Objects Of Fetish vii: Laver's got wood

The malleable, ultimately pregnable psyche of a batsman can turn to just one physical prop, and that's the bat itself. With its owner beset by doubt and by failure, never more than one ball from disaster, it's no wonder that the cricket bat becomes more than an interchangable tool (and if you don't believe it, just ask any cricketer a simple question - what was your first bat? - and then pin back your ears for a five-minute answer).

That it was once alive; that it is willow, the rare and ancient wood of diviners and dowsers; that it is hand-made using old tools; that its creation is dependent to a degree on the arcane knowledge and intuition of the bat maker; that it is, ultimately, a one-off, as individual as a fingerprint; all add to the feeling of destiny when the right one falls into your hands. Like Excalibur, there is, you presume, one out there that's got your name on it.

In an age when people queue overnight to buy an identikit phone assembled in sweatshop conditions, the idea that something is made so organically has a sense of myth about it. And never has the cricket bat been as fetishised: its last decade has been its most glorious. In the 70s it got sexy: the Scoop, the V12, the Jumbo, but in the noughties it got dirty; thick edges, massive profiles, deep bows. It has developed its own language, it has reinvented itself from nut-brown, hard-pressed utility club to bone white, shark-finned driver, its new-found power happily coinciding with the rise of a format of the game that would showcase it like never before.

There are more brands than ever; there are internet forums on which batmakers themselves are minor celebrities. In the same way that a bog-standard Ford car of 2012 performs better and is more technologically advanced than the marque of twenty years ago, so the standard, mid-range bat is unlike anything available to players of just a couple of generations back. There is probably just enough leeway in the bat's physical dimensions to allow the makers to tweak and spin each year, to let them salami-slice the market.

With that, there is now a prime cut, a slice so rare that it takes the object beyond function and into form, from artisanship and into art. Newbery, noble podshavers of Sussex, offer the Cenkos, a bat that costs a grand, made to the buyer's specifications. That though, however beautiful (and it is) is still a tool. Laver & Wood's Signature range is something very slightly different. In thirteen years, James Laver has found just 87 pods of willow good enough for the Signature, and the first of those he kept for himself.

The extraordinary thing about the others is they are supplied with an exact copy of the bat made from the next grade of willow down, "if you prefer to keep the Signature as a piece of art". It also comes with a display stand. It's strange and wonderful and slightly sad to think of a bat that might actually be too beautiful to use, and yet here it is. That James Laver makes them far away on the edge of the world in New Zealand, mailing them out once they are finished (and the bounty of $1,999NZ is handed over) only adds to the mystery of their creation. Even Laver himself is slightly in awe: "The finished bat is always a marvel to behold, and it is often a shame to let it leave the workshop".

Bats like that are at the very edge of actually being bats, unique and beautiful objects that transcend their purpose to exist simply as art, as examples of what can be done. They fire the imagination, not the ball.

Buying one...

This morning, a colleague pointed out that I'd snapped at her for using the word 'autumnal' during August. It could mean only one thing: the end of the season, with all of its unsettling melancholy, has slipped into view. Only a few more games now, and they already feel under siege from football, the X-Factor and other chilling harbingers of winter. This is always the worst time; for some reason once the last game's over it's alright again.

There is one consolation, though. The bat's done a couple of seasons; it's the nets only for the noble Gray-Nicolls from now on, and the sales are coming up. Not really joining the pantheon, that Nicolls, bloody nice bat, but have never really had the connection with it, that indefinable feeling of oneness that you get with your favourites. Found a few of them in a cupboard the other day, some of them decades old: a vintage County, Boycott-inspired probably, that always looked slightly wider than other bats; a beloved Slazenger with cracks in the face as familiar as my palm (pre-the really thick edges, that one, but still not bad on that score); a decent Powerspot gone in the splice; a Puma that enjoyed one outstanding day... always worth keeping your old bats, because they all hold something.

For a club player like me, the new acquisition has to be savoured, anticipated, relished, because they don't come around too often. There's no manufacturer knocking on our dressing room door with a van full of virgin willow, no sponsor keen to re-sticker with next year's look (though if anyone's interested, you know, I'll do you a little blog every now and again; give you an ad...), so the selection process should be long and thoughtful. 

