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.


In the good old days of cricket at the end of the 19th and start of the 20th century there wasn't the need to control bat power in the same way. The high-tech material of 100+ years ago was india rubber, and used only for damping in the handle. A trawl through my cricket bat patent database reveals some quirky ideas in cricket bat handles being offered up at the time, and here is one…

In 1908 Summers Brown filed a patent to improve the cricket bat handle. Summers Brown Ltd manufactured bats in Finchley, and these were used by the legendary Jack Hobbs. In this interesting and slightly bizarre idea, Brown takes a solid cane handle and makes deep saw cuts along its length, then inter-weaving a rubber band to create the damping element (see image above). The end result created what was in effect three longitudinal rubber springs, but appeared to use an awful lot more rubber than was necessary. It probably made the handle too flexible and was likely to have a short life. Was the Summers Brown idea ever used in anger by cricketers, even Jack Hobbs? Did it work, or did it make the handle too flexible? I hope to find out one day through further research.

It appears that bat makers of this era were experimenting with improvements on the early laminated cane handle of the 1860s. The preceding 20 years from Brown's creation had seen a raft of patented ideas on the theme, some daft, and some sensible. The 'automatic' handle patented by L J Nicolls in 1888 used a curve profile to join two halves of the handle, and was used by W G Grace to score over 2000 runs and his 100th century. There were 15 handle patents in the 20 years spanning 1890 to 1910, compared to 5 blade patents. Ultimately most of the handle ideas proved unsustainable, being either ineffective or uneconomic to make compared to the flat slip laminated cane handle with flat sheets of cork or rubber springs, of the model that was finally patented by Gradidge in 1910 (see pic left).

The first use of cane for the handle and the method of manufacture from multiple pieces in 1853 has remained largely unchanged. The 1910 Gradidge concept appears to be an optimal design, and due to the constraints of Law 6, it remains so.

For the technologist and the progressive, cricket is a frustrating sport when it comes to innovation. If one of the worries of the new breed of bats was that 'mis-hits were now going for six' then is that not something the bowler can adapt to? Does it really un-balance the game? The Mongoose bat is legal. But surely this is designed for big power hitting, and consequently edges and mis-hits might also go for six? Is it therefore okay to permit the game to be un-balanced in twenty 20, but not in any other forms? If the MCC are going to be consistent then either the Mongoose bat should be banned, or the high-tech handles should be allowed to return.