Many types of wood have been used in the manufacture of cricket bats but history has proven only one type - WILLOW - provides the necessary springyness, strength and compression liabilities to make the perfect cricket bat. Avoid at all costs bats made from other woods like poplar (often used in low priced beach cricket sets) which are simply not up to the job for a proper cricket bat. There are essentially three types of willow used today to make cricket bats; English willow, nurtured abroad English willow and Kashmir willow;
OK, so we've explained the three types of willow available in the market but what about the grade?! Each type of willow is graded, clefts are often graded on appearance, ie number of grains, how straight are the grains, is there any brown/heart wood, are there any knots, marks or blemishes. Unfortunately there is no universal grading system, each supplier of willow and maker of cricket bats will offer their own system. What follows can really only be a summary of the various characteristics often used in the market place. JS Wright state a grade 1 willow cleft shall have a minimum of 4 straight grains, now if we sold you a grade 1 bat for £200 and it came with only 4 grains would you be happy? No, I thought not .........................................
FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions
1) What about Grade A, B, C that I've heard something about?
Grades A,B and C are nothing to do with the quality of the willow. These are new regulations brought out by the ICC to cover the increasing use of non-wooden materials in cricket bats. The basic laws of cricket state a bat must be made of wood, however recently more and more manufacturers are using other materials (eg, kevlar, carbon fibre and titanium) in their bats and also facing and protecting them with rubber toe guards and plastic faces. The grade A,B,C regulations limit these extras per category. Only bats conforming to the grade A regulations may be used in Test Match and First Class cricket, grade B is a half way house for use whilst grade C bats can be made of almost anything (with primarily a wood chassis) but can only be used in club cricket. Full details are available from the ICC website and the various custodians of the laws of cricket.
Grade A bats must only have a wooden blade, material for protection and repair is allowed to a minimum thickness, the handles must be traditional cane with less than 10% of non-wooden material. Rubber toe guards are allowed. Most of the bats we sell are Grade A bats, however as most of our sales are for club cricketers we don't classify our bats to grade A,B,C as it really doesn't matter. If you intend to use a bat supplied by Quantum Cricket in professional cricket please ask for a specification check before you purchase.
2) Is a grade 1 bat always better than a grade 2 which is better than a grade 3 etc?
The simple and to some surprising answer is NO. We are talking approximations, the physical appearance between a low end grade 1 and high end grade 2 bat can be very similar and it is hard to tell which one will be best. The willow is only the starting raw material - the skill of the bat maker makes a huge difference to how a cleft of wood performs. Some clefts that look to be lower grade perform better than those that look better, performance also changes over time. Most clefts tend to get a bit better with age as they settle into their job, then as they get too old they tend to dry out, start to crack and loose the springyness that creates a good bat - this is normal and expected - no bat lasts forever. Some blades also perform better in different areas, most bats will perform if you time the ball out of the middle, thats how they are designed, some however give better rebound higher up the blade, or lower down the blade or can be more forgiving and responsive to edges and mistimed shots - this can be a result of the profile or just the natural variation of the wood.
So in summary, by buying a higher grade bat you expect and would normally get a better performing bat (from within a manufacturers range), but not always and this does not constitute a fault, this is down to natural variation. Higher grade bats cost more to buy and grading is done on appearance by most systems. The skill of the bat maker is just as important as the appearance of the wood, each maker has their own skills, their own equipment and methods of pressing the bats to create what they believe is the optimal product. The real skill comes in the retailer and the purchaser matching those specifics to the player, and thats how you will get the best bat for you.
3) What is a grain?
A grain is the thin line that runs vertically down each cleft, usually a dark brown in colour, this is the growth ring of the tree. Every grain is the equivalant of one growing season (ie a year of growth), so a bat with 6 grains comes from a tree that is at least six years old, usually more than this as a couple of grains are normally lost during preparation of the cleft. A tree that grows straight upwards at a uniform rate will usually produce nice straight grains except in the lower portion where the trunk usually fattens out to support the tree. So the gap between grains indicates how quickly the tree grew in that year. This is the basis of dendrochronology, the study of the age of wood by investigation of the ring structure.
4) What is brown heart wood?
Brown heart wood is the centre of the tree where the wood is older and often harder. The white wood is the sap wood from the outer part of the tree. By the time a cleft has been pressed and turned into a cricket bat the brown wood usually plays just like sap wood, except it can be a bit harder on the edge of the bat and produce a slightly different sound and rebound if you edge the ball - this is the basis of the old fashioned notion of a right and left handed bat - some prefer a brown inside edge, some a brown
outside edge, some no brown at all !!! Generally it is a cosmetic
issue with brown wood being less pleasing to the eye whilst having
minimal impact on the performance, so brown wood is often
bleached white to try and make the bat look like a higher grade.
5) What is multi-grain / Pro-series / high grain willow?
This is a particular type of willow that has very close grains, 15-20 or more grains is not uncommon and almost always about half of this is the brown heart wood. This type of willow is usually graded as grade 4 or 5 due to it's apperanace but is much prized for it's immediate high performance. These type of bats play well immediately but sadly don't last very long as the willow tends to be weaker due to all the grains. Some makers sell these as high grade custom bats whilst others sell them as lower grade and lower priced bats, as the customer you should pay your money and take your chance - expect excellent performance but you won't get a long life span.
6) Why do some bats have knots?
A knot is basically a place in a tree where a branch has started to grow. Commercial willow produces carefully cultivate their trees and remove shoots as soon as they appear to give trees with tall branch free trunks to maximise the willow crop and reduce the number of knot marks in their clefts. So clefts with knots usually come from the higher parts of the trees. A skilled craftsman will produce clefts with knots in specific areas to enable the bat maker to put the knot in the back of the bat or maybe cut it out altogether from the edge or back of the bat. On low grade clefts some knots are filled with a white paste to strengthen and disguise them. You wouldn't expect to find a knot in the playing area of a cricket bat, but a knot in the back or shoulder is not usually detrimental to the performance of the bat. Branches can also produce "water stain" or
"shadow marks" across a cleft, these can sometimes be unsightly but don't normally adversely effect the quality of
a bat, indeed these areas are often a little bit stronger than normal and can produce a great performing bat,
somtimes thay can also produce a 'deadspot' with lower performance due to the wood being excessively hard. This is
the beauty of willow - a natural product with a lot of variations, a skilled buyer will look at these imperfections with
objectivity and maybe try bouncing a ball on the bat to see if the marking has any effect on the bat either positive or
negative.
7) What is a Butterfly Stain?
This a blemish in the bat that resembles the body of a butterfly, hence the name. Nobody is 100% sure how they develop, some think it is down to some hybrid wood mutation, others a wood bourne infection or indeed one suggestion is even shotgun pellets embedded in the tree trunk allowing water ingression which creates the patternation. Bats containing these are often much prized as being quite unique but also the staining seems to impart incredible strength into the wood and these clefts normally produce strong powerful bats even if they do look a little ugly or beautiful depending on your interpretation! These bats are becoming far less common these days - perhaps the control on shotgun ownership is having an effect?
8) What is fleck?
Fleck are little brown marks that run vertical in the wood, mostly less than 1cm in length. These marks are caused by the soil conditions in which the willow grows, gravelly or stoney soil. What happens is a tiny particle of rock is drawn up the wood dissolved in the water, if this comes out of solution it lodges in the wood and can be pulled upwards creating the 'scratch' mark. The particles are normally microscopic in size. This type of mark is only cosmetic and doesn't effect the performance or life span of the bat.
