The Duke v Kookaburra

There are generations of Australian domestic cricketers kicking the dust right now.

All of them sulking.

Why?

The Duke.

No. Not John Wayne

The English ball. That thing is the result of a cheat code. It generates swing that only the greats have ever been able to produce. Can you imagine rolling into domestic cricket as a batsman and facing four hey-day Terry Aldermans!!

So, yeah, I’ll sing with those former quickies, whose bottom lips are dragging along the ground, that any wicket taken in Australian domestic cricket with a Dukes ball should come with an asterisk.

*taped up tennis ball

For the majority of us former domestic warrior’s, the conditions to get the Kookaburra ball swinging had to be perfect: 33 degrees, extreme humidity, a light breeze in the direction of your seam with seasonal alignment to the mating window of the Fitzroy River Turtle.

The Kookaburra ball used in domestic cricket – the Turf – holds a seam which could be described as a little fat when compared to the Duke. When being held in the hand, the seam noticeably cuts into the fingers. The lacquer used to cover the leather lasts only 10-15 overs before it splits and removes itself from the ball. It is also machine made.

Once the lacquer is removed, the natural swing is gone and the bowling team generally then searches for the cunning of reverse swing – is it still too soon?

The Duke is the complete opposite. Its seam is skinny in width which brings a pointy end to the top of the ball. It makes the ball feel less round than a Kookaburra. And because of the lack of abrasiveness to the material used, it can be difficult to find finger position on.

The Duke is meticulously handcrafted with a grease finish for protection. This protects the ball for a longer time than the flimsy lacquer of the Kookaburra which obviously results in the ball maintaining its shape and swing for longer.

So why does the Duke swing more? Oval v round.

The science is extreme and to explain it properly would have me in a tin foil hat scribbling red markings on my lounge room wall and you most likely asleep, if you aren’t already.

Let’s try it this way.

Have you ever skimmed a rock on the water?

When hunting the perfect skimming rock, you are looking for the Duke. Elongated oval shape, ultra-smooth; something that will glide/bounce over the water without major inertia impact causing it to slow down.

What you don’t want is one that is perfectly round. BLOP. It just won’t cut through the water in the same way.

If you throw that same smooth and oval shaped rock into the air, the way it cuts through the air as an object will send it flying in a host of directions. The perfectly round rock will give you no sideways movement.

If you’ve ever thrown a 20c piece at someone, you’ll know what I’m saying.

The Duke is the perfect skimming rock. The Kookaburra is great for tying to your boat and using as an anchor.

As a nation, whenever the ball swings, our teams struggle.

We just aren’t used to it.

It’s why when the decision was made to implement the Dukes ball into Shield cricket as a long-term preparation tool for this upcoming Ashes series, I didn’t mind it.

Preparing for the Duke isn’t like sitting an exam. You can’t cram in the last two weeks.

But you only need to look at the shield scores post the BBL, where the Duke ball has been exclusively used, to understand the impact the Duke ball has on our performances. We still have a long way to go if success against England on their patch, with their ball, is to become a thing.

There have been 34 innings in this Duke slinging time, with 17 of those innings-totals being under 200 runs.

That’s right. 50% of innings against the duke ball are resulting in under 200 as a team total.

That is not good.

The silver lining in all this is that the ODI World Cup will see a large amount of the touring Ashes party in England for an extended time before the Ashes kicks off in early August. With only 14 days between the completion of the world cup and the first ashes test, that squad will have close to three months in England using the Dukes ball as a staple of their practice diet.

This extended time in Ashes conditions has me bullish that our selected bats people might just offer us something we haven’t seen from a touring Australian team since 2001; enough runs to be competitive.