14
HYDERABAD: Captain Virat Kohli said India should ditch the SG ball for their home games, complaining that it scuffs up too easily and that he would prefer to see Dukes balls used for all Tests worldwide.
India thrashed the West Indies by a record innings and 272 runs last week but spinner Ravichandran Ashwin said the SG ball was ‘disappointing’, and that he preferred Australia’s Kookaburra or Dukes.
“The quality of the [SG] balls used to be quite high before and I don’t understand the reason why it has gone down because Dukes ball is still good quality, Kookaburra is still good quality,” Kohli said ahead of the second Test in Hyderabad. “The quality of the ball has to be maintained otherwise you have too many dead sessions in a Test match. You want to see exciting cricket and guys working hard for runs being in the battle all day.”
Kohli added: “I totally agree with him [Ashwin]. To have a ball that is scuffed up in five overs is not something that we have seen before.”
The SG has always been used by India in five-day international and domestic games, while England use Dukes for Test cricket and Australia, South Africa, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka prefer the Kookaburra.
Kohli, whose side recently lost a five-Test series in England 4-1, said: “The Dukes ball is the most suited ball according to me in Test match cricket, and if there is a situation I would vouch for it to be used all over the world because of the consistency.”
The Dukes was always the ball of choice until Australia’s Kookaburra broke its monopoly. While England continue to use Dukes in their home Tests, the Kookaburra is widely used in limited-overs cricket.
Published in Dawn, October 12th, 2018
