Cricket ball Cricket balls were the traditionally red balls around which the sport of cricket revolved . Made of leather ( COMIC : " The Forgotten " ) they were , according to Tegan , quite hard . ( PROSE : " The Eight Doctors " ) The Doctor often had one close to hand . The Fifth Doctor was the incarnation who was the biggest fan of cricket , and therefore frequently had one on his person . This was in evidence in Amsterdam , when he emptied his pockets , and their contents included a cricket ball . ( TV : " Arc of Infinity " ) Obviously , he often used the ball to actually play the game . But there were a number of notable occasions on which he used cricket balls in unusual ways . While drifting in space outside an Urbanka n spacecraft , he propelled himself back to the the TARDIS by throwing a cricket ball against the hull of Monarch ' s ship , catching the ball as it bounced back , and letting the its momentum propel him back to the doors of the TARDIS . ( TV : " Four to Doomsday " ) Later , he saved Tegan Jovanka ' s life by throwing a cricket ball at the Raston Warrior Robot threatening her . The impact was just enough to throw the robot ' s aim so that the javelin it fired missed . ( PROSE : " The Eight Doctors " ) On yet another occasion , he switched the Eye of Akasha for a cricket ball and thus saved Tegan from the Judoon . ( COMIC : " The Forgotten " ) He also at least once used a cricket ball to hit a Sontaran ' s probic vent , thus rendering the warrior temporarily immobile . ( PROSE : " Lords of the Storm " ) Even though the Fifth Doctor was the most overt cricketer , several other of the Doctor ' s incarnations were known to possess cricket balls . The Second Doctor once produced a cricket ball to allow Ben to knock an RTC unit out of Queen Aysha ' s hands . ( PROSE : " Invasion of the Cat - People " ) The Fourth Doctor gave Harry Sullivan a cricket ball to use in a failed attempt to deactivate the automatic guard system on Nerva Beacon . The cricket ball was destroyed . ( TV : " The Ark in Space " ) The Seventh Doctor used a biodata pod disguised as a cricket ball to store the biodata of his Time Lord self , and later that of his human persona . ( PROSE : " Human Nature " ) He also carried around a cricket ball , as was revealed when he once emptied his pockets ( PROSE : " Bad Therapy " ) and when Chang Lee retrieved his belongings from Walker General Hospital . ( PROSE : " Doctor Who - The Novel of the Film " ) The Eighth Doctor , too , carried a cricket ball on his person . ( PROSE : " The Dying Days " ) Although it wasn ' t strictly speaking " his " cricket ball , the Tenth Doctor — as John Smith — retained enough muscle memory of bowling to correctly throw a cricket ball to start a chain of events to save a mother and her baby from a falling piano . ( TV : " Human Nature " ) The Tenth Doctor kept a cricket ball in his pockets . ( PROSE : " The Price of Paradise " ) In his eleventh incarnation , the Doctor kept a cricket ball in the TARDIS drawing room ( GAME : " TARDIS " ) and underneath the TARDIS console . He also used a cricket ball to show and Amy , Rory and himself that the Dream Lord didn ' t have a proper body . This led to the hypothesis that he wanted to annoy the three of them because they had proper bodies . ( TV : " Amy ' s Choice " ) There were also times when cricket balls weren ' t quite as they appeared . A perversion of the Event Synthesizer caused a cricket ball in the 1980s to exchange places with a grenade at a game in Stockbridge . When it left the bowler ' s hand , it was a cricket ball , but by the time it reached the batsman , it was a grenade . ( COMIC : " The Tides of Time " ) Also , one of the cricket balls that the Doctor had hit at the Cranleigh Hall cricket ground turned out to be a segment of the Key to Time , which was retrieved by Ace . ( COMIC : " Time & Time Again " )