Cricket Bat

A cricket bat is used by batsmen in the sport of cricket. It is usually made of willow wood. Its use is first mentioned in 1624. This specialised bat is shaped something like a paddle, consisting of a padded handle similar to - but sturdier than - that of a tennis racquet, which is usually cylindrical in shape. This widens into the blade of the bat, a wider wooden block flat on one side and with a V-shaped ridge on the other to provide greater air flow in the follow through and greater strength to the over-all bat. The flat side (the front of the bat) is used to hit the ball. The point at which the handle widens into the blade is known as the shoulder of the bat, and the bottom of the blade is known as the toe of the bat.

Modern bats are usually machine made, however a few specialists still make hand-made bats, mostly for professional players. Bats were not always this shape. Before the 18th century bats tended to be shaped similarly to how hockey sticks are currently shaped. This may well have been a legacy of the game's reputed origins. Although the first forms of cricket are lost in the mists of time, it may be that the game was first played using shepherds' crooks.

Most bats, when first purchased, are not advised to be used straight away. They often include a small manual advising, for the safety of the bat, to knock in the bat by hitting the surface with a cricket ball or a special bat mallet first. This compacts the fibres within the bat and protects the bat from snapping which would often be the case should the bat not be knocked in. It is advised by many cricket bat manufacturers, including Gray-Nicolls, Puma AG and Kookaburra Sport, that the time spent knocking the bat in should be around 3 to 6 hours. However it is worth it, as the bat becomes more controllable, manipulative of the ball and provides the user with more power.

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 kahuna icon) 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.