The new ball is the Kookaburra Pace Pro, which is a name that sounds like a running shoe and is, in fact, a cricket ball. The ICC approved it for bilateral T20Is at the start of the year, after two years of trials in the domestic T20 competitions of Australia, South Africa, and England. The ball has a more pronounced seam, which is the seam that you can see from the press box if you have good eyes, and a harder core, which is the core that retains its shape longer, which is the thing that has, in the old ball, gone soft by the eighth over and that has allowed the batters to hit through the line.
The Numbers, From The First Twenty Matches
The first twenty bilateral T20Is played with the Pace Pro have produced an average first-innings score of one hundred and sixty-one. The average first-innings score in bilateral T20Is in the two years before, with the old ball, was one hundred and seventy-five. The drop is fourteen runs. The drop is not, in the context of a T20 innings, a small drop. The drop is the difference between a par score and a score that the chasing side, in the second innings, is under pressure from the start to chase.
The wickets have gone up too. The average number of wickets per innings in the first twenty matches is eight point two, against a pre-introduction average of six point nine. The bowlers are getting more wickets, and the wickets they are getting are the wickets that the batters, in the last three years, had stopped giving, because the ball was soft and because the soft ball did not carry to the fielders and because the batters could hit through the line with the soft ball and not get out.
What The Batters Are Saying
The batters are not happy. The batters have said, on the record and off, that the ball is doing too much, that the seam is too pronounced, that the harder core is making the ball come on quicker and is making the shots that they have played for years, the check-drive and the flat batted punch, into shots that are getting out. The batters have a point. The ball is doing more. That is the point.
The ICC did not introduce the ball to make the batters happy. The ICC introduced the ball because the scores in T20 cricket had, in the last three years, climbed to a place where the format was, in the words of the ICC’s cricket committee, becoming a competition between batting units rather than a competition between batting and bowling units. The committee is right about this. The scores in the last World T20 were the highest in the tournament’s history. The averages for batters were the highest. The averages for bowlers were the lowest. The format was, in the data, tilting towards the bat, and the tilt was not a slow tilt, it was a tilt that was accelerating.
What The Bowlers Are Saying
The bowlers are happy. The bowlers have said, on the record, that the ball gives them something to work with, that the seam allows them to bowl the lengths they want to bowl, that the harder core allows them to hit the pitch and trust the bounce. The bowlers have a point too. The ball is giving them more. The question is whether more is too much, and the question is the question that the ICC will answer in October, when the trial period ends, and when the committee will look at the numbers from the first fifty matches and decide whether the Pace Pro is the ball of the future or the ball of a future that did not need to arrive.
The thing to watch, if you are watching, is the second innings. The first-innings scores have dropped. The second-innings scores have not dropped as much, because the second innings is the innings in which the chasing side knows the target, and the chasing side adjusts, and the chasing side plays the ball on its merits. The first innings is the innings in which the batters, in the last three years, have batted without a target and have hit through the line, and the first innings is the innings in which the new ball has done its work. The gap between the two innings is closing, and the gap is the thing that, more than any ball, makes a T20 match a match.
