After players getting stuck and series getting cancelled or delayed, the West Asian war has hit the cricketing world differently. The England cricket is in the crosshairs this time. If England thought their biggest headache ahead of the home season would be pitches or player workloads, something far more threatening has cropped up. There are no cricket balls to play cricket with!
According to a report by the Daily Mail, the ongoing conflict in West Asia has thrown the supply of Dukes balls into disarray, leaving English counties scrambling just weeks before the new season. The new County Championship season is slated to begin on April 3, and the war isn’t stopping anytime soon. With the County season, where a total of 18 teams take part simultaneously, about to start, there’s a shortage of basic cricket equipment.
Why is there Dukes ball shortage in England?
The problem lies in how a Dukes ball is made and transported. While the leather is processed in England, the stitching is done in the subcontinent before the finished product is flown back, usually through Middle Eastern routes. That entire chain has now taken a hit.
With airspace disruptions and freight movement slowing down, shipments have piled up. Airlines are either avoiding the region or charging a premium to operate through it. The cost of transporting a box of balls has reportedly tripled, and more importantly, the deliveries are not arriving on time.
Dilip Jajodia, who owns the company that manufactures Dukes balls, summed it up rather bluntly. England cricket, he admitted, is dealing with a “major crisis”.
“We’ve got a major crisis right now with this bloody Gulf War nonsense and got to ration clubs by giving them 50 per cent of their balls at the start of the season and then manage the problem. We’ve got plenty of stuff in the factories in the subcontinent ready to go, but the airlines are not taking the freight because there’s a logjam.”
What will England cricket do now?
County teams are set to begin the season with roughly half the number of balls they would usually have. It is a big issue considering we are talking about four-day cricket, where you continuously keep changing the ball. The game will surely be affected.
There is stock ready in the subcontinent, but getting it into the UK is proving to be the bottleneck. Alternative routes are being explored, including rerouting consignments via Sri Lanka, but nothing is easy at the moment. To make matter worse, counties have denied using Kookaburra balls after a brief experiment previously.
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