Provided they didn't get caught, it was very hard to detect the difference between a natural scratch and a man-made one. In the late 1990s, when reverse swing with an old ball gained prominence, some bowlers became quite proficient at mimicking or enhancing natural scuffs or scratches on the rough side with their finger or thumb nails. Watch: Bancroft and Smith admit ball-tampering plan But if a ball gets naturally roughed up, how do you tell if it's been tampered with? That is, as long as it isn't hit so far that it's lost. The best legal method of ball-tampering, when you desperately need wickets? Put on a bad spinner.Ī couple of clonks for six into concrete stands would produce just the right sort of damage to the ball that the ailing quick bowlers need. This could be accidentally-on-purpose stepping on the ball, scratching it surreptitiously using finger nails, bottle tops, sandpaper stitched into trousers or even, on one occasion, a pen knife. So, bowlers and fielders are tempted to try illegitimate measures. Can a ball be roughed up naturally?īowling cross-seam deliveries to land the ball on the leather, or bouncing it in from the boundary, has no guarantee of damaging the same side of the ball.

Or, if it did, I wasn't good enough to exploit it. Occasionally in matches when there was absolutely nothing happening, I tried this - totally against the laws of the game, of course - but nothing happened. He got hold of an old ball from the coach's bag, prised up the quarter seam on the rougher side - the quarter seam is the join at right angles to the main seam - and the ball swung like a boomerang. Pakistan great Imran Khan was the first person I met who demonstrated to me - in the nets, one might add - how to tamper with the ball. What happens when the ball reverse swings? Pakistan great Imran Khan took 362 Test wickets at an average of 22.81 This creates extensive turbulence around the rough side, 'forcing' the ball against its natural swing path, which is why it's known as reverse swing.

The key to finding reverse swing is to get one side of the ball as pitted and scuffed as possible - and kept scrupulously dry. With a Kookaburra ball, which is used often in South Africa and Australia, quite often the shine doesn't last very long, which is when bowlers look for reverse swing. Conventional swing is when a bowler uses the polished side to get the ball to move one way. First things first - what does reverse swing mean? But what is the benefit of tampering with a cricket ball? Cricket analyst Simon Hughes explains.

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