls have not changed. The process is the same, ingredients the same, the manufacture homogenised. What has changed is red-ball cricket. The ball is battered to the rope and into the stands right from the opening overs. Bats have changed too, become not just heavier but with less give, made from a harder, drier wood.
The ball goes for 427 runs in a day, not 256. This isn’t Bruce Edgar leaving and prodding and gliding. It’s Pant battering this poor defenceless thing into the concrete seats. Chuck in a dry, violently hot summer. It really isn’t a great time to be a ball.
