Of cricket bats and batsmen: The evolution of the willow

One of the most brilliant moments of the Champions League T20, 2011 was the scene before the semifinal between the New South Wales Blues and the Royal Challengers Bangalore. Before Gayle went out to bat, David Warner took a look at his bat and his reaction suggested that he had picked up a club. Not that David’s is no Goliath but Gayle’s bat was just out of the world. They showed a cross section of the bat. My jaw dropped as well.

Allow me to describe the bat:

Height: 3 feet 3 inches. (looks like 2 feet in Chris’s hands).

Weight: Somewhere between Mercury and Venus.

Handle length: Just about enough for Chris to hold it.

Width of the blade: Range – varying from the diameter of the Earth (at its thinnest) to the diameter of Jupiter (at the ‘sweet-spot’).

Material: Tree trunks (in whole) polished with carbon fibre.

Range of hitting: Generally, the moon; at times, known to reach Pluto. Edges generally take the ball out of the stadium.

In layman’s terms: Round long handle. Splice. Sweet spot. Sweet spot. Sweet spot. Bottom of the bat(slightly less sweet).

As difficult as it was, I tore myself away from the riveting action and looked up the history of bats. I was fascinated. It goes something like this. First, there were the dinosaurs. Then the meteor came. They all disappeared (Jurassic Park notwithstanding). God then made these little creatures of the night that scared Bruce Wayne in a well. Then came along Darwin to disprove God. Then came along Sachin to disprove Darwin. I digress.

Right from the days of W.G. Grace, the bats have been works of beauty with the curved blade glistening in the morning sun, reflecting the rays when the batsman lifted the bat to acknowledge the cheers of the crowd and shooed away the stray dog that ran onto the pitch. The bats then generally evolved with the blades, becoming less curvy and flatter. Some said this was what prompted Mr. Friedman to say that the world is flat. The world, after all, consists only of two things: cricket and the IPL.

Then came Mr. Lillee with his Aluminium bat and this created a mark, to say the least. I, personally, have nothing against the Aluminium bat. It did everything a bat ought to do: take the shine off the ball (it did take the shape off the ball as well but that’s just collateral damage), strike fear into the heart of the bowler and perplex the opposing captain. As with anything good (like ball tampering or pitch scruffing), the international council was quick to condemn Lillee and he had to stop using the brilliant contraption. How the umpires escaped Lillee’s wrath (and bat) with their heads intact remains one of cricket’s greatest unsolved mysteries.

The mongoose bat

The humble bat went pretty much unnoticed and kept producing offspring that mildly resembled their parents but with ever-growing waistlines. Then, a sudden mutation happened in 2010. In what has been hailed as a landmark in the evolution of species, a bat mated with a dwarf to give birth to a mongoose. Somehow, someone got the idea that the top and bottom parts of the bat served no purpose and hence could be done away with. Hence, the mongoose was the first real ‘all bat’.

Description of the mongoose: Handle, then a cuboid of wood.

Although the mongoose was only moderately successful, it gave rise to the possibilities of full sized ‘all-bats’. Which is why cricket, as it stands today, is hugely indebted to Darwin. His theory of evolution and the survival of species had taken bats to a newer level from where they are now ready to go bravely where no bat has gone before.

Chris Gayle‘s bat is but a step towards the attainment of the ultimate aim of producing a bat. One bat to rule them all. One bat to achieve the single greatest and sole purpose of bats in cricket: to help Venkatapathy Raju clear the infield.