Have seen some very nice bats out on the field this season. In our side there are a couple of Gunn & Moore's, an Epic right out of the factory with a ruler straight grain that picks up like a dream, and a handsome Luna; there's a glowing Laver & Wood with a supernatural middle; a Millichamp & Hall with some serious ping. In the various oppos we've faced, every M&H has sounded magnificent, and I'm big on how a bat sounds. Can't cheat on the sound it makes, and those boys have a deep, throaty bark that sounds like no other. Most impressive though have been a couple of old Newbery's. Both have seen better days, which makes them even greater, just generous, lovingly made bats that keep on giving and going. Die in the harness, they will, like a couple of aging shire horses...

The retro brands have a lasting nostalgic pull for me, especially the Scoop and the V12, two bats that have given me lots of runs, but no... can't go back, feels wrong. Can't go back in batting because I'm not that player any more, haven't been for a long time so have to resist. Good prices though, and affectionately done.

This time it feels like it has to be something new, a make I've never owned, something light and understated, not flash but definitely, quietly true, a bat that will bring sorrow in the parting when it comes. That's what I want, and I'll know it when I hold it. Sussex, Somerset and Kent are the places on the shortlist, so you can probably hazard a guess...

Objects of Fetish V: Screams From The Balcony

It hardly needs saying that a bat is more than the physical line of defence; it's a symbol, a totem, invested with dreams, subject to the forces of superstition and luck, the single prop for the vulnerable, suggestible psyche of the batsman - and if you've not got one of those you're either Viv Richards or not a batsman.

For much of the history of the game batmakers were behind the curve. The hints were there - WG wrote to Gray Nicolls to congratulate them on one of his blades, a sweet longing evident between the lines - yet the psychology only began to be exploited with the defining bats of the 1970s and early '80s, the Jumbo, the Scoop and SP.

Now though,with the epic re-invention of the object itself - the supercharged, hyper-tooled, bigger, deeper, thicker bats of the new century – the marketing has roared ahead into the areas in which men buy: sex, technology, power. As the bat catalogues come out for the new season, it's evident that the thesaurus has been well-thumbed, the copywriters have been blue-sky thinking. Neville Cardus it ain't...

So for the fourth annual survey of the goods on offer:

First the bats for men whose self-image is that of a velveteened, 40-ish Hugh Hefner, louche occupants of the top order, those who arrive at the ground in middle-age crisis cars - roof down, natch - in short, bats that sound like 1970s hairspray or pub-machine condoms: the TP Willow Rumpus, the Samurai Keibo, the Kookaburra Rogue, the Woodstock Curve Platinum, the Vulcan Apollo, the Chase Lancer, the GM Epic DXM, the Willostix Anaconda, the Matrrixx Gladius, the Black Cat Phantom, the Puma Cobalt, the adidas Libro, the Charlie French Recurve.

This year sees an emergent military theme, willow weapons for weekend warriors who talk loud, work in sales, arrive at the ground in two year old 4x4s that take up three spaces in the car park, who bat six and think of themselves as 'the finisher': the Newbery B52 Bomber, the Kookaburra Recoil, the Instinct Sniper Upper Class, the Hawk X-Bow, the Gray-Nicolls Quantum Warrior, the Hunts County Reflex Reckless, the Boom Boom Blaze, the Bulldog Spirit, the Choice Willow Teutonic, the Instinct AK47, the Newbery Uzi.

Joining them but with a more gothic hue are bats for the kids pushing for that second team place, who get dropped off by their dads and moodily re-read We Need To Talk About Kevin in the pavilion, who want a bat that sounds like an obscure Iron Maiden B-side: the Hell4Leather 666 Monster, the Gray-Nicolls Oblivion Slayer, the Willostix Medusa, the Newbury Mjolnir, the SAF Hades, the Choice Willow Immortal, the Vulcan Fire, the Hunts County Mettle Monster.

For the man who looks upon batting as a higher calling, who sees mysticism in its challenges, who trusts in luck and destiny, who is re-training as a counsellor and arrives in a nine year old Volvo on the back of which one of the lads has written 'clean me': the GM Luna, the Choice Willow Saladin, the Vulcan Zeus, the Surridge Ocre, the SF Saphire, the Solitaire Pink, the SAF Infinity.

There are some epic fails, of course: is there anyone under 50 who'd think that the Puma Bionic represents the cutting edge of bat technology? There is the totally left field: The Piri Piri Tampiqueno Dias Pro (although kudos for fitting it all on the sticker), and there is the frankly unintelligible: the Salix Praestantia, the adidas Pellara. There's also the mistimed marketing moment: it's hard to image the Gray-Nicolls Powerbow LE Strauss walking out the door on present form.

