Yorkshire coach Anthony McGrath has described the decision to use Kookaburra balls during this week’s County Championship fixtures as “nonsensical”.<\/b><\/p>\n
McGrath watched Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire play out a draw at Trent Bridge during which just 21 wickets fell.<\/p>\n
Seven of the nine matches ended in draws, with only Surrey and Northants picking up victories.<\/p>\n
McGrath said asking county players to use the less responsive Kookaburra to better prepare England players for the Ashes this winter, while Ben Stokes’ side tackle India with a Dukes ball this summer, made no sense. <\/p>\n
“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,” the 49-year-old said.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
The directive, enthusiastically embraced by director of England cricket Rob Key, was originally brought in to encourage County Championship bowlers to ‘upskill’ after successive Ashes disappointments with the Kookaburra ball.<\/p>\n
It was initially seen in 2023 for a two game mid-season trial and repeated last summer with a two game early and late season trial.<\/p>\n
Critics feel the move penalises seamers, which form the bulk of county sides, and reduces the likelihood of results. A total of\u00a017 out of 18 early season games with a Kookaburra in 2024 were draws.<\/p>\n
Former Yorkshire coach Ottis Gibson called it “a nonsense” last season and Surrey’s then director of cricket Alec Stewart said it was “the worst decision ever”.<\/p>\n
“If you’re wanting people to bowl 90mph on the back of seven first-class games, then eight T20s… and you slot it in during a Test series, in the most jam-packed part of the season with not many England players around, it is nonsensical,” McGrath added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yorkshire coach Anthony McGrath has described the decision to use Kookaburra balls during this week’s County Championship fixtures…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216555,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4101],"tags":[1406,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-216554","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114751105027731171","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}