A History of Swing in White Ball Cricket
The trends and changes through the decades in cricket's shortest forms of the game
This past weekend, when I started writing this post, I sat down in front of my TV and loaded up the highlights from the inaugural Men’s Cricket World Cup final in 1975, between Australia and the West Indies, played at Lord’s. As the grainy, black-and-white footage began playing, accompanied by the lesser-heard trumpet and xylophone duet for a theme tune, it struck me that I’d never actually watched any limited-overs cricket from before the 1990s.
I was informed that Ian Chappell had put the Windies into bat by a man with the crispest of RP accents and watched as Dennis Lillee, long mullet and ‘tache waving in the breeze, came steaming in against two batters wearing white bucket hats. At least cricket’s style hasn’t changed in the last 50 years.
I peered at the screen, hoping to see some sideways movement from the red ball being used - this is before ‘pyjama cricket’ took over limited-overs cricket. Instead, I watched Roy Fredericks whip a bouncer off his unprotected nose and into the stands, only to trip and fall onto his stumps. Ludicrous cricket, but not hugely helpful for mapping the history of swing.
I wanted to track the journey of swing bowling in shorter form cricket for two reasons. Firstly, I realised how little I knew about my specialist subject before I started watching cricket in the early 2000s, and decided that I needed to rectify that. Secondly, and somewhat unsurprisingly, I wanted to finish with the upcoming 2023 Men’s World Cup, and discuss some trends and predictions for what is still, for now, the biggest competition in the sport.
This is going to be quite a science-lite blog post, though I will try and explain the large scale changes seen in the game over the years. So sit back, put down the geometry kit, and enjoy some retro cricket kits, surprisingly in-vogue hairstyles, and, most importantly, some vintage swing bowling.
Before White Ball Cricket was White Ball Cricket, pre-1990
The video highlights of the 1979 Men’s World Cup Final was the next stop on my trip down memory lane, and this time the highlights boasted some colour, and a much better camera angle. England were playing the West Indies, and deployed a fast bowling trio of Ian Botham, Mike Hendrick and Chris Old. There was certainly swing for the England bowlers with the red ball, but it hardly troubled the great Viv Richards, who repeatedly strode across his stumps and whipped the ball to the legside boundary, on his way to 138.
The West Indian fast bowlers, however, decided to test out the other half of the pitch. Despite the invention of helmets since the previous final, the prospect of a short ball barrage from Michael Holding and Joel Garner was tough for Brearley and Boycott at the top of the England order. Both scored half centuries, but at a measly 3 and a bit runs per over, leaving a lot for the lower order to do. It was Garner who cleaned up the tail, sending bails flying on his way to 5-38. The video wasn’t good enough to see if there was any movement late in the match, but this was still before the concept of reverse swing was popular in cricket parlance.
On the surface, this game looked and felt very similar to Test cricket. The early overs consisted of conventional swing bowling and cautious batting. All of the top 5 wicket takers from the tournament (including Holding, Hendrick and Old) were seamers. Spin was used in the middle overs as a containment option to rotate the quicks from the other end.
This was in stark contrast to what was happening in Australia at the same time. World Series Cricket was tearing up the cricket rule book. Private equity, coloured clothing and, most importantly, the white cricket ball had all made an entrance. And once they were out of the bottle, there was no way to put them back in.
But the Men’s World Cup stayed true to its origins right up until the 1992 edition, when it finally embraced the bright lights and loud colours we see today. The previous two competitions, held in India and Australia respectively, had also be played in whites with a red ball, despite the spreading of white ball cricket across the international game.
Sadly, there is little evidence I can find on the swing behaviour of the initial white balls in comparison to their red counterparts, though the later balls had the reputation of being a swing bowler’s friend. The white balls were made by Kookaburra in the early days, setting the foundation for their current white ball empire. While this is not a history of white balls specifically, I would recommend Snehal Pradhan’s excellent piece on how Kookaburra dominated this market if you are interested in that side of the story.
So, instead, let’s jump forward to the next era of white ball cricket, one defined by two of the greatest swing bowlers ever, clad in glorious lime green.
Reverse Swing is King, 1990-2007
When you look up ESPN’s record of highest wicket takers in the 90s, two names are on top - Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis. The two Pakistani quick bowlers are synonymous with great swing bowling, and they excelled in white ball cricket as well as red. But it was not just their ability to swing the ball conventionally at the top of the innings that made them so deadly.
