Yes to both. The seam is different on different balls, meaning swing and break is different (more pronounced with Duke, the English ball, I think). Anecdotally the white ball is said to be harder and to swing more, though the manufacturing process, apart from the dye, is the same.
I think the red ball stays harder longer (ooerr), and the Duke more so than the Kookaburra. The Duke also has a more pronounced seam (as I just saw you already said).
The duke is by far and away the best ball to use to produce a close contest as the bowlers are always in the game.
Yeah, just reading about it, the kooka swings from the off but gets soft quicker, whereas the duke is the one where you can get reverse swing without cheating. But as a handmade ball the duke tends to disintegrate quickly on sub continent pitches.
Saw the last two days and this was what Test cricket is all about, have to say Kohli was Man-of-the-Match by a distance, without him it wouldn't have been a match...
Just read that the incredible scoring you saw at the Oval was achieved with......the Kookaburra ball. On a flat batsman’s track. It really is a different game, I wonder who will want to be a bowler in a game designed to generate big hits and weighted against anything which restricts this? The more I think about it the more I would prefer to watch Anderson and Kholi having a high quality duel for 15 overs, including no sixes and no wickets, with Anderson stunningly consistent in line and length and variation and Kholi visibly restraining himself from attacking balls which were too good to hit. Brilliant, and this contest is the main event for the series in my view.
I’m not saying you’re wrong in what you say Stan.....but I think you’re a dying breed....those damn kids are taking over.
It’s not the kids fault and the trend is universal, our attention spans are becoming tiny. I now spend much more time on the iPad than I do reading books, which is disgraceful. I am training myself to bring whatever I am reading down from the bedside table and put the book in the kitchen so it’s presence can remind me what I ultimately get more pleasure from even though it’s a bigger ask of my brain. And when I do pick up the book (added benefit, doesn’t need charging) it usually ends with me asleep on the sofa, drooling on myself.
That’s really interesting in what you say ‘cos recently I’ve been thinking the same. I’ve just bought a book on how to read an ECG as I’m pretty **** at it right now and I should be better....problem is I’ve got so much crap to watch on Sky that I hardly ever find time to even pick up the book and go through it and when I do I end up like you..asleep on the sofa after reading a few pages..... Maybe I should try your method
Don’t tell me ECGs are difficult to read. I had three in the course of six months a couple of years ago when I had some interesting health challenges, and they were important to me as my Mum had a massive heart op a few years ago after luckily discovering that her aorta was about to split open, and you always fear a family link. In every case the nurse said ‘wow, that’s really good’ or words to that effect, and I was left thinking at least that’s something I don’t have to worry about. Now you have me thinking that perhaps I need a few more opinions......
Honestly mate I wouldn’t worry.....some in the profession are good at reading ECGs, and some ain’t (including many doctors). The machine will tell you what is good/bad and even prints it for you BUT we are taught that it’s the lazy way and we really should be able to spot any abnormalities ourselves without relying on machinery. For me personally it’s something I know I’ll get eventually but at such an early stage I’ve got a thousand other things I need to know and practice as well as ECGs and it’s a struggle to take it all in at once. I’m getting there...slowly but surely.
Is is not possible to enjoy both? Granted no kids are going to come through as bowlers if their sole aim is to concede less than 8 runs per over, so both forms are important in my opinion. I enjoy test cricket too, but let's be honest, we've all sat there and thought 'this is a bit dull' at some point.
The two games are polar opposites, we love the big hitters carting the bowling all over the place in T20 which is a great concept for a good evening out but the real skills of the game are being replaced by super athletes with big bats just blitzing everything that is thrown at them. The rules are heavily in favour of the batting side so the real game of cricket is losing it's skills to the bludgeoning big-hitter over the skilful bowler. In my day a bowler that went for more than four an over wasn't viewed as being much good whereas now T20 has distorted that completely. You should also bear in mind the fact that many Test matches can be a foregone conclusion by Day Three and lack the sort of excitement that the England v India match had, we're lucky if you get one great match in a series which is leading to it's demise, a shame because as we've just seen, a well-contested game is a proper example of all the skills of the game...
Just a personal opinion, if I’m allowed that. I love explosive, quick scoring, big hitting innings in the context of a tight game, where the situation demands it. Seeing bloke after bloke having a slog is less of a draw for me, but clearly I’m in a minority.
Of course. All I meant was that it's possible to enjoy both, rather than being in one camp or the other.