There must be a champion, though, and this year's award goes to a bat with a name that conjours almost perfectly one of the defining moments of the modern game: the SF Stanford. Perfect. Arise, Sir Allan...

Perimeter Weighted, baby...

Gray-Nicolls, supplier of bats to Mr WG Grace and other subsequent players of note, have some self-made videos on their site of various pros going into the factory to pick out their glowing, handsomely-stickered blades for the new season.

In serried ranks they lie, pods shaved to exacting requirements, a batter's dream. None of the players approach the task particularly scientifically. They do what everyone else does: pick a bat up, play a few air shots, cast an eye down the line of the willow. They might fuss later with handles and grips, but that initial acquaintance is all about indefinable feel.

The scales have their say. A man who likes a bat of 2lb 8ozs will never be seduced by a 3lb mutha, whatever promise of dominance it offers. Yet, as anyone who has buggered around with the game for long enough will know, weight, once narrowed down, is just a number. Two bats might tip the scales the same, but they will not feel the same, not today, not ever. Some bats of 2lbs 10oz will pick up lighter than others of 2lb 8, and there's not a scientist on earth who can say why, because it's as much to do with the physiology of the batsman as it is with the weight of the blade. That is the only explanation as to why a bat can feel one way one day, and another way the next.

There is a deep psychology at work, because a bat, ultimately, is all a batsman has. In it, he invests his future. It is prey to superstition, ritual, illusion. Ultimately, what matters is belief. If it feels right, then it is right.

Gray-Nicolls have this year [praise be] relaunched their most famous bat, the GN 100 Scoop. It's hard to overstate the rep this blade once had. In a TV era when bats were emerging as marketable objects of desire, the Scoop was revelatory, its spine gouged out and sacrificed for the mysterious promise of 'Perimeter Weighting' a concept so new it got its own sticker on the bat. Counter-intuitive it may have been, but the Scoop roared in the hands of Greg Chappell, Barry Richards, David Gower [who also used the four-scoop version, from memory] and of course Brian Lara.

Other batmakers were forced to respond. Stuart Surridge had the epic Jumbo; Slazenger came out with a V8 [or maybe V12...] which had a sort of shark's fin bump the back; Saint Peter, briefly used by King Viv and Tony Greig, obtained an impossible glamour before vanishing. But the Scoop was the one, a masterpiece of design and allure, an Excalibur among broadswords.

Part of its magic was the sound it made, a great hollow 'whump' that pre-dated the current, plosive crack. You couldn't help but feel a bit superior with a Scoop in the bag, and that was half the battle. I got my first hundred with one, on a distant field long ago, forgotten by all but me.

Its revival appeals to a nostalgic market. Today's player was barely born in its heyday. In the videos, they all get offered one at the end, like a sweet: 'wanna try a Scoop?' To them it seems like an oddity, its conception fatally flawed by the removal of that apparently essential mass on the back of their bat.

The hurdle is psychological. They've grown up looking down at sleek spines and thick edges. It may be a battle for Gray-Nicolls to get one in the hands of a pro on the field. They can't be persuaded by the legend, any more than they would be by the chance of using a bat like Compton's or Bradman's.

But then they have one thrust at them. The reaction is usually one of surprise. 'Picks up really nicely,' they'll say*. Hopefully, they'll chance one in the nets, and the ball will go from it like it always used to, and they'll realise the strange magic that this greatest of all bats possesses. After all, Lara got 375 and 501 with it, so it kind of works...

*That'll be the Perimeter Weighting. Probably.

Objects of Fetish IV: Bigger, harder, Thicker

Like a Steven Seagal revenge-fantasy franchise, each edition more fevered, more heightened, more alluring and more ridiculous than the last, so the new season brings its new weapons, its ammo, its bats.

Yes, it's bat catalogue time for the manufacturers, it's gear-test time for the mags, it's time-to-dream time for the buying public. This blog has been following the moment for the past two seasons [the first here, the second here] and reading back on them, the ramping up of commerce, the refinement of the sales pitch, become obvious. Bats are boys toys, like cars, like guitars, like bikes, like all that stuff, and men are simple to sell to: it's about machismo, it's about lust, it's about power. Cricket took a while to catch on, but now, the language is in place to frame it in that way.

