GOOD BATS ARE IMPORTANT FOR GOOD CRICKET

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 87, 18 January 1950, Page 7

GOOD BATS ARE IMPORTANT FOR GOOD CRICKET

Of all summer sports in the Bay of* Plenty tennis and cricket dominate. Tennis has a very large following while cricket is left to the enthusiastic males who like to spend their week-ends on the green. But cricket. does not have the appeal to the New Zealander it has to the Englishman. It is the Englishman’s favourite summer sport and Test matches snd village cricket alike hold magic for the keen cricketer.

But to play good cricket good bats are necessary and in one famous Nottingham factory 50,000 bats are turned out every year.

The bats are mostly of Salix Caerulea, Latin name of the closebark willow used for making the best blades. This’ wood comes in as a newly-hewn log and goes out, some eighteen months later, as a first-class bat with which the Bradman type can make a century and the normal kind of cricketer his usual few runs.

Life Time Job In this factory many of the employees regard their work as a life job. According to one visitor cricket bat craftsmen do their work by instinct. There are very few mechanical aids but what is seen is an elderly but dead keen eye glancing along a straight edge, then an unerring hand using a knife with a traditional razor-sharp edge to take off a thought here, a suspicion there, the merest breath of t a shaving there.

When choosing a bat, according to one of the factory experts, never go for a gleaming white blade. He advised getting one with a sort of marking on it that is known as the butterfly stain. This, so it appears, is like the hall mark on a gold ring, the guarantee of quality.