{"id":198119,"date":"2025-10-08T15:56:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T15:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/198119\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T15:56:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T15:56:07","slug":"kookaburra-ball-experiment-in-county-championship-could-be-scrapped","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/198119\/","title":{"rendered":"Kookaburra ball experiment in County Championship could be scrapped"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In the aftermath of England&#8217;s last Ashes tour of Australia, when they were hammered 4-0, a high-performance review led by former captain Andrew Strauss recommended the Kookaburra be used in the Championship to help prepare players for conditions down under.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It was used for two rounds of matches in the 2023 season, with the experiment expanded to four rounds in 2024 and 2025.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Though one aim of the experiment &#8211; to bring more spinners in to the game &#8211; was largely fulfilled, it produced some dull cricket, with bat dominating ball.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In two rounds of Kookaburra matches earlier this summer, played in June, the average first-innings total across the Championship was 430. There were 59 individual scores of 100 or more and Surrey racked up 820-9 declared against Durham at The Oval.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">If the PGC does end the Kookaburra experiment, it would likely mean all 14 rounds of Championship matches next season are played with the Dukes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the aftermath of England&#8217;s last Ashes tour of Australia, when they were hammered 4-0, a high-performance review&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-198119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}