A vegan cricket ball that lasts 50 overs?

In today’s Finshots, we give you a glimpse into India’s cricket ball manufacturing industry and how the Super 50, a non-leather synthetic cricket ball, could change the game.

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The Story

Making a cricket ball is a proper, old school craft.

It did four layerswhich starts with a solid core made entirely of cork. This is the inner part. For this sit two leather cups. To make it, colored leather (red for Test matches, white for One Day Internationals, and pink for day-night Tests) is cut by hand into semi-sphere shapes. These pieces are stitched together and pressed into shapes until they form perfect half cups that can tightly cover the ball.

The cork core is then placed between these two leather halves and stitched together with a special thread. This creates the first, inner seam. After that come more stitches on the outside. At the end you get the six neat rows of stitching that run across the ball’s surface. One last push in a mold keeps it perfectly round. Then it is polished and stamped with the brand name. Only then is it ready.

And while we walked through it pretty quickly, it’s anything but quick to make a real cricket ball. One ball can take up to 90 minutes. Each part is weighted so that the final product falls within a very tight range 155.9 and 163 grams for men’s cricket, and 140 to 151 grams for women’s cricket.

In India, most of this work is still done by hand. This means incredible focus and attention to detail, as even a small change in a putt or polish can affect how the ball swings or moves. And sometimes that’s enough to change the course of a game.

But here’s what you need to know. Cricket did not always have standardized balls. It took years of trial and error, centuries actually, to decide on the right materials, weights, sizes, stitch counts and seam structures. But through it all, one thing has barely changed. From the early days of cricket in the 17th century — Whether the core was cork or wool, the ball was always wrapped in leather.

And there is a good reason for that. Leather is what helps bowlers move the ball in the air and off the pitch. The way the core, string winding and leather cover interact determines a ball’s bounce and swing. Bowlers and fielders rely on the grip that leather provides. And leather-covered balls simply last longer.

That’s why what happened a few days ago is very interesting.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India has Sanspareils Greenlands – better known as SG, their Innovation in Business Award for developing a professional cricket ball that uses no leather at all.

It becomes the Super 50. It is made of vegan leather, patented by Sgand the company claims that it can hold its shape throughout an entire match and last at least 50 overs.

Now SG is one of India’s largest manufacturers of cricket equipment. His balls are used in Test matches played in India and in the Ranji Trophy. But this new vegan ball isn’t meant for that level. At least not yet.

Instead, it is aimed squarely at professional cricket academies that train young, aspiring cricketers. And it’s being touted as something that could quietly disrupt the game in the coming years.

This is because this ball meets all the technical specifications required to play professional cricket. Same weight, similar feel and same performance metrics, all without the traditional leather. Which means no reliance on large-scale cow slaughter just to make the outer casing. Moreover, tanning itself is an environmental nightmare. Tanneries release toxic chemicals into nearby bodies of water and expose workers to substances linked to cancer, respiratory disease and other serious illnesses. This is exactly why authorities have cracked down on tanneries in cities like Meerut and Vellore (Tamil Nadu), forcing many of them to close.

It also created an unintended consequence. A great lack of learning.

Cricket ball manufacturers suddenly found it difficult to obtain raw materials. But demand hasn’t slowed down. In fact, it continued to rise. To put things in perspective, cricket academies in India consume around 40 lakh leather balls every year. And that number is growing by about 6–7% annually.

So SG’s push into synthetics was sort of a practical response to a supply crunch. When leather became scarce, but the need for cricket balls continued to climb, rethinking the material itself began to make a lot of sense.

But before we get carried away with the idea that vegan cricket balls will change everything, there are some uncomfortable realities about how the cricket ball manufacturing industry actually works in India.

To begin with, India is the world’s largest producer and exporter of cricket balls. And most of that production is centered in Meerut. Not in giant factories and assembly lines. But in home based cottage industries spread over 10,000 people in about 30 towns. Each unit is usually a small family setup, perhaps with a few extra hands, quietly stitching balls day after day.

Now, cricket balls are not stitched by hand because there is no alternative but because hand stitching works best for leather balls. This gives manufacturers much better control over seam height, stitch density and durability. It is simply a craft that has been refined over generations.

In fact, even SG comes from this exact tradition. Although it is now a well-known brand with more than 850 dealers in India and abroad, its roots are deeply local. The Anand brothers—Dwarkanath and Kedarnath Anand, moved from Sialkot (now in Pakistan) to Meerut after Partition in 1950. And what started as a family leather business in 1931 eventually grew to become India’s primary supplier of Test match balls to the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India), a position SG has held since 1994.

But the thing is, vegan balls don’t need the same kind of hand stitching. Much of that work can be mechanized. And it’s shifting manufacturing away from traditional, manual leather craftsmanship, potentially reducing the need for the very skills that thousands of families have depended on for decades.

Then there is the demand side. As we mentioned earlier, India’s cricket academies alone require around 40 lakh professional balls every year. But leather balls have a known weakness: moisture. Dew can quickly affect how they behave. Vegan balls solve that problem. If they get wet, you wipe them dry and keep going. So even if a ball like the Super 50 costs almost double that of a basic leather ball, which starts at around ₹250, academics may still prefer it because it lasts longer.

But as demand shifts to vegan balls, production is likely to move to machine stitching. And over time, it could slowly squeeze out jobs in the cottage industry that has been the backbone of India’s cricketing ecosystem.

And finally, there is the copy-cat risk.

India’s advantage so far has been manual efficiency. Countries like England and Australia already have brands like Dukes and Kookaburra. They do use some machine stitching, not completely manual methods because it’s just not economical for them. Indian manufacturers, especially in Meerut, pay workers by the piece, which works out to about ₹16–20 per bale. So you can imagine the profit margins made by cricket ball manufacturers when you consider that leather balls can sell for ₹4,000 or more, even after factoring in materials and other overheads.

Foreign manufacturers simply could not match this cost structure because they could not pay such low wages for such complicated crafts. But synthetic balls change that math. Once mechanization becomes viable with synthetic cricket balls, countries outside of India may start experimenting, investing more in machines and producing academy-grade balls at scale.

And if that happens, India’s long-standing lead in cricket ball manufacturing may no longer be as secure as it once was.

So yes, while the Super 50and more balls like that could reshape professional cricket, there is a flip side we can’t ignore. This risks hurting small workers who already earn very little for highly skilled craftsmanship. For many of them, this job is the only thing that puts food on the table. But as manufacturing slowly moves away from hand-stitched leather, that livelihood may be quietly slipping away.

Until next time…

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