Bats have been invested with emotion by their users long before they became consumables, because that is the nature of batting. It's about repetition, and like most things of that ilk, there's an obsessive edge to it. Its psychological demands mean that the bat itself becomes imbued with a kind of totemic power. Many pros and many amateurs are familiar with this odd psychic terrain, where the same piece of wood can feel one way one day and one way the next.

It's this conflux of urge and need that the manufacturers have tuned into. The bat, essentially unchanged for so long, is now a thing of technical and aesthetic beauty, machine-tooled yet natural, recognisible but reinvented for a new game that pulses with action and power. There are certain key adjectives that are common to all of the 50-plus batmakers and podshavers that have their wares on sale. Profiles are always 'massive'; edges are 'imposing'; bows are 'exaggerated'; middles are 'huge'; willow is 'prime'... If you don't feel rugged and ready to rock n roll with that lot on hand just below your waistband, then this probably ain't the game for you.

Sex and violence dominate the marketplace. From the same lingual category of 1970s men's mags, condoms and hairspray come the Willostix Anaconda, the Kookaburra Rogue, the Hunts County Envy, the Redback Surefire Performance, the Fearnley Magnum Super, the Adidas Libro, the Choice Black Prince, the Charlie French Recurve, the Ram Rambow, the San Andreas Erus Premier.

For those with the self-image of a destroyer, the lone-wolf hunter, there's the Gray-Nicolls Oblivion, the Adidas Incurza, the Hawk X-Bow, the Buffalo Bison, the Shark Tiger, the Bulldog Growler, the Warrior Grade A, the Choice Saladin, the Gray Nicolls Nitro Powerblade, the Samurai Tessen.

But the coming form is futuristic, faux-technological, suggestive of some new and weird science: the Woodworm iBat Gamma, the Gray Nicolls Quantum, the Vantage Lithium, the Puma Kinetic, the San Andreas Fabrica, the SS Matrix. They are shadowed by bats that allude to a kind of irresistible super-nature, an unstoppable act of god: the Vulcan Fire, the Newbery Krakatoa, the Black Cat Voodoo, the Hell4Leather 666 Monster, the Hunts County Mettle Cyclone.

Some have struck out alone, on their own esoteric little tip: Chase, from Hampshire, have, quite sweetly, the Finback, the Orca and the Beluga; Surridge have the Ocre, Charlie French the Aria and the Ovation, Gunn & Moore the Luna. Choice are probably trying too hard with the Teutonic, and Redback's Paradox remains in a baffling corner of its own.

This year's winner though introduces to the mix the kind of divine feel every batsman needs. Who wouldn't feel better going out there with a Hunts County Glory Almighty in their hands. Praise the Lord...

Objects of Fetish V: Bigger, thicker

I think I've seen a few of these bad boys on show in the domestic T20 competition, albeit [and inevitably] re-stickered to allow for sponsorship.

It's from Black Cat Cricket, a London maker of bespoke bats, and it's a far more intuitive response for the need for big wood in T20 than the Mongoose. The handle's longer, the blade shorter, thus keeping the weight - if not, you'd assume, the balance - pretty standard at a saucy 2lbs 8ozs [for Glamorgan last night, Mark Cosgrove had a standard bat of similar dimensions to the Joker - it weighed 3lbs 4ozs].

As for the edges - man, you could get the first few pages of Lolita onto them, and they couldn't be any ruder. You must get a little shiver looking down at those as you await the bowler. Oh yes.

Very superstitious...

I have a new bat. It's a freebie, thanks to a friend of mine who has access to such things. I am in his debt, because this bad boy has every flavour you might crave: a true, straight grain on flawless white, slim shoulders, a long, sleek fin on the spine that reminds me of the old Slazenger V12 and a deep, low bow made for English pitches.

Best of all, it tips the scale at 2lbs 8 and a quarter of Her Majesty's ounces, a rarity in these days of railway sleeper cudgels. I've been given several bats over the years, and this one is the first I'd say I might have picked out myself. It sort of flows; it's a magnificent thing.

I've taken it to the nets and it's all that it should be, given the limitations of its owner. There's just one thing, a little thing, a daft thing that's never happened to me with any new bat before, ever. The first ball I faced with it, I nicked behind. It was only from the bowling machine, and the nets were packed and noisy, so I'm the only person on earth who knows it happened. But you know, I know.

