Pakistan are going back to the Kookaburra, and the PCB is making the same argument it made in 2019
The PCB will use Kookaburra balls in the President’s Trophy and the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy from 2026-27, ending a two-season run with the Dukes that began alongside Jason Gillespie’s appointment as red-ball coach.
Sep 11, 2026
Pakistan’s first-class season starts on Saturday, and it starts with a different ball. The PCB has decided to bring the Kookaburra back into the President’s Trophy and the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy from 2026-27, ending the two seasons in which the Dukes was the domestic red ball.
There is no bedding-in period. The President’s Trophy Grade-I opens on 12 September with eight departmental sides, 28 four-day matches and a ball that most of their bowlers have not held in a first-class game since the 2023-24 season.
A ball that was doing the bowlers’ work
The Dukes has a harder and more pronounced seam than the Kookaburra, and it holds that shape for longer. The result is lateral movement, in the air and off the surface, over a much bigger chunk of an innings. In England that is the whole point of it. In Pakistan it produced a side effect the board did not want.
Cricinfo reported that first-class matches had been tilting towards bowlers on surfaces carrying grass and moisture, and that the PCB had grown concerned its seamers were not bowling to their full potential at domestic level, which was hurting their development on the step up to international cricket. A bowler handed movement for 70 overs does not have to build pressure or work a batter out. He finds out what that costs him later.
Most of this season is being played in seam country
The venue list sharpens the case. Grade-I is being staged at four grounds in the north of the country: Imran Khan Stadium in Peshawar, Abbottabad Cricket Stadium, the Diamond Cricket Ground in Islamabad and the Shoaib Akhtar Cricket Stadium in Rawalpindi. Those are conditions that lean towards seam bowling before anyone chooses a brand of ball.
What the board wants from the Kookaburra is a flatter contest. Batters who spend longer at the crease, where technique is actually built, and enough life left in the game after the new ball for spinners to matter.
Pakistan have made this exact argument before
They have. In September 2019 the PCB moved domestic cricket from the Dukes to the Kookaburra, saying it wanted to bridge the gap between domestic and international cricket, that the Dukes had tilted the balance too far towards bowlers through the seam and swing it offers, and that the Kookaburra would help batters develop technique as the ball changed through an innings. Seven years on, the reasoning has come back word for word.
The Kookaburra stayed until the end of 2023-24. The Dukes, used before that in 2017-18 and 2018-19, returned for 2024-25 alongside Jason Gillespie’s appointment as red-ball head coach, as part of a push to revive Pakistan’s fast-bowling culture.
The Rawalpindi experiment that undid it
That push did not survive its first assignment. In August and September 2024 Pakistan prepared grassy pitches in Rawalpindi for two Tests against Bangladesh, playing to what they had decided was their strength, and lost both. It was Bangladesh’s first Test win over Pakistan and their first series win over them.
England then arrived and won the first Test in Multan by an innings and 47 runs after declaring on 823 for 7. Pakistan swung to the opposite extreme, reused the same pitch for the second Test, watched Noman Ali take eight in an innings, and have been producing square turners at home ever since. Gillespie resigned in December 2024, eight months into a two-year contract.
Domestic cricket will now match the Test ball
The cleanest argument for the switch is continuity. Pakistan play their home Tests with the Kookaburra, so a domestic season played with the Dukes was preparing cricketers for a version of the game they do not walk into when they get picked.
The Quaid-e-Azam Trophy, which follows on 1 November, has been rebuilt this season as well. It grows from 18 teams to 20, split into a Gold division of eight and a Silver division of 12, so that all 16 regions have first-class cricket. Both of those divisions will also use the Kookaburra.
Whether the ball explains anything about Pakistan’s batting is a harder argument to win. England beat them by 194 runs at Lord’s and had the series sealed with a match to spare, and the batting orders that produced those scores came out of a first-class system that used the Dukes for both of the last two seasons. The Kookaburra now gets its turn to be blamed or credited.