Someone rings up and asks for a dozen cricket balls. The honest response is a question back: what are they for? A ball that is right for a Saturday league fixture is a waste of money on a Tuesday night net, and a ball that is right for a Year 5 PE lesson would be a poor idea in a men's second XI.
Cricket balls are not one product with a price ladder. They are four or five different products that happen to look similar. Here is how they differ and which one belongs in which bag.
What is actually inside
Every leather cricket ball is built around a cork core, wound tightly with layers of string or yarn, then covered in dyed leather and stitched around the middle to form the seam. The differences that matter are in how many pieces of leather make up the cover and how the seam is put together.
A four-piece ball uses four quarters of leather, joined by an internal seam as well as the visible six rows of stitching. It holds its shape longer, keeps a proud seam for longer, and swings and seams the way a bowler expects. A two-piece ball uses two halves, like a tennis ball cover. It is cheaper, softer on the hands, and goes out of shape faster, which is exactly what you want for practice and exactly what you do not want in a league game.
Leather quality is the other variable. The best balls use alum-tanned hides and hand-stitched seams; cheaper ones use machine stitching and a coarser hide that scuffs quickly. Brands grade their own ranges rather than working to a shared scale, so a "Grade A" from one maker is not a like-for-like with another.
Match balls
Four-piece, hand-stitched, top-grade leather. These are what a league insists on for its top divisions and what a first XI expects to be handed on a Saturday. They hold a hard seam for a long spell, keep their shine on one side if the fielders do their job, and behave predictably off the pitch.
They are also the most expensive thing in this article by a distance, and they are wasted on anyone who is not playing a proper timed or limited-overs fixture with a scorer. Most leagues specify the ball, so before buying a box, check the league handbook rather than guessing. Dukes are the traditional English ball and are used in the county and Test game here; Kookaburra is the standard across most of the rest of the world; Readers turn out a lot of what UK clubs and schools actually use week to week.
Club balls
Still four-piece in most cases, still hand-stitched, but a grade or two down on the leather. This is the workhorse category and where most club purchases sit. A good club ball will get through a 40 or 50-over innings without going badly out of shape, which is all it needs to do.
For a club buying in bulk for lower XIs, midweek fixtures and colts matches, this is the sensible tier. Buy a box, rotate the used ones down into net bags rather than binning them, and you get two lives out of every purchase.
Training balls
Training covers several very different things, which is where the confusion usually starts.
- Practice leather balls. Usually two-piece, sometimes four-piece seconds. Fine for throwdowns, slip catching and net bowling. They soften and lose shape quickly, which is not a fault at this price.
- Bowling machine balls. Hard dimpled plastic, not leather. Machine feed rollers chew leather balls and leather balls throw a machine off line, so use the right ones. They come in different weights and levels of firmness.
- Windballs and soft training balls. Hollow or foam-cored, roughly the size and sometimes the weight of a cricket ball but far softer. Indoor sessions, warm-ups, catching drills and anyone learning to get in line without flinching.
- Used match balls. Free, and better for net bowling than most new practice balls, because they have already gone soft in the right way. Every club should have a bucket of them.
School and junior cricket
Schools mostly work down a ladder. Youngest year groups use soft balls and windballs so nobody needs a helmet and PE staff are not supervising thirty children around a hard ball. Around Year 6 and 7, many schools introduce a two-piece leather ball or a junior-weight ball, and by Year 9 upwards the harder four-piece club ball is normal for fixtures.
The key point for parents: junior cricket uses a lighter, smaller ball, and that is written into the Laws rather than being a manufacturer's suggestion.
| Category | Weight | Circumference |
|---|---|---|
| Adult / men's | 5.5 to 5.75oz (155.9 to 163g) | 22.4 to 22.9cm |
| Women's | 4.94 to 5.31oz (140 to 151g) | 21.0 to 22.5cm |
| Junior (under 13) | 4.69 to 5.06oz (133 to 143g) | 20.5 to 22.0cm |
If a school or club has given you a kit list that just says "cricket ball", ask which weight before you buy. An under-13 turning up with a men's 5.5oz ball to a junior session is a small but avoidable problem.
Red, white and pink
Red is the traditional ball for timed and longer-format cricket, played in whites. White balls came in for limited-overs cricket in coloured clothing, because a red ball is hard to pick up against a dark background and under lights. Pink sits between the two and exists for day-night cricket, where it stays visible as the light goes without the white ball's habit of disappearing against a light sightscreen.
White balls tend to lose their shine faster than red ones, which is one reason the professional limited-overs game uses two of them. For club and school purposes, the colour choice usually follows the format the competition is played in, so again, check before ordering.
Look after them and they last. Wipe a wet ball dry before it goes back in the bag, keep them out of a hot car boot, and never soak one. A ball that has been left damp in a kitbag for a fortnight is a training ball whether you meant it to be or not.
Our cricket range covers match, club and training balls, and there are more options across the wider sports ball collection. If you are ordering for a club or a school and want a hand working out quantities and grades, drop us a line.