I'm not superstitious in day-to-day life. I don't care about walking under ladders. I'd screw up any chain letter without thinking. I sometimes count magpies, but that's about it. I've never been superstitious about playing, probably because it's only ever been a bit of fun, an escape.

I always think of Vinod Kambli, though - Vinod, that glorious and doomed enigma, damned by hubris, caste [allegedly] and mental demons, the man who ended up with nine rubber grips on his handle. I remember too Graham Thorpe's endless tinkering with his bats, Steve Waugh's red rag, Sachin's right pad and so on, ad infinitum.

Batting, like anything that demands repetition, has elements of obsession to it. It requires something from your inner life. When you bat, ultimately, you are alone in a team game. Even someone as iron-hard as Steve Waugh took comfort in superstition, or at least in repetition.

So the fact I nicked that first ball kind of bugs me. Should I not nick the first ball I face in a match, maybe it will go. If I do, maybe it'll go too. I'm just telling myself I'm not superstitious, either way. You?

Let there be light

Messing around in the nets last year, I picked up an old bat my dad found in his loft, a Gunn & Moore Maestro that can't have seen action for at least 15 years. Ripe as an old conker and half as dark, I expected it to split down the middle. Instead, with the bowling machine cranked up for some short stuff, it played like a dream. The ball didn't trampoline from the face as it would from a modern bat, but it came off well enough, yet the real surprise was how much more quickly it felt like I was in position. When I got home, I stuck it on the scales: 2lbs 4oz.

I thought of it when reading about the Hawk batmakers [sponsors of this man] and their new LPi10 bat aimed at women players. It is, they say, 'lighter than a conventional bat' - and starts at 2lbs 6oz.

It shows how time has shifted: well-known ladies like Denis Compton [2lbs 2oz], Dame Don Bradman [2lbs 3oz] and Mrs Geoffrey Boycott [2lbs 4oz, sometimes changed to 2lbs 3oz after tea if he'd been batting all day] would have chucked a 2lb 6oz plank back into the kit bag. As Bob Appleyard once said, 'Billy Sutcliffe had a 2lb 6oz bat and he had to have it specially made'.

The game has changed of course. Much like forged golf clubs that used to have minute sweet spots, old bats were made for uncovered wickets, and for men who had to be able to manouvre the ball. But it's easy to get sucked into using a railway sleeper because the odd one you hit in the middle really pings. I'm trying to find a bat that looks manly and weighs around 2lbs 8oz at the moment.

NB: Any offers welcome...

Pass the thesaurus, I've got wood

The first equipment catalogue of the year is out [like Marcus Trescothick, I luvvem] and the language of love is alive again. The first season of the new decade has an unprecedented number of bats available, described in an unprecedented number of ways. The copy writers - and surely they're now employed on this mission - have spared no page of the thesaurus in their search for a lucrative niche.

Bats are objects of fetish, of course, and this year, things have taken a sexual turn. There are bats to appeal to what Tom Wolfe once called 'BSDs' - Big Swinging Dicks: the Willostix Anaconda; the Kookaburru Kahuna Biggest; the Ram Rambow; the Gray-Nicolls Powerbow.

There are bats that sound like condom brands from the 1970s: the Choice Willow Black Prince; the Salix Pod Performance; the Fearnley Magnum Ultimate; the Gray-Nicolls Ignite Pro-Performance; the Adidas Libro Elite; The Bradbury M Players; the Surridge Duke.

There are bats for men who drive 4x4s and bat in the middle order: the Newbery B52 Bomber XL; the Gunn $ Moore Hero DXM; the Newbery Uzi SPS; the Warrior Classic; the Kippax Fireblade; the JMS Attitude; the Redback Surefire. 

There are the counter-intuitive: the San Andreas Fault Premier Willow; the Redback Paradox; the Surridge Enigma; the Duck And Run. There are the unpronouncable: the Salix Praestantia Performance; the Piripiri Naga Jolokia 5 Chilli.

Best of all, there are the incomprehensible: the Puma Iridium; the Adidas Incurza; the Newbery Mjolinar; the Gray-Nicolls Xiphos.

There has to be a champion, though. Some years ago, Viz comic ran a contest to name an imaginary car they'd designed. The winner, brilliantly, was the Satsuma Castanet. So the inaugural Satsuma Castanet Award must go to the choice of the inimitable KP, the Adidas Pellara.

'The Pellara means to beat, banish and push away',' runs the ad copy. 'It features Adidas-specific contours...'

Of course it does. How could you resist...?

