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England's legendary opening batter Alastair Cook has come down heavily on bowlers complaining about the Dukes ball. Cook took a sly dig at the number of ball changes in the third Test of the series at Lord's Cricket Ground, London. He feels that the bowlers always find an excuse to justify why they bowled a bad ball.
"I just love how bowlers are always moaning. It's like they bowl a bad ball and it's never their fault. They’ve scraped the footmark... If they bowl a bad ball, they look at the ball and blame the shape," Cook said while laughing alongside his former teammate Steven Finn.
Cook also said that the batters benefit when the ball is changed as the slightly harder ball travels far when driven.
"I think a batsman would much rather hit some slightly harder ball. Nothing worse than playing a lovely cover drive like I used to and it going nowhere," he added.
What Hussain said about ball change?
Earlier, former England captain Nasser Hussain had criticised Mohammed Siraj and Shubman Gill for getting the ball changed after 10.3 overs. Jasprit Bumrah was bowling well with the new ball but the ball change didn't help the visitors as England piled on runs.
“It was a very odd ball change from India. There’s two reasons you change a cricket ball. One is because the umpires think it’s gone out of shape, or two, because the bowling attack and the captain realise that the ball is doing nothing and you try and get the umpires to change it.
“The ball was doing everything this morning. The ball they had, for 63 deliveries, was zipping round corners. Bumrah was going through a magic spell. Siraj at the other hand was having catches dropped. The ball was carrying through to the wicketkeeper. It was doing everything. It was doing more than at any stage in the Test match.”
“I cannot work out why you’d want to change a ball that was doing this much, sixty-three deliveries of the ball zipping round,” the former England skipper continued. “Not only did they want it changed, but the captain got really animated when they didn’t change it. I thought it was one of the most bizarre decisions.
“You’ve got a ball in your hand that’s doing a lot. We all know these Dukes balls are variable. He’s still on the umpire about the ball change. Now maybe he’s having a word with the umpires about, ‘this ball isn’t as good as the last one’. But that’s the problem with trying to change the ball, which is that if you’ve got a good one, stick with it. I thought it was a really odd thing for a) India to do and then b) to get really animated and now c) to say, well, the ball we got is no good. Don’t change the good one.”
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