The mystery of the missing balls

There appears to have been confusion over the dimensions and rigidity of the imported balls

English cricket was rocked yesterday when Patricia Hewitt, the trade and industry secretary, claimed that cricket balls would be a casualty of the escalating trade war between the European Union and the USA.

Interviewed on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Hewitt was discussing a proposed five percent duty on about 1000 different goods imported from the USA into the EU. "They include really familiar things like orange juice, ice cream," she explained, "and cricket balls, which it turns out are imported from the United States."

The news came as a surprise to many, not least the England & Wales Cricket Board who said that it was "not aware of any county which was importing the finished article from the States". The manager of the MCC's Lord's shop told The Daily Telegraph that he was "not even aware that cricket balls are made in America".

It would be expected that Dukes, the manufacturers of balls used by many county and international teams, would be aware of the threat from the USA. But owner Dilip Jajodia was equally bemused. "I am surprised," he told the newspaper. "The bureaucrats do not know what they are talking about."

The government maintained that cricket balls were flooding in from the States, producing figures which claimed to show that balls - diluted to include polo as well as cricket - to the value of £67,000 were brought into the EU from the USA between 1999 and 2001.

Few, if any, appear to have found their way onto the UK marketplace, so presumably the EU now has a pile of balls to add to its butter mountain and wine lake.