Ngidi and Duke ball are a match made in heaven

WHAT’S in a ball? Isn’t a cricket ball, just that? Some cork, tightly wrapped in string, covered with a couple of pieces of leather, that’s stitched together and then smeared with lacquer.

Given that cricket ties itself in knots over a pitch, the weather and a coin toss, it’s no surprise that the make of ball should be a talking point.

The Proteas and West Indies teams are using the Duke ball for the series in St Lucia. Lungi Ngidi loves it. But he would, having taken five wickets with the thing on the first morning of the series, helping to bowl the opposition out for less than a hundred. “Having bowled with it now, I hope to bowl with it for many more years,” he smiled.

In all, 14 wickets fell on the first day of the first Test, with West Indies debutant Jayden Seales finding the ball to his liking too as he picked up three wickets.

The South Africans usually only come across the Duke ball, which is manufactured in England, when they tour that country. In South African domestic cricket, it is the Australian manufactured Kookaburra that is used. Cricket SA’S High Performance Manager, Vincent Barnes, previously the national team’s bowling coach, says there are stark differences between the English ball and its Australian counterpart. “(The Duke) has got a big seam, and it swings more,” said Barnes. “It’s strange, you have to keep shining, it gets ‘old’ around the 15-over mark, but it keeps swinging.”

The Kookaburra gets softer and on flatter pitches it’s very much to the batsmen’s liking. The Duke is a ‘bowler’s ball’ as it were. “The ‘Kooka’ probably makes for a more fairer contest between bat and ball, but it’s also dependent on conditions,” Barnes added.

The pitch at the Daren Sammy Cricket Stadium in St Lucia gave the fast bowlers more assistance than certainly the South Africans had thought before they left for the Caribbean. “It never felt like batsmen were ‘in,’” Ngidi remarked. While the bounce was good, there was also further assistance via movement off the pitch, enhanced by the Duke ball’s more pronounced seam.

Ngidi and the South Africans had trained with the ball at a short camp before flying out, and he said it wasn’t easy adjusting to the ball. “It took us a long time to learn to control it... once you get the wrist position right and hone in on your area, you can be very successful with this ball.”

In England the ball swings even more given the slightly cooler and less drier conditions that prevail in that country’s summer compared to the Caribbean or even South Africa. Barnes indicated that wicket-keepers need to be wary too. “That (Duke) ball keeps swinging, even more when it goes passed the stumps. It’s very hard for ‘keepers.”

He recounted a tale of working with Morne Morkel on a Proteas tour to England when the swing found him wanting. “I was standing back while Morne was bowling, using the baseball glove in my left hand. This ball came towards me, and kept swinging, passed the glove and clipped my ear.”

As a bowler, Barnes, like Ngidi, certainly prefers using the Duke. “But I suppose we also have to be fair to the batters, they may not like it so much.”