I bought a white Kookaburra cricket ball. I’ve never held one before and wanted to see what they are like. It was all red ball when I played. The red ball in the pictures is a 20 year old red Kookaburra I used in the nets. #cricket
@ianRobinson
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It’s why they use 2 balls in ODIs — once the surface of a white ball is scuffed, it quickly reveals the bare (dull greyish) leather beneath, whereas a red ball is still red immediately beneath the surface.
I’ve found the coloured balls to be a lot harder on the bat and hands than (good quality) red balls, possibly again due to the surface pigment layer, which will have to be hard if it’s not to disintegrate after being struck a few times. #cricket#CricketBalls
@ianRobinson My understanding is that the major difference between red (“proper”) cricket balls and white (or, indeed, pink & orange balls) lies in how the colour is applied. Red is a dye, throughout the leather, other colours are surface pigments.
See Alison Mitchell’s article, from 2015: https://wisden.com/stories/tickled-pink
1/2 #cricket#CricketBalls
@ianRobinson
I'm not sure. I've not seen any scientific studies on why coloured balls swing (they certainly do), or why they stop. An untested hypothesis.
Brand new red balls swing without much extra maintenance (sometimes too much), but take a lot of polishing to get them to deviate later ("normal" or "reverse"). I read somewhere that the gorgeous glow of a well polished ball is down to the activation of enzymes within the leather. Balls do seem to shine (and swing) if you can get friction (heat) into the surface, more so (for me) than the application of moisture.
As you can't actually polish the leather of a pigment-coated ball (only clean the pigmented surface), that might be why they stop swinging after a while? #CricketBalls
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