Dilip Jajodia, the owner of Dukes, has said that the company will launch an internal investigation with regard to the controversial ball change in the final Ashes Test at The Oval. It was a pivotal moment in the highly competitive match, which swung the pendulum in the favour of England, who went on to defeat Australia by 49 runs to level the series 2-2.
Going into Day five of the Test, the Aussies were well-placed at 135-0, in their pursuit of 384 run target, after both their openers David Warner and Usman Khawaja went past their fifties. But then, during the 37th over, when the umpires changed the Dukes ball after Mark Wood struck a blow to the head of Usman Khawaja, the fortune changed for England at The Oval.
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While talking to News Corp, Dilip Jajodia was quoted as saying, “I'm going to investigate myself, because it affects me … my name is at stake so it's important they don't misallege something wrong with the ball.”
He went on to state, “Every ball we produce for the specific season has got a date stamp on it. It would have 2023 marked on it. We supply balls to the ground. These balls are not controlled by the ECB or the ICC, it’s controlled by the ground authority. So on this particular occasion (at The Oval) the balls would be done by Surrey.”
“Surrey get the supply of balls from us before the season starts and then they start knocking them in, getting them into wear and tear if you like and in my view, they’re probably not doing it that accurately,” he added.
The owner of the Dukes also speculated that the ball from 2018-19, which was significantly tougher for the batters to play against, in comparison to the current batch, might have gone into the box carried to the field of play by the fourth umpire.
He remarked, “I can’t imagine they would risk putting a ball in there with a different date on it. Frankly, the match referee should be on top of it. We do bang that number in quite hard, so even if the gold comes off the ball is imprinted. It wouldn’t be easy to get rid of it. I’m not saying it’s impossible (it was a 2018 or 2019 ball), but it’s not likely.”