On precise imperfections
Summary
In the age of AI-generated outputs, there’s still room for the glorious unpredictability of being human.
During an English county championship match, Greg Thomas, a quick bowler, beat Viv Richards’ bat a few times. Emboldened by the act, he taunted the West Indian saying, “It’s red, round and weighs about five ounces. Can’t you see it?” The next ball from Thomas struck the middle of Viv’s bat and soared outside the ground. “You know what it looks like. Now go find it,” said Richards.
Anecdotes like these dot the history of cricket — a game between bat and ball. It’s a balanced game when the ball can do things the batter can’t predict. The enigma of the five-ounce cricket ball has endured decades of gameplay. All balls start with a cork core under layers of worsted wool. Four pieces of premium leather, fashioned from the best cowhide, dyed in the immortal “Test match red” colour, encase this cork nucleus. But the magic of the SG and the Dukes balls, unlike their Australian counterpart, the Kookaburra, is in their hand-stitched seams. Yes, it’s 2025, and expert artisans still hand-stitch these balls into existence.
Hand-stitching gives the Dukes and the SG their resilient, “proud” seams. Those seams allow quick bowlers to extract movement in the air and off the deck. They allow spin bowlers to grip the ball and impart revolutions to the five red ounces. In a duel between bat and ball, the pronounced seams enable the bowlers to stay in the contest longer. Every hand-crafted ball has a unique character, which makes choosing the match ball a skill in itself. In contrast, the Kookaburra seam, which has two hand-stitched and four machine-stitched rows of thread, flattens out in about 25 overs. Batters who weather the initial storm can set themselves up for bulk runs from about the 30th.
Understanding the impact of a hand-stitched cricket ball isn't just about cricket. There’s always something to say about the unique signature of hand-crafted outputs, from the tailored suit to an artist’s canvas. From a master chef’s culinary invention to cricket balls. It's this human imprint that I find myself contemplating when I switch gears from watching cricket to my work in technology. Romanticising the Dukes and SG balls is a worthy indulgence in a time when we want to produce everything using machines, specifically AI.
As an AI evangelist, I support the efficiency gains from such means of production. AI can be a phenomenal partner, handling laborious data collation or automating the repetitive groundwork. But beyond a point, machine outputs lack character. The promising human-machine partnership can instead become an uninspired delegation of creative outcomes.
Take AI-generated slideware for example. These visuals look polished, no doubt, but they build on a decades-long legacy of death by PowerPoint. Slides are not the presentation. Slides only serve as the visuals to support a presenter’s story. The strongest stories emerge when a speaker’s narrative tightly interweaves with complementary visuals. It’s a symphony of form and function, often elevated by those human 'seams' — a spontaneous shift in vocal tone that conveys deep conviction, a perfectly timed, pregnant pause that builds suspense, or a slide that, while perhaps not symmetrically perfect, powerfully captures an abstract emotion. AI outputs still don’t consider such outcomes, often losing the enigma and magic of hand-crafted, human creations.
Like seams of the SG and Duke’s balls, there’s something about the “precise imperfections” (credit - Unmesh Dinda) of a human’s creations that a machine still can’t replicate. As companies push for more industrialised AI outputs, I wonder where we draw the line and leave room for human creativity and glorious unpredictability. I don’t have easy answers, but it’s a question I grapple with almost every single day.