It’s not the size, it’s the science: How cricket bats got smarter

In 2017, cricket’s caretakers got anxious as bowlers were getting hit out of the white-ball game. Playing conditions in white-ball cricket were skewed in favour of the batters as the scores kept getting bigger in cricket. Bigger bats became the talking point. Australia’s David Warner’s bat, an obscenely bulged piece of equipment famously called Kaboom then, became kind of an eyesore.Two years earlier, Barry Richards had sounded the alarm bells. “It’s just unrecognisable as a weapon. The only thing that seems to be common is they have got wood, and they have got a grip. The balls are just pinging off these bats so fast. I think they can get bigger and bigger until somebody gets injured,” the South African batting great had said, holding his own bat from 1970 in one hand and Warner’s jumbo bat in the other.To bring some parity to the contest, the International Cricket Council (ICC) decided to cap the size of the bats. The width couldn’t be more than 10.8cm, while the depth and the edges were limited to 6.7cm and 4cm, respectively.Yet, since then, the scores have only got bigger. There are other variables at play like the evolving skills of batters and the benign nature of pitches that offer negligible assistance to the bowlers. Yet, the weapon, as per Richards’ reference, got deadlier which could shred a bowler’s ego to pieces with a few swipes.The lop-sidedness of the whole thing even inspired Kagiso Rabada, that wonderful South African fast, to want to re-christen ‘Cricket’ to ‘Batting’.“The game has to progress somehow,” the Gujarat Titans player said recently, on the high likelihood of a 300-run total being breached at this IPL. “But I don’t think it can just get too flat, like every single game. It would take the fun out of it. You know, then you might as well call our sport Batting, and not Cricket… The most exciting games are the ones that hang in the balance. Requiring batters to apply themselves when wickets fall… or bowlers to step up in the same manner. It shouldn’t be about just survival for either,” Rabada reminded us.Rabada echoes the unsaid trauma of all IPL bowlers. Six-hitting has become an unassuming skill for the modern-day batter. More than the number of sixes being hit, the discussion has veered towards the distance the ball travels off the bat. medium120276965Evolved R&DICC’s restrictions, in a way, challenged the bat manufacturer’s ego. As we now witness more and more scores of 350-plus in ODIs and 200 becoming the par score in IPL, it’s a response to suggestions that size of the bats offered an unfair advantage.Paras Anand, CEO of Sanspareils Greenlands (SG), one of India’s leading cricket equipment manufacturers, busts some myths. “Knowledge of wood and cane used has improved by leaps and bounds. The focus has shifted to yield rather than judging a willow in terms of its grade,” Anand says. “Technology is computerised but hand-made craftsmanship helps us attain consistency.”The noise over bat size started only because the European manufacturers couldn’t nail the technique for bats with better yield, claims Jatin Sareen, CEO of Sareen Sports, another long-running gear manufacturer. “That bat in question wasn’t an Indian brand,” he says of the Kaboom. “They went about increasing the amount of wood on the blade. Today, players from all over are coming to get their bats made here because we have cracked the R&D.”Anand mentions how it was believed that if a bat had more grains, the better it was for stroke-making. “Earlier, top players would demand 12-15 grains in their bats. But these days, players are seeing results with even 8-10 grains. If one understands the wood, one doesn’t need more grains,” he says.Then, has the ‘sweet spot’ — that portion of the bat that offers maximum results — become bigger? “There can be only one sweet spot, which gives you the best result,” says Anand, explaining, “What has happened is manufacturers have succeeded in uniformly distributing weight all around the bat. That’s why one sees the ball carrying a fair distance even if the batter hasn’t connected perfectly.”Sourav Ganguly can corner some credit for the current-day evolution of the bat. According to Sareen, the former India captain perhaps first thought about modifying a bat to aid six-hitting in the early 2000s. “We learnt bat-making from Ganguly,” says Sareen plainly.