At the heart of the scandal that
has already cost one of the world’s all-time greats his captaincy and now
threatens to end his career, lies an attempt to illegally change the condition
of the cricket ball using a foreign object at Cape Town on Saturday. After
cameras picked up Australia’s Cameron Bancroft with a small yellow object in his hand, and rubbing the rough side of the ball
as opposed to the shiny side, captain Steven Smith pleaded guilty to
ball-tampering.
Why do fielding sides try to
keep one side of the ball shiny, the other rough?
In the first 10-15 overs, bowlers generally focus on conventional swing, when the ball moves towards the dull, or non-shiny, side. For inswing, the
seam needs to point to leg slip; for outswing, towards first slip. To move the
ball in the air, a subtle change of grip is needed. But the seam of the
machine-stitched Kookaburra balls, the kind being used in the ongoing South
Africa-Australia series, merges with the leather sooner than the hand-stitched
Dukes and SGs, both of which have more pronounced seams. This results in the
ball going flat, and bowlers find it difficult to move it in the air. That is
why bowlers are desperate to extract
reverse swing as early as possible. For this, the ball has to be rough on the
one side and shiny on the other. Designated ball tenderers in the team
ensure this.
What is reverse swing?
It’s the term used for unconventional swing — when the (old) ball moves in the direction
of the shiny side. Due to friction,
air passes over the shiny side quicker than it does on the rough side, creating
a drag effect that ensures the ball moves in the direction of the shine. This
is also dependent on keeping the shiny side heavier, which is done by
constantly applying sweat on the shiny side while leaving the rough side
completely dry.
Do roughed-up balls
automatically start reversing?
No — because if they did, there’d
be greats like Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis in every team in every era. To
begin with, the ball has to be delivered
at over 85 mph (137 kph), so the batsman has no time to adjust to the late
movement. To generate that late movement, the action must be slightly whippier
or slingier like Waqar Younis’s. Bowling
into the wind assists movement towards the shiny side; a ball going downwind
encounters no resistance, and its swing is curtailed.
What are the ways to keep one
side of the ball shiny and the other side rough?
The only legal way available is to polish the ball using plain saliva or
sweat — and ensuring that the other side does not get any moisture at all.
Designated ball-shiners are in charge of “making” or “keeping” the ball. The roughness of the other side must be
‘natural’ — the result of wear and tear in the normal course of the game.
What foreign objects have been
used to illegally roughen the ball?
Cricketers have used tiny blades hidden in the protective
tape worn on fingers, zippers of trousers, bottlecaps, sandpaper, and shoe
spikes — or simply rubbed the ball against any rough surface available.
Bancroft introduced to cricket yellow
tape with great adhesive qualities. Fingernails
have been used widely — it is often the team strategy to toss the ball around
among four or five fielders before the bowler gets it back, each of whom gets
in at least one scratch on the rough side with their fingernails. There are
also rogue throws from the boundary,
ensuring the ball lands on the pitch square, which is the hardest part of the
cricket field. Bowlers also
“accidentally” lay their spikes on the ball; two days before the Bancroft
incident, Australian quick Pat Cummins’s foot was found to be resting — by
“mistake”, he said — for a few extra seconds on the ball.
And are there illegal ways to
keep the ball shiny as well?
Players have long used mints that produce a pasty mix with saliva, the
thickness of which makes the shiny side of the ball heavier, and assists
greater reverse swing. This “slurp-up” tampering technique is believed to
have been discovered in England, and was picked up by players the world over. Indian
domestic cricketers identified the hard candy Alpenliebe as the ideal sweets to suck on, followed by Poppins. In 2008, the former England
opener Marcus Trescothick admitted to having used Murray Mints when he was his team’s ball-shiner during the 2005
Ashes series, when England regained the urn after nearly two decades. Most
recently in 2016, South Africa captain
Faf du Plessis was fined for ball tampering after being caught sucking on
mints.
Other commonly used illegal
ball-shiners include hair gel, sun tan
lotion, lip balm, jellybeans or Vaseline. Former South African spinner Pat Symcox allegedly managed to both
rough up and shine the ball by sticking
it inside his shirt and rubbing it in his armpit.
But how have players been
getting away with these acts for so many years?
As with most things, there is a
technique to scuffing up the ball, and the really smart cricketers are able to
use their fingernails without letting the umpires catch on. The scratches, for
example, might leave concentric circles on the rough side, which resemble
natural wear and tear. Things used to be somewhat easier before umpires started
to insist on holding the ball during drinks breaks, and cameras at the ground
became increasingly all-seeing. Another common ploy was to get the most
‘innocent-looking’ player to work on the ball — the jury is out on whether
Bancroft fits that description. With ball-tampering of this kind being fairly
common, what probably stands out in the Cape Town affair is the brazenness of
Australian action — trying to scuff up the ball as nearly 30 cameras zoomed on
to every move they made on the field, and the manner in which Bancroft stuck
the yellow tape inside his trousers.
The ICC has always been a step
behind the practitioners of illegal techniques — which is the reason it has
failed to snuff it out for good. The
ball-tampering law, Law 41.3.2.1 of the ICC Men’s Test Match Playing
Conditions, is rather general, allowing a fielder to “polish the ball on
his clothing provided that no artificial substance is used and that such
polishing wastes no time”. In the circumstances, it is often broadcasters who
end up playing the unofficial police where ball tampering attempts are
involved.
XXX
Physics of Swing: The rough side
slows down the air due to friction whereas the smoother side allows the air to
pass by at a greater speed. According to Bernoulli's principle, greater the air
speed, lesser the pressure. So there is a pressure differential that pushes the
ball in the direction of the smoother side.
Credit: Indian Express Explained
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