Cricket bats: How are they made?

“This thing here, which looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor. It's for hitting cricket balls with. If you get it right, the cricket ball will travel two hundred yards in four seconds…,” wrote English playwright Tom Stoppard about cricket bat.  

Well, these words of Stoppard about cricket bat almost make us hear the sound of ‘leather (cricket ball) on willow (the wood that a bat is made of)’. Here, let’s take a look at how it is manufactured. 

The making of a cricket bat 
As already mentioned, cricket bats are made of willow. Their wood is derived from willow trees 12-15 years old. Here is how they are made: 

Step 1: The trunk of the tree is cut into clefts and dried for around a year to eliminate moisture from the wood.  

Step 2: The cleft is cut into the shape of the cricket bat’s blade.  

Step 4: Almost 3 tons of pressure is applied to the bat to curve the face of the blade and compress the fibres of willow. This is necessary to enhance performance.  

Step 5: The bat maker will cut a V at the upper end of the bat making room for the handle.  

Step 6: The handle of the bat is made of numerous pieces of cane coated with rubber and glued together. The bottom of it is shaped in a way to fit into the V shape of the blade.  

Step 7: The profile of the bat is shaped with a draw knife. Its edges are also smoothened using tools designed for the task.  

Step 8: The spring of the bat I tested with a wooden mallet. 

Step 9: In order to ensure that the profile of the bat is maintained, bat makers sand it using a drum sander. The first session of sanding is followed by two more, once with a coarse abrasive and then with a fine abrasive. This gives a cricket bat its perfect finish.   

Step 10: After sanding, the handle is fully coated with glue and the bat is spun around at high pace in a twining machine. During this process the twine is wrapped around the  handle of the bat.  

Step 11: In order to lend a sheen to the cricket bat, it is polished with a cotton wheel spinning at a high speed. 

Step 12: In the final step involves adding the manufacturer’s name to various parts of the bat and the application of rubber grip.