Match Ball - the dirty art

In junior cricket, teams are not expected to play with a new ball. This means they can use any junior size ball though it is expected they would use a new or nearly new ball in the spirit of the game. Of course this done to stop putting financial burden on junior cricket where money is short anyway.

However, I have seen during last season and this, many teams are turning out with really old balls which are tattered and gone beyond their useful life; they just happen to be in one piece.

In one junior match I saw, team A used a ball that was 1 match old and fairly shiny and hard. It was a fast outfield and they lost lot of runs from edges. When team A came out to bat they were faced with an old ball that barely bounced and could not be hit for a boundary even with a canon. Suffice to say team A lost the match.

In another match recently I witnessed a team used a really old ball which was probably 15 matches old and looked it had been chewed by a dog. They just 'lobbed' the ball at the batsman feet and took wicket becuase the ball had very little bounce. Many batsman lost their wickets by not being able to pick the ball which was just dying and 'rolling' under their bat. The batting side lost the match.

I also, at times, suspected that some teams bring doctored match balls; balls that have been massaged with oil, dipped in water on one side etc. to give their bowlers extra help.

Of course what all this does is that they win matches but it does no good to young bowlers or batsman who should be learning against good bowling, hard balls and on decent wickets. When young players have to cope with this kind of situation, they cannot adjust to representative or senior cricket because there new balls are used every match.

Just not cricket!

The problem is how do you define a ball's condition. You might object to a ball that the opposition propose to use but they do not agree with you; so an argument ensues.

I wonder what kind of criterion you can set to say whether a ball is acceptable or not?

We mostly use a new ball every innings and therefore it gives it a feel of proper cricket,we only use old balls at practice.
You could talk to an club authority about it.

I play junior cricket,and even the younger ones are taught to use the ball to swing therefore we use new balls for matches.
Though admitadly my team is the one that brings the ball allmost ever match so it could be just my club!
By the way my team won the grand finals by over one hundred runs!

I play junior cricket and we always use a new ball for our matches, not one for each innings though.

In my experience of club cricket, not too many years though, i've never seen such unfairness described in the first post. Both balls are usually as close to the same condition as possible.