One of the fundamentals of cricket will change today and for once it should be
the bowlers who will benefit. Bats are to be defined with unprecedented
precision in a new law that has taken four years to come to the vote. In
particular the handles, and the materials of which they are made, are to be
defined for the first time in an extended and reworded Law 6.
The required two thirds majority of MCC's 18,000 voting members is expected at
a special meeting that follows the AGM at Lord's this afternoon. The change
is timely. At the top level grounds are getting smaller as new stands are
built; cricketers are fitter and stronger; and heavy bats are thicker where
it matters, yet lighter in the pick-up because of artificial materials such
as carbon fibre and graphite. The consequence is that far more sixes are
being hit, especially when Twenty20 matches give a licence to slog beyond
boundaries sometimes less than 60 yards away.
That may be good news as far as spectators are concerned because most people
enjoy sixes - the suffering bowlers are the obvious exceptions - but in
great profusion they become unacceptable if the balance between bat and
ball, on which the game depends, is weighted too heavily towards the
batsman. Heavy bats and their bigger sweet spots have been a talking point
in cricket for years, especially among slow bowlers, but the general opinion
has been that stronger players and heavier, thicker, better balanced blades
have marginalised all but the best spinners. Few have taken much notice of
what has been happening to handles.
“The bat speed of a 2lb 10oz bat these days can be as fast as it used to be
for one of only about 2lb 4oz a few years ago,” Peter Wright, the managing
director of Gunn & Moore in Nottingham, said. He understands and accepts
the reasons for the change but added: “My only concern is that the law is
now going to be very fastidious.”
Since the width of the bat was confined to 4.25in (after “Shock” White used
one the width of the stumps in 1771) and the length to 38in in 1835, the
only significant change to the law on the bat was the stipulation in the
2000 code that its blade should be made “solely” of wood, after experiments
with aluminium bats in the late 1970s. The Kookaburra bat used by Ricky
Ponting and others had a part-graphite cover that increased “durability and
strength by minimising negative flex”, according to the publicity. It was
banned by MCC, supported by the ICC, two years ago.
MCC's research included consultation with nine bat manufacturers in England,
India and Australia. John Stephenson (formerly of Essex, Hampshire and
England), the assistant secretary in charge of cricket, says that handles
are being defined because recent changes could be seen as “the thin end of
the wedge”. Traditional bat-making techniques will not be affected by the
new law, which insists that handles must be made principally of cane
(bamboo) and wood, with twine binding and rubber grips, and a maximum of 10
per cent rubber or cork springs to reduce vibration.
Bats are to be graded A, B, or C, with those made from lower-grade willow
allowed extra covering to keep their price down and stop them from breaking
easily. The highest grade, A, may be used at any level and any amateur
player who has bought a bat that will become illegal under the new law will
be allowed to use it “for the rest of the bat's natural life”.
In time, I believe that the thickness of the blade may also have to be
limited. The difference between bats used by professionals today and those
of not much more than ten years ago are obvious. The middle of a modern bat
is about three times as deep as it used to be, making them by coincidence
much more like the original 17th-century “clubs”. The edges of the bat used
by a big-hitting player such as Kapil Dev, the India all-rounder, who
famously hit four sixes towards the Nursery End at Lord's off Eddie Hemmings
in a Test match in 1990, were about three quarters of an inch thick; now
they are 2 inches. Yet Brendon McCullum, the big-hitting New Zealand
wicketkeeper, carries at least five new bats and frequently discards them.
Kapil used a bat of medium weight, somewhere between the 2lb 3oz bat favoured
by Don Bradman and the 2lb 13oz monster used today by Sachin Tendulkar, the
modern master who, at 5ft 5in, is almost 2in shorter than Bradman was.
Tendulkar is stronger than the most prolific player of them all (Bradman
seldom hit sixes), but there is more to it than working to build arm and
upper-body strength in the gym. His recent arm injuries may be a consequence
of using too heavy a bat, but he can move his willows almost as quickly
because they are so superbly balanced, both by lighter handles and skilful
pressing designed to give his bats maximum flexibility.
The changed law follows action to curb technology in other sports such as
golf, whose lawmakers, the Royal and Ancient, finally took a stand against
the ever increasing distances that balls could be hit by banning drivers
using the “springboard” effect. “Tennis, hockey and baseball have all had
problems in dealing with the advancement of materials,” Stephenson said.
Not every manufacturer is happy, particularly the East Sussex firm of John
Newbery, which spent three years researching means of developing a more
powerful bat with a lighter pick-up and came up with a patented process
known as Carbon Core Technology, a hollow carbon-fibre rod (made from the
same material as a fishing rod) sheathed in foam and joined to the blade by
a wooden tube. It was approved by MCC in prototype in 2003. “We feel there
should be some financial compensation,” John Newsome, the manager at the
firm's base in Hove, said.
About 40 of the world's best batsmen, including one of the most famous, who
cannot be named because he uses another firm's “cosmetics”, use bats made by
Newbery's master bat-makers, the Keeley brothers, Tim and Nick. They make
about 5,000 bats a year compared with Gray Nicholls, their near neighbours,
which produces some 35,000 at its factory in Robertsbridge. “Most of the top
pros find the carbon handles too flexible and don't use them,” Nick Keeley
said.
Amateurs disagree. The handles make a bat 3oz lighter, allowing maximum wood
in the bowed area just below the middle of the blade. As from today, sadly
for Newbery, the innovation will go the way of Concorde.
