But many cricketers say that white balls are just not the same as the red ones - and not just in the way they look. There has been resistance in the game for these claims to be admitted. To the uninitiated, cricketers' habit of rubbing the ball on their trousers always looks strange. Now a scientist in Wellington, New Zealand, claims to have proved that batsmen's claims that white balls swing more than red ones are true. And test results shown on BBC One's Tomorrow's World echo what he has found in exhaustive experiments on white balls - that batsmen have been telling the truth.
White balls swing more.
Firing a mixture of balls, positioned in the machine to give a slight swing, showed white balls deviating from a straight path much more than red ones. Former England captain Mike Gatting, who helped the programme assess Mr Wilkins' results, said it had confirmed his suspicions, and said he hoped it had laid to rest the claim that there was no difference between red and whites. Dilip Jajodia, of British Cricket Balls Ltd which is making its white Dukes balls for this year's World Cup in its Kent factory, said he thought the claims over differences had been exaggerated. But he accepted that differences in the way balls were made could make a slight difference on the field. Tests showed white balls swinging more than red All cricket balls are made from cork and latex rubber on the inside with leather on the outside, he said.