Trivia: While the seeking for lighter yet powerful bat continues, Sachin Tendulkar used to play with a bat that weighed 1.47 kgs.
The modern cricket bats by international players typically weigh between 1.1 to 1.4 kgs. In the late 19th century, the manufacturers started to use the sapwood of the English willow to design lighter bats for better manoeuvrability in shot making. The earlier bats were made from the heartwood of the English willow and comparatively weighed a lot heavier than the modern-day bats. The batting techniques also evolved from horizontal sweeping of the ball on the pitch to playing the ball upright with wider shoulders.Ĭricket bats were traditionally made from English willow woods, as they were considered to be lighter, tougher, and more shock resistant to ball impact. When the game moved to more roundarm bowling in the early 1800s, the bats started evolving with broader blades, higher swell, and lighter weights to allow more freedom in the movement and to react quickly to the speed and bounce of the ball.
When the bowling moved from underarm rolling to looping the ball in the air and allowing it to bounce on the pitch, the bat blades started getting wider at the bottom to accommodate the bounce. The bowling was understood to be underarm and the ball was rolled along the ground and hence the design proved sufficient to play the ball close to the ground. It is believed that the games were first played amongst the Shepherds community in England and hence the initial bats could have actually taken its form from the Shepherd’s crook. The oldest Cricket bat that is on display at the Oval in London traces back to 1729, and has very close resemblance to that of a hockey stick. Trivia: The law for the bat dimensions came into existence after the year 1771, when a batsman playing in the local English tournament came to the pitch with a bat that was wide enough to cover all the stumps. Despite the restrictions on the material and the physical dimension of the bat, the story of Cricket bat has been filled with plenty of adaptation to the evolving needs and with no dirt of innovation spirit. The idea of codifying the specifications of the cricket bat largely stemmed from the need for preserving the spirit of the game – to allow a fair play between the opposing teams. While there are 42 laws of Cricket that exist today, law 5 defines the precise specifications of the bat, including the material, purpose, measurement, and the grading to be considered while designing and using a Cricket bat.
These laws, controlled by a private club called Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) in London, had been codified and existed since 1700s. While cricket balls in local tournaments vary largely from soft tennis balls to leather balls, depending on where & who plays the game, the material aspect of Cricket bat largely remained as wood and has been consistent in the last 3 decades – except in a few rural locations, coconut tree branches are at times used as alternates to wooden bats.Ĭricket, unlike many other sports, is governed by Laws (not mere rules!) of the game. It is very hard to cross a town without noticing a cricket match played by kids on the streets. Law 5.71 & 5.7.2: The bat should not be more than 38 inches / 96.52 cm in length 4.25 inches / 10.8 cm in width 2.64 inches / 6.7 cm in depth 1.56 inches / 4.0 cm at the edgesĬricket, similar to the English language, is the Lingua Franca equivalent of sports in India.