Your Turbo-Blaster Super-Ultra Reflex Bow Plus began life as part of a willow tree, grown in England whether that’s Essex, Sussex or Yorkshire, before being shipped off in clefts to India or Pakistan.

Whatever your final choice, the journey your bat has made to get to you is one of the more remarkable, costly and daft going. You decide a new bat will bring with it a change of fortune and those elusive triple hundreds. Imagine you are a very average club cricketer living in West Yorkshire with a batting average that has remained entrenched in single figures for decades. Why are some of the cricket bat prices so crazy? Is it greed? Is it justifiable? To strip it back to its most basic, we’re talking about essential equipment to play a game and the very real issue of it being an elitist pastime because not everyone can fork out hundreds of pounds for a cricket bat.Ī relentless Google of cricket bat pricing – you’ll have to take my word that I searched until my eyes whimpered and the pixels converged into digital fudge – illustrated that if, as an adult, you have £150 in your pocket to buy a new blade made from English willow then you have slim Price of bats is a major disincentive to people of all economic groups in UK playing the game. Why is this and what are the consequences for cricket? One thing is hard to ignore…the price of bats is going aerial with all the subtlety of Chris Gayle. Your ability as a cricketer, economic circumstances, your sense of value and whether you are a grain-obsessed badger or don’t much care what lightsaber you wield at a weekend. What would you prepared to pay for a cricket bat? The answer to that is as broad as the edges of bats that now dominate the market.

Google cricket bat