MCC: buying the balls

Date released: 16 April 2008

MCC's John Stephenson and Keith Bradshaw with the new balls MCC provide top cricketers from all over the country to play against schools and clubs; now they are providing the balls.

In a new initiative for the 2008 season, MCC has bought 1,000 new cricket balls for the 500 games it plays throughout the year. The £10,000 spent on balls contributes to a total of around £3million that the Club spends each year on cricket-playing activities.

John Stephenson, MCC’s Head of Cricket, explained it is a way for MCC to take some financial pressure off some of the schools and clubs it faces:

Stephenson and Bradshaw show off some of the new balls "For some schools, especially those without cricket pitches or high quality sports fields, playing cricket and hosting matches can be a costly business; providing the balls goes some way towards lessening that cost.

"We wouldn’t like to think there are any schools where cost prevents them from playing against MCC, because we want to bring cricket to as many young players as possible.

"The statisticians tell me that with the hundreds of fixtures we will be playing this year in the UK and abroad, we can expect MCC teams to score 10,000 runs and take 4,000 wickets with these balls, so we are looking forward to a lot of great cricket this year."

The new balls will all have MCC's monogram Wisbech Town CC will be the first club to benefit from the MCC’s new scheme when it plays the Club in a two-day match beginning on Wednesday 16th April. MCC will hope to avenge the two-wicket defeat suffered in 2007.

Despite its involvement into developing pink and white cricket balls, MCC has stuck firmly with tradition with its new investment: all the balls (provided by Dukes, Readers and Tiflex and stamped with MCC’s monogram) will be red.