Batting Boom & Pace Bowling Doom

Takeaways from the first three West Indies first-class Kookaburra rounds

Feb 24, 2025

As we reach the end of the first three rounds of the West Indies domestic first-class championship, it presents a great opportunity to reflect on how the competition is shaping up.

One crucial caveat for these three rounds is that they were played with the Kookaburra ball instead of the standard Dukes ball used in previous seasons. As such it has a significant weight on the proceedings thus far.

Takeaway 1: Batters are up

The lack of runs at the domestic first-class level has long been a source of frustration for both fans and administrators. Efforts have been made to address this issue by improving pitches, enhancing coaching etc. The introduction of the Kookaburra ball may have been another strategic move to assist batters, as it is generally perceived as more batter-friendly than the Dukes ball.

These are league wide batting averages, comparing this season to the last season.

The tournament-wide batting average has increased by approximately 3.3 runs, reflecting a ~12% improvement over last season.
This doesn’t just stop at averages although that is probably the most important metric. Similar increases are observed in other batting metrics:

Batters are now scoring more runs, facing more deliveries, and maintaining a higher strike rate than last season. While pinpointing the exact reasons for this improvement is challenging, the efforts by CWI to enhance pitch quality since last season and the T20 World Cup have likely contributed.

The Kookaburra factor cannot be ignored, in county cricket which also introduced the Kookaburra for a few rounds over the last two seasons, significant improvements in batting averages were observed with batting averages being as much as 8 points higher than in Kookaburra rounds vs the Dukes rounds. The impact should be much more muted in West Indies first-class as it depends on spin compared to the English first class system and as such can better handle the switch to a ball that aids the pacers less without such a massive increase in batting averages.

That said the impact of the Kookaburra cannot be denied as the 3.3 point increase in batting average has to have an origin.

Takeaway 2: Armageddon for pace bowlers

The rise in batting averages has come almost entirely at the expense of pace bowlers, who appear to be the most affected by the switch to the Kookaburra ball. A comparison of spin and pace bowling metrics from the first three rounds of 2024 and 2025 reveals the following (recall that bowling SR is balls per wicket so lower is better):

Fast bowlers appear to be facing most of the pain.

Fast bowling average has worsened by about ~6 points going from 29.7 to 35.8
Fast bowling Strike Rate (balls per wicket) has worsened by 12.5 points going up from 49.7 to 62.2

Spinners on the other hand are faring much better

Spin bowling average has worsened by 2 points from 24.6 to 26.6
Spin Strike Rate (balls per wicket) has actually slightly improved from 50 to 49

Furthermore, the slight increase in spin bowling averages may be partly due to struggles of the pacers. This season spinners are more likely to face settled batters and much less likely to bowl to newer batters on the crease due to a lack of wicket support from the pacers .

Notably, even West Indies test pacers have not fared much better than domestic only fast bowlers.

Fast bowlers who are part of the West Indies test setup have fared marginally better than domestic bowlers but both are struggling to replicate the impact produced by spinners.

This is not entirely unexpected. The Dukes ball has a more pronounced seam, is known to stay harder for longer, swing and seam for longer and thus is significantly more friendly to fast bowlers than the Kookaburra. So pacers were expected to struggle and are a big part of the reason for the increased batting averages.

All this has had the final effect of increasing the relative importance of spin:

In 2024, overall average of spin bowlers was about 17.2% better than pace bowlers
In 2025, this advantage increased to 25.7%.

This makes having quality spinners, having enough spinners and bowling them lots more important in the championship than before, leading to our next key observation.

Takeaway 3: Teams Underutilizing Spin

With there being an even more pronounced advantage for spinners than pacers in the Kookaburra rounds thus far, it would stand to reason that teams would have increased their deployment of spin and decreased their deployment of pace.

That however has not been the case, certainly not to the extent that the numbers have been lopsided for spinners this year.

Despite spinners being significantly more effective, they have bowled only 1% more deliveries than last season.

This suggests that teams have not appropriately adjusted to the optimal strategies in these Kookaburra rounds. In County Cricket, where the Kookaburra has also been introduced for select rounds, spinners bowled up to 20% more deliveries in response. While such an extreme adjustment may not be necessary in WI First-Class cricket, the fact that spin is only being bowled 1% more suggests that teams have perhaps left wickets on the table. If there are to be more Kookaburra rounds, the optimal strategy might be to load up lineups with even more spinners and bowl as much as 65% of the overs from spinners.

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Looking Ahead

With the Dukes ball set to return for future rounds, several key questions remain:

Will batting averages decline again?
Will pacers regain their effectiveness?
Will teams adjust their strategies more effectively?

The remainder of the season will provide insights into how these factors evolve and what lessons can be learned for future tournaments.

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