Dukes swings into gear to save the craft of hand-sewn cricket balls
IT WAS something of a national travesty when the art of making cricket balls was listed as “extinct” in the UK – where England is regarded as the home of cricket – when the Red List of Endangered Crafts was published in 2017.
Now there is a new initiative to bring home the craft of making top-level red cricket balls.
While some of the processes are completed in this country, highly skilled hand-stitching is being outsourced overseas because Britain no longer has such specialists.
But a search is underway to find retired makers, or anyone with knowledge of how to make cricket balls, to pass on the intricate art to the next generation.
Heritage Crafts, the national charity for such traditional skills, is liaising with various partners to fund and recruit trainees – perhaps those with saddlery skills or a background in leather work – who want to learn how to make cricket balls.
Founded in 2010, the charity works with government, guilds and individuals, among others, who care about the loss of traditional crafts, “a fundamental part of our living heritage”.
Every two years, it publishes the Red List of Endangered Crafts, which ranks them according to whether they will survive the next generation. The 2023 edition, funded by the Pilgrim Trust, classified “cricket ball making” as “extinct, listing the number of professional, trainee and even serious amateur specialists as “zero”.
The relevant entry states: “Today, no one manufactures hand-stitched cricket balls in the UK. In some cases, the raw materials are sent from the UK to the Indian subcontinent for fabrication, and the balls are then finished in the UK.” Daniel Carpenter, executive director of Heritage Crafts, said: “We need to be thinking about how the UK’s support of its traditional craftsmanship is viewed around the world. If we can reverse the dependency on other countries for the skills underpinning one of our national sports, then that is an important signal that there is political and public interest in supporting the continuation of our craft heritage.”
Charlotte Reather, a consultant to Heritage Crafts, said: “The significance of bringing back the craft is that the birthplace of cricket as a sport is England. It just seems unfortunate that those skills have been lost. With cricket being such a big international game and... surely it’s time to bring cricket ball making back to England and create the Rolls-Royce of cricket balls.”
The charity is liaising with Dukes Cricket in Walthamstow, whose balls are used in test matches and firstclass county cricket. The company was founded in 1760. Skills were once handed down through the generations. Dilip Jajodia, who acquired the company in 1987, said: “You need people with passion, dedicated workmen. It used to be passed from father to son. They came into the business because their dad did it. They were very proud of what they did. But then, when we tried to get apprentices, sons of the workers, about 20 years ago, none of them were interested.” He recalled that they tried in vain to recruit staff from their local job centre: “We did interview a few, but they hadn’t got a clue about cricket balls and didn’t have much interest.” He tried importing overseas workers from the Indian subcontinent to make top balls under his scrutiny but, when immigration regulations required a degree, this source of workers disappeared. It led to him sourcing raw materials and sending them to the subcontinent: “They do the actual crafting of the product there. We have a factory here where we finish the product.”
The craft involves the halves of balls being sewn together with a raised seam, hand-stitched with a cork core and polished leather covering. Such is the complexity that it can take up to 10 years to perfect the craft. Everything from the thickness of the thread to the polish affects the way the ball performs, Mr Jajodia said. “Each little thing that you do to it has to be right. It’s a hellishly difficult job, frankly.” He hopes that, through this new initiative, “people might want the romance of it all again”.