Match Cricket Balls £5 - £10

Cricket Balls - The Buyer's Guide

There is currently a huge selection of cricket balls available featuring a vast range of different colours, sizes, weights and materials. All of which can make buying cricket balls particularly difficult for someone new to the game.

Traditional Leather Cricket Balls

Traditionally cricket balls are made from a core of cork, which is layered with tightly wound string, and covered by a leather case with a slightly raised sewn seam. In top-quality cricket balls suitable for the highest levels of competition, the covering is constructed of four pieces of leather shaped similar to the peel of a quartered orange, but one hemisphere is rotated by 90 degrees with respect to the other. The "equator" of the cricket ball is stitched with string to form the ball's prominent seam, with a total of six rows of stitches. The remaining two joins between the leather pieces are stitched internally. Lower-quality cricket balls with a 2-piece covering are also popular for practice and lower-level competition due to their lower purchase cost.

Cricket Balls Colour

Cricket balls are traditionally dyed red. and it is these red cricket balls that are used in Test cricket and First-class cricket. White balls were introduced when one-day matches began being played at night under floodlights, as they are more visible at night. Professional one-day matches are now played with white balls, even when they are not played at night. Other colours have occasionally been experimented with, such as yellow and orange for improved night visibility, but the colouring process has so far rendered such balls unsuitable for professional play because they wear differently to standard balls. Australia recently began using pink cricket balls, although the concept has not proved popular with other cricketing nations. White cricket balls have been found to swing a lot more during the first half of the innings than traditional red cricket balls and also deteriorates more quickly, although manufacturers claim that white and red balls are manufactured using the same methods and materials. Multi-coloured half-and-half cricket balls are often used to help batsmen recognise different bowling styles and spin patterns.

Cricket Balls Price and Quality

The price of cricket balls is determined on their quality, build and usage, with training cricket balls available for around £4, and International match cricket balls ranging up to around £70. Features and benefits of cricket balls aren't always obvious, with the quality and durability of the outer cover and the quantity and quality of the stitching providing the only exterior indicatiors of a ball's quality and potnetial performance. The highest priced cricket balls feature a "Selected Grade Tanned Steer Hide" and cheaper balls have a "hide cover". The stitching and cover of cricket balls often vary in quality, with cricket balls within the same batch often offering different performance levels. Higher quality cricket balls use a finer stitch and may have as many as 80 stitches per circumference. Lower-priced cricket balls tend to feature thicker stitching with as few as 55 per circumference.

Cricket Balls Weights and Sizes

The size and weight of cricket balls are governed by their intended users. The official regulation sizes for match cricket balls are as follows:

Mens cricket balls: weight 5.5 to 5.75 ounces (156-163g), circumference 22.4-22.9cm.
Womens cricket balls: weight 4 11/16 to 5 1/16 ounces (133-143.5g), circumference 21-22.5cm.
Junior cricket balls: weight 4 11/16 to 5 1/16 ounces (133-143.5g), circumference 20.5-22.5cm.

Synthetic Cricket Balls

Many synthetic polymer cricket balls have been developed specifically for younger cricketers to offer many of the same characteristics of traditional cricket balls but with enhanced durability and reduced unit costs.

Skill Development Balls

There have been developed a number of specialist cricket balls that have been produced soley for the purpose of promoting specialist skills such as spin, swing and seaming. These cricket balls may combine both traditional and synthetic materials in a range of colours.

Choosing the correct Cricket Balls

Therefore the key to buying the correct cricket ball is determining first what you wish to use it for, and then the standard at which it will be used.