Keeping a leash on bat revolution

Apart from its width, officials have grappled every time an innovative bat had ‘threatened to steal’ the show

2017 was a bad year for one of cricket’s most destructive batsmen. Before sandpapering the ball made him infamous, the Marylebone Cricket Club had deprived David Warner of his favourite Gray Nicolls ‘Kaboom’ bat.

In early 2017, MCC, the conscious keeper of the sport, announced a slew of rule changes among which was the restriction in bat size. The modern game had tilted heavily in favour of batsman, and something had to give. The Australian had reported in December 2016 that Warner’s T20 bat had a maximum depth of 85mm, 18mm more than what the proposed MCC rule change would allow. \

“The bat size issue has been heavily scrutinised and discussed in recent years,” MCC’S head of cricket John Stephenson said. “We believe the maximum dimensions we have set will help redress the balance between bat and ball while still allowing the explosive, big-hitting we all enjoy.”

Significantly, the bat width was left unchanged. Warner disagreed. “In my mind it’s credit to the bat-maker, because he’s told he can use one cleft of wood. If he can use his brains and technology to make a bat light and large, then it is credit to him,” he said. Perhaps unknowingly, Warner hit the nail on the head as far as history of bat-making is concerned – 247 years ago, it was another bat maker, and Warner’s 18th century counterpart, who had forced the powers that be in cricket to change bat dimension that would survive two-and-a-half centuries.

MORE BOARD THAN BAT

In September 1771, Thomas ‘Daddy’ White, a Surrey and Allengland all-rounder, went in to bat for Chertsey at Laleham Burway in Surrey. He was play- ing against Hambledon, founded in Hampshire four years earlier and which would be the leading club in England for the next 30 years. Much like boxing contests of the time, it was a match played between two top sides for high stakes, originally £50-a-side but with larger stakes accruing as the game progressed.

White was a recognised player and would go on to play 33 First-class matches, scoring almost 1000 runs at an average of around 16. But that day, he was determined to score enough for his team to beat Hambledon, and in an effort to negate getting bowled, walked in with a specially-made bat.

Contemporary accounts talk about how he “tried to use a bat that was fully as wide as the wicket itself.” Hambledon objected, and some players seized the bat while others took it to find a carpenter to shave it to more acceptable dimensions.

Hambledon’s leading wicket taker and opening bowler Thomas Brett filed a complaint and a meeting took place at the club where it was decided to limit the bat width to 4-1/4 inch, a ruling that was signed off in the club minutes by Brett, club captain John Nyren, and their star batsman, John Small, who was also a bat-maker.

The law was formally changed three years later, and the bat width would thereafter remain unchanged.

CRICKET’S GRAND CHURN

The longevity of this law can however only be appreciated when we look at how the rest of the game has changed. The LBW law would only come into effect in 1774 and the MCC would be founded in 1787. A year later, MCC would take over the determining of cricket laws. Cricket had been a game where bowlers delivered the ball underarm. Only in 1828 did MCC allow the bowler to raise his hand level with the elbow, and it was in 1864 that over-arm bowling became legal.

Until 1889 an over comprised four balls, which changed to five, and it was only in 1900 that the six-ball over came into being. Only in 1931, a year before India made their Test debut, did the stumps take on their current size - 28 inches high and 9 inches wide.

Indeed, until another match between Kent and Hambledon in 1775, there were only two stumps used. Kent’s Lumpy Stevens bowled a batsman thrice with the ball passing between the stumps each time without dislodging them. The batsman survived, and won the match for his team. Stevens lodged a protest and the middle stump was introduced.

What about the bat? While its width remained unchanged, the rest of it underwent myriad changes. In the 1960s, Slazenger introduced the first shoulder-less bats – New Zealand’s Lance Cairns made it famous in 1983 by using his ‘Excalibur’ shoulder-less bat to hit a 21-ball fifty with six sixes, including a one-handed maximum off Dennis Lillee.

In the 1970s, Warsop Stebbing introduced the two-sided bats, where the wood from the centre of the rear of the bat was removed, making it lighter. In this T20 age, this makes it easier to play switch hits (see box on bats).

Cricket has gone through enormous change in terms of laws and equipment over twoand-a-half centuries, but it is incredible that other than the 22-yard pitch that was introduced in 1744, nothing but the width of the bat has survived the ravages of time.

As the modern bat celebrates its 247th birthday this week, the likes of Murali Vijay and Shikhar Dhawan, recovering from the summer nightmare of the swinging Dukes ball, will doubtless be wishing that Thomas White’s experiment with the wide bat in 1771 had met with unqualified success.

Dennis Lillee menaces Allan Border with his controversial aluminium bat.