Every Dukes ball is handmade by experts and finished with a lacquer that was created by a Jewish man called Walter who escaped the Nazis and made his life in Derbyshire
hernhall Street is a largely residential road in Walthamstow, east London, just under an hour by public transport from the manicured turf of Lord’s: 10 miles away but worlds apart. No 241 is a two-storey grey-brick building, whose blue double door gives no hint of what is inside. The owner likes it that way. Enter and you are greeted by the smell of leather, and a swathe of red, plus a bit of pink, white and orange: boxes and baskets of cricket balls.
The company dates back to 1760, when Duke & Son was established as a manufacturer of cricket balls at Penshurst, in Kent. It received a royal warrant in 1775; at the 1851 Great Exhibition, the triple-sewn ball won a medal. In 1920, Duke & Son merged with John Wisden & Co, and in 1961 were amalgamated into Tonbridge Sports Industries, a joint-venture company that included Gray-Nicolls and Stuart Surridge.
Then he spotted a tiny classified advert in a cricket magazine: “Ball Re-Polishing Kit, £20 – does 200 balls.” He placed an order and a cardboard box arrived in the post. “Inside was a piece of wood with six nails [a kind of rack to rest drying balls], a paintbrush and three small tins: one of a clear liquid, one of a red liquid, one of a semi-opaque liquid, plus some instructions. That was it.
Cricket ball leather is measured for thickness and graded prior to shipping at the Joseph Clayton tannery in Chesterfield.“I don’t know how they knew each other. Barry just said they were family friends but he obviously knew Walter’s expertise in leather and asked him to come up with something that might work on cricket balls. Walter went away and tried various chemical concoctions, before settling on this liquid. It worked like a dream.
“One day, I got a call from Barry. Walter had died. It was very sad. He was obviously extremely old and had lived this incredible life. But I do remember blurting out: ‘Oh no and what am I going to do about the polish?’ Barry said: ‘Don’t worry about that. I’ve got some good news for you. After that first meeting years ago, Walter gave me a brown envelope and told me to keep it in my safe for when he died.’ Can you guess what was in the envelope? The formula – the recipe for the polish.
Still the breakthrough didn’t come. I realised I could view The Cricketer archive online and so would spend spare moments at home scouring the archive again in case I had flicked past it by accident, but there was no sign of Barry’s original advert.
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