The Cricket Ball in the Sport of Cricket

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The Cricket Ball in the Sport of Cricket

Cricket is one of the most exciting sports in world. It is played is most countries in world. Cricket is not that popular in Unites States but it is the most popular sports in countries like India, England and Australia. Making cricket popular in America requires describing its equipments and the game itself. One of the most important equipment of this wonderful game is Cricket ball.

The cricket ball is a little small than a baseball ball. It is round shaped, smaller than a wrist of an average size man. A cricket ball is made from a core of cork, which is layered with tightly wound string. It is covered by a leather case with a slightly raised sewn seam. The covering is constructed of four pieces of leather shaped similar to the peel of a quartered orange. A cricket ball only has one seam. The equator of the ball is stitched with string to form the seam, with a total of six rows of stitches. The remaining two joins between the leather pieces are left unstitched. The ball is about nine inches in circumference and only weighs between 5.5 – 5.75 ounces.

The surface of the ground where cricket ball is pitched matters a lot for the performance. This ball bounces a lot on a dry/hard pitch because of its hardness. However it's the other way around if the pitch is wet/damp, this ball loses it bounce. Weather is also very important factor on how the ball behaves. In sunny weather the ball don't do much but if it’s windy the ball swings in air a lot. Therefore when the weather is bad this ball sometimes becomes impossible to play.

The most dangerous thing this ball does is “Swing”. Swing which is achieved by keeping one side of the ball polished smooth and shiny and keeping the other side rough, and delivering the ball with the polished side forward, and the seam angled in the direction of desired swing. There are two types of swing balling in cricket. The out swinging ball moves away from the right-handed batsman, while the in swinger moves in towards him. Normal swing is achieved by maintaining laminar boundary layer air-flow on the shiny side whilst creating turbulent flow on the seam side.

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