From over 30 onwards, batters would have to be aware of prodigious swing, with the ball seemingly reversing at will for the ‘Sultan of Swing’ and ‘Toe Crusher’ (two of the cooler nicknames in cricket). The architect of this duo’s incredible reverse swing skills is said to be Imran Khan, himself an excellent bowler, who taught them the art which had been honed in the previous decade’s Pakistan team.
But why was reverse swing, something previously reserved for late-game subcontinental Test matches, so much easier to achieve in white ball cricket? Well, there are two big difference between ODIs and Tests which affect swing: the white ball, and playing under lights at night. So let’s have a look at these two factors, and how they contribute to swing in white ball games.
There is a narrative in cricket that the ball swings more under lights. Now, the lights themselves obviously do not impact the ball, but playing at night definitely changes the atmospheric conditions.
Firstly, you can’t see the clouds, which heavily negates their impact. Okay okay, it’s nothing to do with clouds (hint: it never is), but one thing does happen at night. It gets colder. If the ground cools down, a blanket of colder air is trapped in the stadium, unable to rise above the warm air higher up. This still air then sits above the pitch, which is great for conventional swing, though actually not required for reverse. Strong wind currents will negate this fact, but it is still something to be aware of.
The other feature about batting under lights is a simple one, but is often ignored. It is simply harder to see the ball in the dark. Any sideways movement is harder to pick up, making it more effective in deceiving the batter. There actually isn’t any evidence in recent ‘Pink Ball’ Day-Night Test matches that there is any more lateral movement in the evening sessions. Sometimes it’s the perception of movement that makes the difference, rather than actually any extra swing.
As for the ball, the white cricket ball is painted, rather than dyed and greased like a red ball. This paint has a heavy layer of lacquer on top, in order to protect the colour and visibility. As a white ball ages, this paint chips off, rather than wearing down like a red ball, revealing a greyer underlayer of rough leather. It’s this underlayer that is the key to reverse swing. The ball quickly goes from a state of ‘shiny lacquer’ to ‘rough leather’, unlike non-painted balls. Once this roughness spreads across one side of the ball, is it ready to reverse.
The command of white ball reverse has not been without controversy, however. Vish Ehantharajah’s history of reverse swing in England (a really great read) highlights how Allan Lamb, the victim of Akram in the video above, directly accused Pakistan in the media of cheating in the months after the Men’s World Cup, with the ball described as being ‘gouged’. Despite this, Wasim and Waqar continued to terrorise teams into the early 2000s, having truly dominated the previous decade.
It was England who next mastered the dark arts of reverse swing in ODI cricket. Darren Gough became a wielder of old ball in-swinging yorkers, while a young Jimmy Anderson began honing his craft in the same team. Around that time, Simon Jones was re-arranging Michael Clark’s off stump in the Ashes, and Andrew Flintoff was hitting 90mph+ with both the white and red ball.
This era of fast bowling dominance, however, would soon come to an end. The visibility of the old, white ball became vastly reduced once the paint had been lost, resulting in many balls being changed in the last 10 overs, just as they began to reverse. Instead of waiting for this to occur, the ICC decided to implement a mandatory ball change at the 35th over from 2007. Suddenly, scuffed up, greyish reversing balls were a thing of the past, and with it, came a shift in the balance of ODI cricket.
Gun-Barrel Straight, 2007-2019
The rule change in 2007 effectively killed reverse swing at the end of an ODI innings. There was still some movement at the start of an innings, but once that had been nullified, batters were set for big-hitting in the last 10 overs. In a slightly misguided attempt to rebalance things in the bowlers’ favour, the ICC changed the rules again in 2011, this time providing a new ball at each end.
The rationale behind this move was to double the length of time before the ball stopped swinging at the start of the game, to compensate for the lack of reverse swing. However, those of you with some mathematical background will know that multiplying a small number by two still only results in a small number. The Kookaburra balls being used rarely deviated from the straight once they’d been hit to the boundary, and instead remained harder for longer, providing batters with more opportunities to score boundaries.
In 2013, it was England this time which found themselves in the middle of a ball-tampering scandal against South Africa in the Champions Trophy. Despite the two new balls, they found ways of getting the ball moving sideways later in the innings, in lush, English conditions, prompting the ever fiery Bob Willis to call them out for scratching the ball.
