The Kookaburra factory in the Melbourne suburb of Moorabbin comprises of a bronze statue of Victor Trumper in his stately pose – arched onto his front foot, bat above his head, ready to fetch the red-leather ball far. On the other hand, the reception is an old photograph of its founder AG Thompson, inside the meeting hall is a cut-out of Usman Khawaja, it’s the brand ambassador, besides framed photographs of Australia’s women’s hockey team. The gallery has a whole set of memorabilia including a box of the first white balls used in cricket at the World Series Cricket. On the ragged, soiled balls is inscribed the score of the match.
Kookaburra has been treasuring the set of balls not because they are fond of cricket-relics, but they are the reminder of their humbler times as well as the symbol of their inventiveness. There is a story behind the origin of white balls too.
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Describing the same, the communications manager, Shannon Gill said, “When Australia hosted the Olympics in 1956, they wanted white balls. What we did was we painted the red-cricket balls white. And when Packer came up with the idea of colored balls, we suggested the white ones. The rest is history.”
Here is the video of the visit:
Kookaburra factory…!!https://t.co/9ZT9Y02toc
— Videos Shots (@videos_shots) December 22, 2018
Forty years later, Kookaburra invented the pink ball as well, but their quality has been questioned till date. The Aussie great, and a Victorian himself, Shane Warne urged the ACB to replace Kookaburras with the English hand-stitched Dukes. In 2015, Warne said, “The Kookaburra, for a long time, hasn’t been a very good ball. We’ve been saying the same thing but nothing seems to be changing. A few of us have said, ‘let’s try the Duke ball here’. I’d love to see it used all over the world. The best ball is the Dukes ball, so let’s use it. It’s time for Kookaburra to have a spell and get the Dukes ball out and try that.”
Former coach Darren Lehman, along with the disgraced cricketers Steve Smith and David Warner, too had expressed their displeasure over the brand of ball they’d used to while growing up. There were a plethora of reasons for the same, that the seam wore off rapidly, that it would get worn out too soon and had to be changed frequently. Batsmen tend to prosper against such a ball, which does not offer the lateral movement, in the air and off the pitch, that can be obtained with the Dukes.
