5 most famous bat sponsors in Indian cricket

Bat sponsorship is a great way to improve brand visibility
Bat sponsorship is a great way to improve brand visibility

Cricket is a great sport for a brand to promote itself. It is the nature of this beautiful game that makes it an ideal platform for the brands/companies to market themselves. With advertisements after every over and fall of wickets combined with a relatively long game duration if compared to other sports, cricket gives the brand tremendous visibility. There are dozens of ways to market a product or the brand in cricket.

Hoardings on the ground, advertisements on television and title sponsorship are more explicit ways of promoting. Having your brand's name or logo on the team's jersey or a player's bat are implicit techniques. Bat sponsorship is a fantastic marketing tool albeit its success is subject to the batsman's performance.

Consistently performing batsmen attract big brands which are willing to pay big bucks for bat sponsorship deals.

Cricket has an enormous fan base in India and with the exponential growth of television viewers over the last two decades, brands have been increasingly interested in exploring various marketing strategies and bat stickers are one of them.

Here is the list of 5 iconic bat sponsors which have found a place on the bats of some of the greats of Indian cricket.


#1 MRF

MRF sponsors bats to world's best batsmen
MRF sponsors bats to world's best batsmen

The awe-inspiring image of Sachin Tendulkar's elegant straight drive and Virat Kohli's ravishing cover drive has one thing in common - the iconic MRF bat.

MRF stands for Madras Rubber Factory - the largest manufacturer of tyres in India and fourth largest in the world. MRF has a very well thought-out strategy of sponsoring only the world's greatest batsmen and a few extremely promising young talents. The word genius in the bat sticker design signifies two things - one the batsman using MRF bat is a genius at and two, MRF is a genius at doing its work.

MRF has sponsored bats for batting legends like Sachin Tendulkar, Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers, Steve Waugh and Brian Lara. It has also sponsored young Indian batsmen like Sanju Samson and Prithvi Shaw.

MRF pays a hefty amount of money to these cricketers for bat sponsorship. Virat Kohli renewed the deal with MRF in June 2017 at a mind-boggling deal price of over Rs. 100 crore for a period of 8 years, a massive jump from a previous three-year contract priced at Rs. 8 crores.

#2 Britannia

Britannia is one of the pioneers of bat sponsorship in India
Britannia is one of the pioneers of bat sponsorship in India

Britannia is a very familiar name in Indian households for its food products, especially for its wide variety of biscuits. Britannia and Parle, both giants of the Indian food industry, have always competed fiercely with each other in terms of variety offered, quality, pricing and marketing.

Sponsoring cricket bats was a fresh marketing strategy in the 1990s and not many had dared to use it to improve brand recognition and thus sales. Britannia decided to go ahead with it and started a full-fledged bat sponsorship campaign on boarding the goliaths of Indian batting - Rahul Dravid, Virender Sehwag, Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman.

This idea of tapping in on Indian audience's new love for watching its favorite game on TV paid off for the food giant Britannia and gave the brand great visibility and recognition.

Although Britannia has not sponsored bats since quite some time now, it is considered to be one of the pioneers of this novel idea.

#3 Hero Honda

Hero Honda sponsored attacking Indian batsmen like Virender Sehwag
Hero Honda sponsored attacking Indian batsmen like Virender Sehwag

Remember the swashbuckling Indian opener Virender Sehwag destroying the opposition bowling or the southpaw Yuvraj Singh bludgeoning Stuart Broad for six sixes in an over or Sourav Ganguly - the king of off-side cutting the bowlers for boundaries and sixes? They all had Hero Honda (now Hero MotoCorp) stickers on their bats.

The motorcycle company was impressed by the power hitting of Sehwag, Yuvraj and Ganguly and their capability to score fast. With power and speed being the key attributes for a motorcycle, Hero Honda was very keen on signing a bat sponsorship deal with these batsmen.

As soon as Sehwag's contract with Britannia came to an end, Hero Honda quickly pounced on the opportunity and signed him. Same was the case with Ganguly as well.

Hero Honda, a joint venture of Hero and Honda was dissolved in 2010 and later became known as Hero MotoCorp.

Hero continued its collaboration with Sehwag and it proved to be fruitful as he scored a record-breaking double ton in an ODI against West Indies with the Hero MotoCorp sponsored bat.

#4 CEAT

CEAT recently extended bat sponsorship deal with Rohit Sharma for three years
CEAT recently extended bat sponsorship deal with Rohit Sharma for three years

CEAT tyres is a flagship company of RPG group and the one the largest manufacturers of tyres in India. Over the years, the marketing strategies employed by CEAT through their advertisements have been ingenious and in a way path-breaking if we talk about tyre ads. Parting with jargons in ads, CEAT tries to pitch the product and its features in terms of real-world experiences.

A scintillating limited overs batsman for India - Rohit Sharma - is one of the finest batsmen that CEAT has sponsored bats for.

Rohit Sharma's ability to play long, free-flowing knocks and getting glued to the crease makes him an ideal candidate for CEAT as its USP is of designing long-lasting tyres with a strong grip.

CEAT recently extended the bat sponsorship contract with Rohit Sharma in October 2018 for a period of three years.

Other players who have bat endorsement deals with CEAT include Ajinkya Rahane, a couple young guns in Shubman Gill and Ishan Kishan and the powerful women's team batter Harmanpreet Kaur.

#5 SS

SS is one of the most well-known bat manufacturers and sponsors
SS is one of the most well-known bat manufacturers and sponsors

Headquartered in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, Sareen Sports or famously abbreviated as SS is one of the largest manufacturers of cricket equipment in the world. Growing up in India, playing the game of cricket on different maidans across the country, the young and zealous future cricket stars of India have always had one thing in common - the SS cricket gear. Founded in 1969, SS is India's one of the oldest cricket equipment brands and its name has become synonymous with cricket.

The three primary factors which led to SS scripting such a grand success story are quality of products, competitive pricing and intuitive marketing.

The bat sponsored by SS was etched in the history books when India's God of fourth innings VVS Laxman scored a monumental 281 against Australia at Kolkata with that very bat.

SS bats were also used by International cricketers like Kumar Sangakkara and Kieron Pollard.

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Edited by Akarshak (Ishu) Roy