“He was so clear about what works for what kind of stroke-making. He introduced the idea of having a heavier bottom, handles with better springs and focusing on the blade’s curvature. It soon became a template for other players, peaking when Yuvraj Singh successfully used a similarly designed bat in the inaugural T20 World Cup,” remembers Sareen.“What has changed is that the bats have a uniform curve on the blade and a little more weight at the bottom. It may appear that bats are bulky since they have broader edges, but none of today’s bats are as heavy as they used to be even during Sachin Tendulkar’s time,” says Anand.Sareen concurs: “The days are gone when players opted for 1.4kg or 1.5kg bats. The trend now is 1.16-1.18kg. The heaviest bat is used by Nicholas Pooran, around 1.25kg.” medium120276980Players’ attention to detailAs T20s demanded power-hitting, close attention came to be paid to bat customisation. Earlier, there were generic demands: Heavy or light, weight distribution, either bottom or higher up. It all depended on the pace and bounce one expected to play. Today, the intricate detail will leave you wide-eyed.Anand recalls Sunil Gavaskar telling him how he carried just two bats on tours. “All he remembered was that if he scored more runs with one bat, he asked for that to be replicated. Now, each player carries at least two customised variants and multiple pieces of each variant,” says Anand.In 2018-19, Mahendra Singh Dhoni pioneered using bats with pronounced curves at the bottom. With the idea to play bigger shots by having a thicker base for more meat at the bottom, he suggested the same to the likes of Hardik Pandya, Rishabh Pant and KL Rahul.Now, both sides continuously interact over shape, base weight, swing, stance and follow through. Pandya, for instance, worked with SG for three years to arrive at ‘his’ bat. “Today, it is normal to work with these players to achieve results to the last millimetre,” says Anand.“Pandya shared how he wanted results on certain kinds of deliveries — balls coming into him and how he wanted to get maximum leverage while trying to cut very close to his body. If you look, Pandya doesn’t swing wildly and often holds his shape while not looking at where the ball is travelling,” points out Anand.“Batters are very particular about the kind of bats they use depending on the rate of scoring. Suryakumar Yadav, largely a T20 player, has a flat bottom but heavier meat higher up because of the shots he plays behind the wicket. But Ravindra Jadeja has three variants for Tests, ODIs and T20s, since he plays all three formats,” Sareen adds.Players’ bat choices today are also dependent on match situations. Pandya, according to Anand, has a bat for when he comes in with plenty of overs left and is needed to build an innings. Then, he has developed a variant that aids power hitting much like a baseball player. “KL Rahul has three variants because he doesn’t have a fixed slot across formats. He bats from No. 1 to 7, so he is very particular about his bat,” Anand reveals. medium120277000Game of trustNo cricketer would attribute big hitting solely to his bat. Lucknow Super Giants batter Ayush Badoni tells of the many thankless routines to improve their hitting. “We can’t just only be dependent on the bat,” is his curt response. But, he adds, “I don’t tinker much. I have two kinds of bats across formats. That said, I do need to feel confident and know the willow that I have when I walk out to bat.”“It’s trust and constant feedback,” says Anand. “We can never believe that we have arrived at the absolute product for a player. The other day, we sent a bat to Rishabh Pant in the morning, and he used it in the match in the evening. That’s the level of confidence a player must have in the bat they use in top-flight cricket.”“Shreyas Iyer would give his feedback almost after every game,” adds Sareen.Today, balls flying into the stands has reached a point where big-hitting has become one of the early lessons in an aspiring cricketer’s journey, ranking right alongside a textbook defensive shot or a cover drive.Devender Sharma, Pant’s childhood coach at Delhi’s Sonnet Club, notes that even U-16 players today are aware of the big-shot bats. “They come to me asking for bats that would help them to hit big. These boys are exposed to the internet and they read about the bats. One can’t run away from the fact that IPL has become the premier ambition these days,” says Sharma.“Players who get deals with manufacturers at an early age try to customise their bats like senior players, while manufacturers are reluctant to customise much for U-16 boys. They offer standard bats but with the weight requirements. But these boys still keep at it,” he adds.