Dirty little secret

The news that professionals quite often use bats made by people other than the manufacturer they are sponsored by will come as no surprise, but today is the first time I've seen it openly acknowledged.

Millichamp & Hall's Christmas newsletter arrived this morning [boys, it's still November...] and they included a nice farewell to Justin Langer [M&H's workshop is within the county ground at Taunton]. With it was a picture of 'one of the bats made for him by Rob, which he presented on his departure from Somerset'.

Sure enough, the bat made by M&H is stickered up as a Kookaburra. You have to feel for the batmaker, in his ghostwriter's role...

The sword in the stone

Like the monomaniacal cyberstalker I probably am, I often gravitate to the website of Millichamp & Hall, batmakers, where I sit with my nose pressed against the glass, dreaming of the day when I make the journey west to Taunton and have them make me a bat.

There's a new bat-sizing section on the site, for those ordering online. Ordering an M&H bat online is a bit like taking a plane to Las Vegas and then not actually getting out - why deny yourself the full experience? - but those who do are asked to complete a form with the questions:

Age:
Height:
Build - solid, medium, light [solid - terrific euphemism]
Batting position - top order, middle order, lower order [don't think you'll see too many of the latter, lads]
Level of cricket played - school, county youth, occasional, club, first class
Batsman - right-handed, left-handed
Most prolific scoring area - off side, on side, square of the wicket, straight
Deal mostly in - singles, boundaries, both
Highest score:
Type of pitch played on - grass hard, grass slow, grass indifferent, artifical
Weight of current bat:
Size and type of current bat:

There's something quite beautiful about the deduction that will go into the selection of a bat based on this questionnaire. It requires a rich knowledge of the game. I like to imagine the batmakers processing the info when you turn up in person too, and then picking up the draw knife to take some wood here, to leave some more there, to tailor it, to shape it, to make it fit.

I remember once finding a bat in a shop somewhere. It was not my sort of thing at all, a Stuart Surridge Jumbo with a very short handle. But it fell into my hands like a wand. I've never felt anything like it since [and I didn't have the money to buy it...] but I'll know that feeling again when it comes. It was like picking up Excalibur. So when I get to Millichamp & Hall, whenever that is, I'll know what to ask for.

'I'll have one of those lads. An Excalibur. Do me one just like that...'

NB: Tom Redfern has the video film of his trip to M&H on their homepage. The bastard. His writing on the subject is here, and just about says it all.

Phil Space: Inertial designed

Ad for Slazenger's 2009 bat, The Blade:

'Blade's unique profile delivers Slazenger's first inertial designed bat. The strategically crafted rear edge profile increases bat torsion stability to improve shot accuracy and performance'.

The fact that this copy comes with the exquisitely-tooled pay-off line 'As endorsed by Paul Collingwood' might have you thinking the whole thing is a wind-up, a discerning howl in the dark at the inexorable attachment of marketing bollocks to something as noble and beautiful as the cricket bat, but alas no. It's real.

The need to re-sell a product that has limited opportunities for redesign or innovation has led to the heightened language manufacturers are using, yet what they really need is a different kind of gimmick. Like any natural thing, willow comes in cycles, it has good years and bad. Maybe they should start selling it like wine, by vintage. 2009 - now that was a helluva year...

Seduced

Further to the post below, Ceci wondered what drives sales of bats to club players. It's a good question. A while ago I had the chance to speak to Rob Pack, who made bats for Puma [he's a bowler himself, naturally...] and the subject arose. He looked up from his drawknife and said wearily, 'the stickers. You've got to have good stickers these days...'

He wasn't being entirely serious, but they play a role. A new design that catches on works, too*. Classics like the Gray-Nicolls scoop [awesome bats, got my first ever hundred with one] and its offshoot the four-scoop that Gower used [I think] on his Test debut; Stuart Surridge's immortal Jumbo, wielded by Goochie and King Viv; the Slazenger V12 with its cool little hump on the back, and so on. 

The right endorsee plays into it too. Saint Peter got big on the back of Tony Greig wearing the mittens; Duncan Fearnley had Beefy during the 1981 Ashes; Woodworm were briefly huge with Flintoff and KP on board.

Ultimately though, I've only ever bought a bat on feel. Sometimes I've come out of the shop surprised by what I've gone for. I suspect a lot of people are the same. Would love to know, too, about the market in India and Pakistan, where the big makes aren't ones we see too often here. 

