That Ricky Ponting is encouraging Australia to start using the Dukes ball at home Tests demonstrates just how valuable a weapon it has been for EnglandOver recent years it has become as much a section of the precursor to a Test match as the toss. Jimmy Anderson will choose the balls with which England will bowl,this one first, this should they need another. They sit there nestled in a box, and half a dozen of them,gleaming gold lettering showing the royal crest, the name Duke and Son, or the Special County mark and the A grade letter: the leather is red and glistening like a unusual-fallen conker.
Anderson will survey them and,just by eye, reject some. Cricketers refer to the ball as “the cherry” but that is an all-embracing term. Just as a cherry can vary in appearance from the vivid fire-engine crimson of the Stella to the black red Morello, or so with the Dukes ball. Anderson will survey the box,looking for the Morello.
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Source: theguardian.com