How do you get a cricket ball to swing without saliva?

Saliva has been responsible for some of the best cricket we’ve seen but, as Vithushan Ehantharajah writes, in the wake of coronavirus, the England vs West Indies series will be very different

The way the cricket ball will be maintained is completely different to normal (Getty)

To those unfamiliar with cricket’s peccadilloes, you may be confused to hear that Wednesday’s Test match between England and West Indies will be the first where the use of saliva is banned. You will also be confused to hear the sport will be far poorer for it.

Saliva has been responsible for some of the more remarkable days cricket has seen, used as it is to accentuate the ball's sideways movement at great speeds. By exaggerating the smoothness of one side, one side move through the air quicker than the other and makes the art of scoring and survival that much tougher.

It’s something English cricket has taken very seriously with its overcast summers conducive to swing bowling. Not only are designated ball shiners now as important as the wicketkeeper, but the practice is taught and tested throughout the age-groups in a purposeful and disciplined manner.

This banning of saliva is solely down to the coronavirus pandemic and the transmission of the virus, something with the International Cricket Council confirmed upon consultation with medical experts. But the use of saliva, particularly when supplemented with other “agents”, has been a grey area they and the wider game have wrestled with for 30 years.

A study published this year by the University of Bath was able to characterise exactly how – and when – saliva mixed with sugar has a dramatic effect on a ball’s properties. Using a red Dukes ball that was 25-overs old, bowled by a former first-class bowler, they found that an unpolished ball would swing conventionally but for only speeds of less than 75mph. When that ball was then polished with saliva “enhanced” by sweets, that swing continued into the late nineties. It is this, late swing, that is particularly devastating for ill-equipped or unsuspecting batsmen.

Marcus Trescothick was one of the first to talk about the use of “sugary” saliva so openly, documenting in his book how England relied on Murray Mints to gain a good sheen on the ball to aid their swing – orthodox and reverse – during the 2005 Ashes. It was a tip passed on by Dermot Reeve who was informed of their properties by Asif Din, a Warwickshire teammate of Reeve, who perfected the craft during the nineties. Australia and Netherlands international quick Dirk Nannes also revealed during an ABC broadcast how Victoria state sides he played in preferred the lacquering enabled by red frogs – a gooey sweet they would tuck into at drinks breaks.

So commonplace was it around the world that cricketers from England and Australia remember times when even umpires would carry sweets. “They either knew what we were up to or were oblivious to it,” a former Test cricketer told The Independent. “But a lot of umpires are former players, so go figure.”

Essentially, it’s the done thing everywhere, hence why the cries against India captain Virat Kohli and South Africa captain Faf du Plessis being spotted with something in their mouth when spit shining gained no traction or attention from those within cricket's inner circle beyond having to address the pearl-clutching from those on the periphery.

Now with saliva off the menu, England and West Indies, along with everyone else, will have to find new ways to enhance and exaggerate swing. History, as ever, carries with it a few lessons.

Vaseline was popular during the 1970s, as it was in baseball at the time. When John Lever, who played 20 Tests during this period, was pulled up for inadvertently taking some from his brow and rubbing it on the ball during his debut series against India, that was ditched for more covert lipsil, or “lip ice” as it was known. Australia’s legendary quick Dennis Lillee revealed sometimes he would use the lanolin wool wax in his cricket jumpers to get a ball “really glossed up”. All of the above remain prohibited.

But perhaps the most notable shift came in the late ‘70s and into the '80s when sweat became the go-to self-produced solvent. And in a corner of the north-west of England, a straight-talking man from Sheffield was leading that revolution to a crop of players that included Darren Gough and a certain England head coach, Chris Silverwood.

“Look after that ball in yer ‘and – it pays the mortgage’,” is perhaps the phrase people most associated with Steve Oldham. A right-arm medium-fast bowler took 273 first-class wickets across 129 matches for Yorkshire and Derbyshire, even turning out for Yorkshire’s 2nd XI at the age of 45 in 1993. But his biggest legacy remains imprinting that value on the tykes under his tutelage.

“He used to give us a bollocking if our trousers weren’t red raw,” remembers Gough, whose appreciation of shining the ball went hand-in-hand with his gorgeous late swing, accounting for many of his 229 Test wickets.

Oldham was very much from the lipsil generation. But his progressive nature pushed him to experiment in his latter years and then vicariously through his young charges. And during the ‘90s – where sweets were only taken seriously at clubs like Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Surrey – Oldham was a big believer in sweat.

“I don’t know why, but I hated shining the ball with saliva,” says Gough. “It felt like I was licking the ball.” So, he would wedge the ball under his arm, in the crux of his elbow or mop his neck and forehead. On a tour of Asia, he also tried taking sweat from his lower back to see if it would have any different properties. He had a working theory that it may be denser and, thus, make the ball behave in a different way.

James Anderson is a master of getting a ball to swing (PA)

Indeed the current England side, led in part by conversations with Silverwood, will plump for sweat for the time being. In hotter countries, zinc or suncream gives sweat an underhanded kick, too But the forecast of clouds and even spots of rain will mean those two accessories will be obsolete.

Greater volumes of sweat will also lend itself to reverse swing, too. England have fine-tuned the art of getting a ball to reverse: a practice which requires one side to be shiny but the other side to be in a specific state of “fuzzy” roughness to flip the swinging nature of a ball and thus make it all the more unpredictable. But the recent wet weather and lack of cricket played this summer mean a lack of rougher surfaces on adjoining pitches which can usually be relied upon to legitimately scuff up one side. As such, an old tactic of “loading” the ball – putting as much moister into one side of it so that it is slightly heavier – will come back on the table.

It was a method Gough relayed to England's bowlers during his time with them last winter in New Zealand. But it is perhaps here where the generational gap is most noticeable around ball-shining. Though it is an effective tactic, putting so much moisture into the ball means it goes softer quicker. That risk-reward factor will be something weighed up in the moment.

A lot of this will be for these well-schooled cricketers to work out for themselves. Ball maintenance in the “new normal” may be new to them, but the methods they will lean on will be straight from the old world.