* There has to be a market now for retro bats. I'd love another scoop, however counter-intuitive the design. In the meantime, Jrod is debuting the Hawk, which will be worth reading...

Cost-benefit analysis

Stephon Marbury isn't famous in Britain, but he's a pretty useful NBA basketball player who did something that made a difference to his sport. Growing up he couldn't afford expensive branded shoes, so when he made it, he launched his own line, Starbury. They retailed at $14.98. Marbury didn't just endorse them, he wore them when he played. 

'If you take my shoe and a $150 shoe and cut it down in half, it does exactly the same thing,' he said.

Cricket bats don't really equate to basketball shoes. The quality and rarity of the wood, the skill of the batmaker, the intrinsic individuality, prevent it. But there's probably a similar emotional investment. And there's a certain similarity to the financial investment, too. Today I made a random, ad hoc chart of bats used and/or endorsed by Ashes players*:

Ricky Ponting Kookaburra Kahuna: £342.99

Gunn & Moore Icon DXM [Ravi Bopara]: £334.99

Adidas Pellara Elite [Kevin Pietersen]: £329.99

Adidas Incurza Elite [Ian Bell]: £329.99

Gray-Nicolls Ignite Pro-Performance [Andrew Strauss]: £324.99

Puma Iridium GTR [Andrew Flintoff]: £320.00

All of those manufacturers offer cheaper versions, made of lesser wood. But there are plenty of smaller batmakers who will make the equivalent for less, it's just that the players don't endorse them.

This isn't a criticism per se. The best are entitled to the best, and to the commercial opportunity. But imagine if someone like Marbury walked out in a Test match with something a little different.

* Stated recommended retail prices. Most shops knock a sizeable chunk off. 

Size matters

My dad was in his loft the other day, and he pulled down a vintage bat of mine from a trunk he'd last opened years ago. We looked at it and laughed. It's a County [now Hunts County] Insignia. It must weigh about 2lbs 4oz. It's wafer thin and so dark it seems to have been smothered in fake tan rather than linseed oil. It's maybe twenty years old, but on the evolutionary scale it's a fish that's crawled up onto the beach: it has more in common with Grace's bat than with Ponting's. 

We took it down to the nets. At first it was psychologically disturbing to face up with: I felt almost unarmed, outgunned. When I looked down, there was none of the testosterone-fuelled outrigging of the modern bat; no power bow or contoured spine, no massive edges or giant sweet spot or chrome-dream stickers. It wasn't named after a greek god and that worried me. If the ball missed the middle it didn't really go anywhere, and the first few that did hit the centre went in the air because the bat was so light I was through the shot before the ball had properly arrived. 

But then I cracked a few, and they went almost as well as any other bat. It was as much a mental as a physical adjustment. I wouldn't use it in a match, I wouldn't want to go back to it, but it taught me one thing: both the bats I'm using at the moment are too heavy. I'd forgotten how freely you can move with a feather in your hands. 

Driving home. I felt like a sucker. Without realising it, and despite telling myself I was far too sussed to be taken in, I'd bought into the myth of modern bats. I'd gone big and thick. Now I want something sleeker, slicker, sexier. Still big, but you know, not that big. 

Call them Ishmael

Tom Redfern has a mission, an obsession, to get a hundred, a maiden hundred and not just any hundred, either. This one must be a perfect hundred, or at least a perfect hundred for him, made 'against cricketers who rate themselves; against players who think they are better than you. It must come in less than fifty balls'.

It's one of the great beauties of cricket that a team game can sustain mad, glorious, destructive, overwhelming personal ambition. Tom's great quest reminded me of another, even simpler aim of an opener I used to play with. His desire was to hit the first ball of a match for six. That's it. That simple. The desire gripped his soul and would not let go. 

This was back in the days when sixes were a rarer currency. I was 13 or 14, just starting to play senior cricket along with age-group games. We'll call him Pete, because that was his name, a lovely man in love with the game. After twenty-odd years of playing, he was still to make a fifty, in part due to the pursuit of his dream. He opened the batting because he'd been at the club for as long as anyone, and there was no man there who wanted to deny him his chance. 

That chance was tougher because it was dependent on batting first, so sometimes he would go weeks without getting the opportunity. But when it came, well... Pete died often, but he never died wondering. He heaved at every first ball he ever received, short or full, wide or straight, good or bad. I would imagine he got more first-ball ducks than any other opener in the country, but he never adjusted his game, never thought 'I'll just bat and try and get that fifty,' never allowed reason to crush his vision, that pure and perfect vision of a bowler running in as the clock turned one, all heads pivoting as a new red ball sailed up and out into the endless sky. 

