MODERN BATS - DOES SIZE REALLY MATTER?

Gray-Nicolls' Chris King - personal bat-maker for England's Alex Hales and Alastair Cook - busts the big bat myth...

Gray-Nicolls' Chris King - personal bat-maker for England's Alex Hales and Alastair Cook - busts the big bat myth...

Cricket balls are being hit harder and travelling further far more often.

To the untrained eye, the huge bats being wielded by modern batsmen are largely responsible for such a run hike.

“I get worried when bats are really big and really light,” Ricky Ponting said in 2016, while Mike Brearley has commented that, “The time has come to restrict the size of bat edges – the game is tilted too far in the batsman’s favour.” 

Both men sit on the MCC World Cricket Committee, so advocated new rules that will limit the size of bats from October 2017, in an attempt to stop mis-hits and edges flying for boundaries.

But cut a little deeper and the science behind the theory isn’t quite so convincing.

 

Chris King, bat maker for Alastair Cook, Alex Hales and several others, explains to the Betway Insider that there is much more to modern run-scoring than the size of a piece of willow.  

“Everybody gets obsessed with the shape of the cricket bat, but the actual power comes from how well the piece of wood is pressed.”

"But that is an area of bat making that most people don't understand. They assume it's just the size. If it was that easy, it would be a lot easier to make a good cricket bat.

"I often joke with people on social media that it’s like saying a Ferrari is fast because it's red. It completely undermines what the engine is.”

A recent experiment conducted by an ex and current England international suggests some significantly more telling factors behind modern strength.

“There is a lot of belief that it must be the big bats, whereas actually it is a lot more to do with the professionalism of the sport,” King says.

“They play different shots now.

“Sky did a thing with Jonny Bairstow and Nasser Hussain. They faced six balls each and Nasser couldn’t even get it to the boundary – and he’s no slouch. 

“I made both the bats they were using. Nasser was using Bairstow’s second bat from the same pair, so I know they were the same. 

“Nasser asked, ‘Why can’t I do it?’, and Jonny replied, ‘Because you’re hitting it wrong, your position is wrong, and you need to get in the gym!’

Hardly just the bat, then. 

Yet the brutish size of the modern-day thing is, undeniably, striking. That, as King explains, is down to the example set by influential figures.

“It tends to be driven by the top end of the game,” he says. 

“All it takes is somebody like David Warner to be constantly getting it over the boundary while using a very obviously large cricket bat and everybody sees it as a shortcut to being successful.    

“That is also supported by commentators, because they are ex-cricketers from the ‘70s and ‘80s who see these guys hitting boundaries all the time, hitting massive sixes, and the first thing you see is the fact that their bat is different to what you used to have.

Really, though, it is all in the head. 

The imminent rule changes will affect nothing, according to King – “Bat makers all find it quite funny because literally they are going to have no change whatsoever” – and he doubts how much further bats can really evolve.

That will not stop everyone concerned eking out every advantage they can, though. 

“To be honest, the dimensions that they have given us aren’t that terrifying anyway,” he says. “It’s not like they’re going back 20 years.”

“I often say that as manufacturers we’re a bit like Formula 1 now, in that we take the materials and push them to their absolute limit. 

“Can we go any further with it? I don’t think we can because we’re restricted to certain materials and by the laws of cricket.”

He pauses and laughs. 

“I guess it’s the bowler’s turn next.”