The week in sport

It's all balls. Kookaburra's cricket trial, Wimbledon's Slazenger consumption, Premier League debuts new ball.

No fewer than 59 centuries have been scored across the latest two rounds of County Championship matches.

A batter's paradise and a bowler's nightmare, with seamers left scratching their heads at how to use the unfamiliar Kookaburra ball. Huge scores have been clocked up, none bigger than Surrey's mammoth 820-9 declared against Durham, the highest for 18 years and fourth highest in the history of Championship cricket.

For these two rounds of matches and the two rounds at the end of this month, all Championship games will be played with the Kookaburra ball, whereas normally matches in England use a Dukes.

After watching only 21 wickets fall in their match with Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge last week, Yorkshire head coach Anthony McGrath was scathing in his criticism of the use of the Kookaburra.

"The match as a whole was not a great watch for spectators with the Kookaburra ball and I'm still not sure why we are using it, to be honest," he said. "We don't play Test cricket in England with a Kookaburra and if we are thinking about the next series in Australia playing with a Kookaburra, then the people who are going to play in that series probably need to be using a Kookaburra ball as well."

Those views were echoed by former Australia head coach Darren Lehmann, now in charge of Northamptonshire.

"The Kookaburra ball is for Australian conditions on wickets that are harder and have got some carry," he said.

"The Dukes ball, we've tried that before in an Ashes for example. A Dukes ball goes all over the shop in Australia and the game's finished in two days."

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Wimbledon uses approximately 53,000 Slazenger tennis balls during the fortnight, stored at precisely 20C to maximise consistency when used. Too warm and the balls will bounce too much, too cold and they won’t bounce enough.

And if you want to get your hands on any, either show good hands and take a catch in the crowd after a match - or pay for used balls with proceeds going to the Wimbledon Foundation.

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The Premier League has a new ball - the Orbita Ultimate PL, and a new ball supplier - Puma. The Premier League’s switch to Puma comes after two and a half decades of working with Nike, whose match balls have been used since 2000. Puma already supplies match balls for Serie A, La Liga, the EFL, and the Scottish Women’s Premier League.

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The Nightwatchman's half century!

Issue 50 of the Nightwatchman, a quarterly collection of essays and long-form articles from Wisden, is out now. This landmark edition contains 19 features covering the breadth of the cricketing world, including the tale of Fred Bakewell; the life of John Masterman, cricketer and spy; the depressing state of play within the ICC; the men's World Cup, coincidentally also reaching 50.

Buy issue 50 here: https://www.thenightwatchman.net/buy/the-nightwatchman-single-issue-print-issue-50

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