Wind and the Willow

Does wind 'stressed' willow improve cricket bat performance?
I had a conversation with a colleague recently about wind damaged willow, and its effect on making a cricket bat.  He had a piece of second-hand knowledge that in South Africa someone was making 'wind-damaged' bats that perform better than the standard.  At the time I hadn’t a clue whether this was true or not, so I tried to find some answers.

A little trawl of the web revealed the somewhat obvious that wind damage results in fibres buckled under compression, or fractured under tension. But nothing of any detail on wind damage relating to performance of bats. In conversation with Gunn and Moore they referred to 'compression creases' caused by wind damage, and some bats returned broken are logged under this term. Manufacturers will often replace a bat free of charge if such catastrophic breaks occur within one-year of purchase.

Tinkering with Law 6

This piece is about the MCC Laws of Cricket, and the changes to Law 6 (the bat) made in October 2008. Two innovations in bat making sparked this eventual reaction from the MCC.  They don't get called on very often. Since the first codified rules were written in 1744, the chronology of changes affecting the bat is, 1774 (first rule for the bat), 1809, 1979, and 2008.

In this latest episode, the first innovation was the colourful (or glaring) glass-fibre sheet covering the back of the Kookaburra bats launched in December 2004.  The second is the carbon-fibre composite bat handles produced by Newbery, Puma, and Gray Nicolls from 2006.  The changes might have made some sense to protect the spirit and balance of the game had the Mongoose bat not appeared in 2008 and be declared legal.  I’ll explain.

Dad's Army - The Test

This piece is not about bats.  I’m taking the liberty to remind those who have never seen it to watch an episode of Dad's Army called 'The Test'. It's episode 10 in series 4, and is the funniest dramatised game of cricket you will ever see. Granted that humour is subjective, and you might say "what's funny about a bunch of old men playing cricket badly". But for lovers of cricket and classic situation comedy it should bring a big smile to your face, and maybe a few titters. Yes it's dated, being first broadcast in 1970, but there's much that is familiar to us today because after all it's a cricket match, played then as it is now. I challenge anyone who has played village cricket not to recognise something of themselves, or an experience that resonates in The Test.

Patents from the archive….high-tech handles

Over the last three years there has been a spate of innovation in cricket bat handles, with carbon-fibre and graphite materials introduced to improve bat performance. It echoes a previous burst of creativity at the start of the last century, but this time the guardians of the rules, the MCC, have taken a dim view of all this new cleverness by the manufacturers. The MCC decided the trend would tilt the balance in favour of the batsmen too much, where ball, pitches and boundaries have remained unchanged. So they modified Rule 6, and allow only 10% of 'non-wood' material in the handle. This constraint now ensures a continuation of the laminate cane handle with flat springs we all know well, which was first seen patented by Henry Gradidge in 1910.

One size doesn't fit all

Newbery, the UK cricket bat maker, has launched a new bat called the 'chic'. It's a bat designed and scaled specifically to suit women, http://tiny.cc/1o5S2. Let's get the obvious and trivial out of the way first. I guess the chic is meant to be 'sheek' a la fashionable, but it's inevitable that the blokes are going to call it the 'chick'. I suspect a name change for next season.

Nothing like a joke to kick things off

While thinking of what to write of any substance I thought why not start with a themed joke.

Patient: Doctor, doctor, I have a cricket bat stuck in my ear
Doctor: How's that?
Patient: Don't you start!