Since then, the pitches have gotten flatter, the bats bigger and scores have regularly exceeded 400. Swing in this era was an afterthought, save for a few specialist bowlers, often on the lower end of the fast bowling pace spectrum. T20 cricket fuelled the rise of wrist-spinners, and the in-swinging yorker at the death was replaced by hard lengths. The balls were just not conducive to previously viable tactics.
England Men’s World Cup winning side in 2019 all but did away with swing. David Willey was dropped on the eve of the tournament in favour of Jofra Archer, who, along with his opening partner Chris Woakes, proceeded to bowl tight, back-of-the-length balls in the opening powerplay. This line and length was in contrast to many other teams, who favoured an aggressive, full, swinging ball at the start, searching for wickets, only to see the white Kookaburra travel in a straight line onto the bat and off to the fence.
Yet this is not the end of the story. It was in 2020 post-lockdown, when I was sat in an almost empty Whittle Laboratory office (working hard of course - SG) watching England play Sri Lanka in an ethereal, empty stadium, when I noticed something odd. In the 14th over of a T20 game, the ball was swinging. Check out the highlights from 11:55 below.
This was something that was non-existent in the 14th over of ODIs in the previous year, when each ball was only 7 overs old. Let alone in a game designed to pummel the ball at all stages, though admittedly this was not achieved by Sri Lanka in this game.
Something had changed, and it had to be the ball. The major roadblock to consistent ODI swing had somehow, overnight, been removed, with no fanfare, public acknowledgement or statement from Kookaburra themselves. And so we move onto the final evolution of ODI swing, and something that will define the 2023 Men’s World Cup.
There’s Something in the Quarter-Seams, 2020 - Present
Jarrod Kimber was the first person in the press I heard voice my theory about a change in the Kookaburra white ball. His excellent video essay, linked below, shows how the bowling average of seam bowlers in the powerplay has dropped significantly since 2020. He describes how the trend holds across T20 as well as ODIs, most likely ruling out any variance due to players or conditions.
The 2021 Men’s T20 World Cup was dominated by swing bowlers, prompting CricViz to investigate why the scores in the tournament were so much lower than expected. The Men’s IPL saw a huge rise in demand for left-arm fast bowlers, with their natural in-swing into the front pad sounding a death knell for many of the best batters. ESPN wrote about the issues opening the batting in this year’s Men’s Hundred, with players referencing the ball as a key factor. Notably, Kookaburra claim the only difference is the Hundred logo, but the data shows that the trend is not confined to this competition.
So what has changed? As part of my research with the ECB, I studied a load of white Kookaburras in 2019, with the remit to help England find more swing from them. More swing = more powerplay wickets, a precious commodity in white ball cricket. It turns out that the answer was ‘it’s not possible’. Because of the way the balls were constructed, the quarter-seams had a tendency to split open after even minimal contact with the pitch or bat. Split quarter-seams are no good for getting a ball to swing, and the regularity at which this occurred meant that aiming for prolonged swing was hopeless. See the previous section about England’s tactics in the 2019 World Cup.
The only conclusion is that Kookaburra have fixed this problem, but as I mentioned, there is no confirmation of this that I can find. The evidence, however, is visible to anyone watching, or analysing, white ball cricket in the last few years. The swing is back. And while we are unlikely to see anyone significantly reversing a 25-over old ball, at least the balance has been shifted back towards the bowler. In my opinion at least, the game is a lot more fun when the ball is moving in the air.
So, let’s finish with some fun predictions for the World Cup:
No opening batter is going to average 50 in the tournament. Even Rohit Sharma, with all of his subcontinental batting prowess, may struggle against the moving ball and having to bat in poor visibility at twilight.
A left-armer will be top wicket taker. The current most-prized commodity in franchise cricket, I expect their rise to continue on some fast wickets throughout the tournament.
The tournament will be won by the team with the most hundreds in the middle order. Going big in the middle overs and setting a platform for the finishers will be key.
Maybe not my spiciest takes, but these are some trends I am fairly confident in, that may not be widely spoken about elsewhere.
That’s all from me for now, I hope you are all as excited about the World Cup as I am. I’m sorry I haven’t written much since the Ashes, life got in the way a bit. At least for the next few weeks, I’ll have a chance to watch a lot of cricket, and hopefully write some more. If there is anything in particular you’d like to see, please let me know in the comments. I am thinking of doing some more player breakdowns, so any suggestions or questions are always welcome. Go well!