India’s bowlers spent much of Friday morning arguing with the umpires rather than England’s tail, after the second new ball at Lord’s had to be replaced only 10.3 overs into its life. The swap blunted Jasprit Bumrah, who had ripped out three wickets with the original cherry in his first 14 deliveries, but went wicketless for the rest of the session while Nos. 7 and 9 blocked serenely.
Captain Shubman Gill looked genuinely annoyed when the umpires reached for the box of replacements. He could be seen rubbing the newer ball, shaking his head and exchanging a few pointed words with Richard Illingworth. Forty-eight deliveries later, amid more complaints about lack of carry and shape, the officials changed it yet again.
Data supplied by the host broadcaster showed just how different the second ball felt. Before it went out of shape, it had averaged 1.869° of swing and 0.579° of seam. The substitute managed only 0.855° swing, albeit a near-identical 0.594° seam movement. Numbers aside, India’s gripe was mainly about softness; the fresh Dukes looked, and behaved, as though 20 overs old.
They were not alone in that assessment. Former England seamer Stuart Broad, an increasingly vocal critic of recent Dukes batches, told viewers the replacement resembled “an 18-20-over ball” and later posted on X:
“The cricket ball should be like a fine wicketkeeper. Barely noticed,” Broad wrote on X. “We are having to talk about the ball too much because it is such an issue & being changed virtually every innings. Unacceptable. Feels like it’s been five years now. Dukes have a problem. They need to fix it. A ball should last 80 overs. Not 10.”
Nasser Hussain, on Sky Sports, echoed the frustration while wondering if captains were also too quick to roll the dice.
“The first thing is that there’s a serious issue with the Dukes ball,” Hussain said on Sky Sports. “Both captains talked about it before the game. We’ve seen it in this game: in this session, it’s been changed twice. We’ve seen it in the last few years, really, the Dukes ball going out of shape.
“The second point at play here is that I think the ball is changed too often. I think we’re getting a bit precious about cricket balls. In the history of the game, the cricket ball gets old, and the cricket ball gets soft. I think we’re getting a bit addicted to having the perfect cricket ball for 80 overs.
“The third thing at play is that they got through in that first hour and Bumrah was unplayable … I looked up from my laptop at the back of comms box and went, ‘They’re changing the ball: why would you change the ball that is doing something to a random box of balls?’ You know nothing about that, you know everything about this … I get why they’re getting upset – it did look older, it did look softer — but why change? Why take the gamble? I thought that was a real bizarre thing to do when you’ve got something, especially in this time when the Dukes ball is so all over the place, when you’ve got something, stick to it. They didn’t.”
Since 2020, teams across England have complained about Dukes batches losing shape and hardness inside 25 overs. The ECB’s decision to trial Kookaburra balls in four County Championship rounds earlier this summer was partly a response.
For now, India must park the irritation. England, still experimenting with what Sanjay Manjrekar dryly calls “Blockball”, will resume at 315 for 7 with a ball only 14 overs old—on paper, anyway.
