That was exactly what they did for the 1990 season, although as Jack Bannister pointed out in his ‘Don’t Blame the Ball’ from the 1991 Wisden – an article I devoured for many years in the 1990s and early 2000s – that change was actually reverting to the seam used on balls from before about 1970.
The less helpful ball allowed for unrivalled run-feasts against the inept English bowling of 1990 – as I noted in my previous post not a single England-eligible bowler averaged under 26 that summer, and the average for all first-class county matches was an amazing 38.72 runs per wicket. Yet, that same 1991 Wisden described English batting as “technically poor” and said that “good bowlers showed it up, even in the batsman’s conditions of 1990”, but that, sadly, “none of these [good] bowlers was eligible for England”.
