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Bamboo bats could be the next game-changing weapon, but the MCC hurdle awaits
An iconic photograph shot some years ago, Barry Richards is seen holding a wafer-thin bat he used when knocking 325 runs in a single day of a Sheffield Shield game in 1970 on one hand, and on the other, a bulky willow David Warner had wielded in a Test match.
In many ways, that photograph was a reminder of how bats have become beefier, especially the sweet spot, wresting thus an unfair advantage to batsmen. Now a recent study published in the Journal of Sports Engineering and Technology says that replacing willow with bamboo could make the sweet-spot even sweeter.
Research conducted by Darshil Shah and Ben Tinkler-Davies of Cambridge University noted that prototype bats made out of laminated bamboo were 40 percent heavier and more robust than those made from the traditional willow. It means batsmen will be able to hit the ball much harder because these bats have a bigger sweet spot. "This sweet-spot was about 20 mm wide and 40 mm long, significantly larger than on a typical willow bat, and better still, was positioned closer to the toe (12.5 cm from the toe at its sweetest point)," the researchers said in a statement.
They have also found that the bamboo bat is 22 percent stiffer than the willow variant, which increases the speed at which the ball leaves the bat. “This is a batsman’s dream,” Shah was quoted as saying in The Times. “The sweet spot on a bamboo bat makes it much easier to hit a four off a Yorker for starters, but it’s exciting for all kinds of strokes,” he asserted.
