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MCC go pink
By Will 6 months ago, Comments
You’ve got to hand it to MCC. For so long they were the stuffy uncle of cricket: custodians of the laws of a noble sport, and with the detached arrogance to match such an honour. Their image has changed irrevocably in the past 15 years - just look at Lord’s for proof. It combines the old with the new like no other ground in the country (if not the world), and continues to break new ground. They’re now looking to utilise the tunnels beneath the nursery which once housed trains on the old tube line.
And today they unveiled a new pink ball as a potential replacement for the grubby white one which becomes so discoloured in ODIs. Yes, pink. It’s not as garish as it sounds and, on such a gloomy day at Lord’s, it was certainly luminous against the lush green turf. I’m not convinced it was any more visible than the old white one, but it appears MCC’s task is to find one more durable, not necessarily more visible.
Anyway. The chap tasked with all this is Dr Anthony Bull, a bioengineer from Imperial College, who was good enough to spare me and a couple of other reporters the time at Lord’s to explain a few things. More interesting than all the pink balls (honk honk, etc) was his opinion of the future potential of bat technology. He is convinced that within the current constraints of ICC regulations, the current bats can be improved so that a ball will travel a further 20% than they do at the moment.
That is quite some revelation and the impact on the game could be extraordinary. Mis-hits could go for six, or flashing nicks for six. Where on earth would this leave the poor bowler? Such a super-bat would give batsmen yet another unfair advantage over their opponents, and increase expectation on television suits to finish games even sooner than they currently do. Boundaries have been steadily creeping in from the fence in the past ten years - an absolute and unrecorded farce if you ask me - for that very reason: to get “result” games in order to lure bigger audiences to TV.
Anyway, we’re some way off ever seeing this super bat. Would be interesting to hear your thoughts. Would you be in favour of such a technological advance, or does it belittle the already hapless bowler to a mere support act?
More on Dr Bull and the pink balls at Cricinfo.
CommentsPink Supercat
By Will last year, mid-November, Comments
Cracking image of Clive Lloyd resembling a flamingo in experimental pink kit for the World Series.
West Indies World Series 1977
Middlesex weren’t the first cricketers to link to pink though. In 1977, when Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket burst onto the scene, the shock of watching cricket with a white ball under floodlights was nothing compared to the shock in the West Indies dressing room when they first unveiled their lurid new kit. Described as “coral pink”, it was a head-to-toe monstrosity that might have been intended to reflect the marine diversity of their home region but instead reflected something rather less palatable to these most macho of men. “It’s a colour which carries strong homosexual overtones in the Caribbean,” demurred the veteran commentator Tony Cozier. Pretty soon they had reverted to a more familiar maroon strip.”
From Andrew Miller’s pink XI. What do you all think about the pink balls? Two words come to mind. “Ridiculous” and “fucking”, in any order you choose.
CommentsCampest cricket number plate
By Will 2 years ago, mid-August, Comments
Without attracting libel, which cricketer - in your opinion - might own this?
Sickly doesn’t even do it justice.
Comments