Charting inventions in cricket bats

In some spare time a few years back I began to compile a record of patents relating to cricket bats. I now have a near definitive record for all patents published. An analysis of this data threw up a number of trends and notions around the inventiveness and capacity to invent in cricket playing nations. Some of these are instinctive, and some are revealing.
 
Bear in mind that this is a brief analysis of patents published. It does not include ideas and inventions or otherwise that were never patented, of which there must be many. The data provided here shows how human invention reveals itself in cricket bats, and I make a connection to their countries of origin. Not being a historian or social scientist I will leave more detailed interpretations and analysis to those with the knowledge to do so, but hope that any who do will share it and improve my own historical knowledge around cricket and creativity.
 
In total there has been (at least) 107 cricket bat related patents published since 1884.  On-line records show 100 patents going back as far as 1894.  An additional 7 have been found through research that date from 1884 to 1891. There may be a few more published patents hidden in the archives, although this is unlikely to be more than a handful.
 
The first graph below illustrates the frequency of patents applied or published by decades, and split between ideas for improvements in handles and blades.

Change required in cricket bat retailing

There appears to be a current trend in bat buying that might go something like this:
"I want a big edged bat with lots of meat in the middle"
"Here you are sir, this one should do nicely"
Cricketer swings bat in favoured strokes.
"Nah, it's too heavy.  I want one that looks big, but plays light"
“Ordinarily sir, I’d say wouldn’t we all! But today is your lucky day sir. We've just got these in this morning from India."

And so opened a Pandora's box that threatens some instability among bat makers using high-grade English willow.