He never did it, or at least not to my knowledge. Tom Redfern is a much better cricketer, but I think he knows the feeling. 'Too many batsmen weigh risk,' he writes on the excellent, self-effacing blog that documents his mission. 'This is the credo all batsmen live by. After all we only have one chance, one life. From Test to village cricket, batsmen are wizened by risk'. 

His refusal to bow to that tyranny has cost him several ninety-odds, but it doesn't matter to him because they were just nineties anyone could have got. He has eschewed easy runs against lesser players because his dream of that first time, that perfect first time, sustains and nourishes him, enriches his love for the game. 

Pete did get that fifty. It came in an in-house game, the U-17 team I'd joined to play for against the men's side. We had some good players in that junior team, including a couple of very decent opening bowlers. They batted. Pete carved at the first ball, which missed everything. Then he carved at everything else, and miraculously, it came off. Balls fell wide of fielders, edges went for four. Finally he swung, connected again and the applause came up from the pavilion. 'Twenty-five years I've waited for that,' he yelled, his bat held high above his head, his face split by the grin that said every moment of the wait had been worthwhile.

NB: Tom has the most mythic of harpoons as he pursues his whale. He's been to Millichamp & Hall and had a bat made, a quest that has occupied my own dreams for some time. They are the wands of god. I must have one, but, like Tom, like Pete, it must be a particular one, made and bought when my bank account can bear it and, more importantly, when I feel like my game deserves it. Just call me Ishmael, too...

Joy of Six: The new language of cricket

The Atheist is at his arch best on the subject of Dolphins vs Cobras and Warriors vs Eagles, otherwise known as domestic cricket in South Africa. 

Dolphins, Cobras, Warriors and Eagles are 'franchises' that 'exist' with the aim of producing 'stronger top tier sides'. 

Given the position of the national team, you could argue that the structure has worked. But the names... The marketeers are here, boys, and they're not going away.

This month's Wisden Cricketer comes with the Good Gear guide, which adds to the new language of selling cricket bats. We've had the neologisms of bat brands: Heros and Icons, Ignites and Kahunas, and now the macho, hard-on, big-boy business of shifting them: 'enlarged sweetspot', 'maximum response', 'massive wood'. 

Feeling horny yet? Wallet opening like a desert flower?

NB: Also on fire was Jrod, saying all that was worth saying about the Antigua Test.

Objects of Fetish iii: talk dirty to me

Quiz: Which of the following are cricket bats and which are cars?

Turbo, Libro, Mettle, Steelback, Boomslang, Glory, Harlequin, Xiphos, Stealth, Vendetta, Catalyst, Hero, Ignite, Incurza, Ice, Pellara, Venom, Scimitar, Recurve, Predator, Advance.

Yes, well, trick question of course. They're all bats, although it's not beyond the realms of possibility that they are all cars as well. They are a part of the new language of cricket, or rather the new language of selling cricket. Bats - the good ones at least - are made the old way, but they are described and sold in the new way.

The new language has much in common with the language of cars. It's full of machismo, it's designed for men. Someone, somewhere is coming up with words like 'Xiphos' and 'Incurza', some real - Xiphos means sword; some invented - Incurza means nothing, but suggests some kind of heroic invasion. 

Someone, somewhere is writing copy for the brochures and websites, too, copy that describes a  'massive profile',  'mid swell', 'steep spine', 'huge sweet spot', 'extreme edge', 'imposing appearance'. Who wouldn't feel good looking down and seeing that lot in their hands?

It's a con, of course, and a fine one. Batting is about repetition and desire, and anything that involves repetition and desire invites ritual. Bats are fetishistic things, they are invested with emotion, with the dreams of what they can do. Every bat in the world is individual. You can pick up five that weigh the same and each one will feel unique. The same bat will feel different day to day, different depending on your mood. In the best possible way, they are intimate things.

Bat makers have made their language emotive, but when you're choosing one you must resist their words and their stickers. All that matters is how it feels when you hold it in your hands. And now I'm sounding like them.

A new bat is a meaningful purchase. They're not commodities, they are things of beauty, made by artists. They're seductive enough without the new language. 

And check out Jrod's new thing - it started me off. Bats do that.