Modern bats are usually machine made, however a few specialists still make hand-made bats, mostly for professional players. The Australian cricketer Dennis Lillee used an aluminium metal bat several times in 1979, but was forced by the Australian Captain to revert to a wooden bat after complaints by the English team that it was damaging the ball. The rules of cricket were shortly thereafter amended, stating that the blade of a bat must be made solely of wood. More recently than Dennis Lillee, Ricky Ponting used a bat (the Kookaburra Big Kahuna) with a carbon composite 'meat' (the large protruding area of wood out the back face) but the bat was altered by Kookaburra in conjunction with the ICC's demand.
Gray-Nicolls and Puma have created bats with lightweight carbon handles so that more weight can be used for the blade. The bats are the Gray-Nicolls Fusion, Matrix and Powerbow, and the Puma Stealth.
Gray-Nicolls has developed the DualT20 double-sided bat. Designer Stuart Kranzbuhler says the bat is made with a unique method of pressing the front and back of the English willow at high pressure (550lbs/squ in).
The batmaker claims this ensures a strong rebound and prevents splinting, cracks or fractures from ball impact. Gray-Nicolls says the bat conforms to the MCC's laws of cricket.
And now the latest invention has been the mongoose bats..
The Mongoose is tailor-made for the short format. Subtlety is not its strong suit. With a five centimetre thick base that boasts a sweet spot twice the size of that on a traditional bat, even the pace bowler's yorker can be dispatched to the ropes. It is yet another invention favouring batsmen, say critics.
The Mongoose bat is the evolutionary step that gives the batsmen an unparalleled attacking advantage in Twenty20 cricket. Its revolutionary design lets you hit faster, harder, straighter, further – giving you more fours, more sixes, more boundaries.
Its blade is 33 per cent shorter than a conventional bat and the handle is 43 per cent longer. This allows increased leverage that makes the bat quicker and easier to manoeuvre, allowing you to select your shot later, or change it in a split second. Scentists call it the bat’s MMi, or ‘mass and moment of inertia’. It determines the amount of effort required by the batsman not only to swing, but also control the bat during the swing. This makes the Mongoose a lighter, harder-hitting bat. And while it looks different to a conventional long-blade bat, when you pick it up its weight and handling feel pretty much the same. The splice, usually located in the blade of the bat, is incorporated into the handle, which ensures there is no dead spot in the hitting area of the bat. The Mongoose also reconfigures the shoulders by dropping them down nine inches. The weight taken from the shoulders – about 20 per cent of the blade weight – is redistributed to the back of the new, shorter blade. This allows the sweet spot to double in size, including in the previously defensive toe area, and for the profile of the bat to be increased throughout, with a redistribution of weight across a greater area of the bat.
Well, looks like in a few years we will not have bowlers at all.. Fill the side with batsmen and the same lot comes back to bowl.. Bowler's nightmare.. It doesn't encourage the younger lot in clubs and state level to take up bowling, when even a yorker can be hit for a four with the Mongoose..Takes me back to the famous dialogue that W.Grace once said- "They have come to watch me play and not watch them bowl" , when he was given out and he refused to leave.. Now, T20 cricket is the modern manifestation of W.Grace..
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