Why India's $12 Million Cricket Bat Industry Is Fueled By UK Trees | So Expensive | Business Insider

[Music] if all goes according to plan this wood will be cut shaped and scraped into one of the most expensive cricket bats and while making a high-end bat is labor intensive the real reason they cost so much English Willow English Willow bats are considered the cream of the crop associated with Star players like India suria Kumar yav and Ms D no professional player will use anything but English Willow the highest bats nowadays go for even up to $1,000 that's why police in India have cracked down on counterfeits trying to pass off bats made with less desirable W so why are English Willow bats the top choice for pro cricketers and why are they so expensive ready like the Ping see you won't know in one day what the sound is we have been working from like more than 25 30 years to understand the sound the bat he's holding is called the Gunther it's English Willow and it costs around $1,000 it is most expensive because of the quality of wood the best quality selection of wood the grains the Ping the shape but developing the best quality wood takes a long time and a lot can go wrong the perfect tree for a Cricut bat grows straight and slow resulting in many grains close together in the wood a tree that grows fast on the other hand will have fewer grains further apart a bat made from wood that grows too fast will be lighter and softer and it typically needs to be knocked in or played with a lot to harden it the harder the bat the further players can hit the ball most Pro cricket players prefer tight grained bats since more compact wood offers high performance from the start the process begins Halfway Around the World in a forest in [Music] England Oliver Wright spends most of his time outside inspecting trees for JS Wright the company supplies the wood for about 75% of the world's English willow cricket bats an English Willow Tree is ready to be cut down when it reaches 60 in in diameter which takes an average of 15 years so roughly if you if you are to hug the tree if you can just about touch your fingers depending on how long your arms are uh then it's near enough ready side shoots need to be trimmed twice a year to prevent knots from appearing in the wood there's also the risk of a tree rotting from within if it gets too much water and pests and diseases can ruin the bark but you can see how all the Bark's coming off dead once the trees reach the Sawmill the goal is to carve as many bats as possible from each one this starts with cross cutting the logs into 28 in pieces with a chainsaw then splitting these pieces into small slices called clefts each cleft will become a cricket bat it all depends on how it looks inside the tree if it's rotten will get slightly less if it's nice and clean we'll get slightly more average tree is about 40 about 40 bats per tree the record here is about 700 out of one tree and it was huge tree yeah huge tree Jeremy Ruggles is a direct ctor at JS Wright he's been with the company since he was 18 no not very good at Cricket no I love watching it but I'm no good at playing it you have to split them this way so the grain goes through the bat to give it the strength the grain can't go across the bat has to go from front to back which is why it's split like cutting a cake at this stage workers note any damage to the wood that might affect how it's graded later on so this is damage this this has been hit um struck by lightning or hit by something hit by a tractor or stopped growing for a year then started again and you can see this is a good quality one there's no damage or anything in it it's little bit of Redwood which is good one of the most important steps of the process is identifying what's known as the face of the cleft this will be the part of the bat that strikes the ball and the part the bio focuses on in the shop it's looking which is going to be the prettiest which side has the least amount of color the straightest grain is what you want less color and no knots so whichever side looks nicer that is the side the face is made once the face is decided and swn you can't change your mind both of the ends are then covered in a special petroleum based wax it's about 10 mm on just to reduce the splitting the quality of a Cricut bat isn't based on just the type of wood but also it's grade at JS right grades range from 1 to 20 with one being the best Bruce Ary is doing the initial grading he's been working with JS Wright for 48 years so this is how we grade things we take the bat off there we' brush the back of it we'd look at the the the grind of the back like that and these are quite nice straight grains they're quite uniform there's not a lot much color down the side so I would put that into a two because it's just got a couple of little blemishes on the back like that so that would make a two in my opinion the sorted clefts are stacked and dried in both the open air and a Kil to remove any moisture you can't rush this process if you rush it you get splits and you get heavy Cliffs so this one on my in my left hand is a younger tree but it's still beautiful straight no blemishes one in my right hand is an older tree with more grains this is what professional players like the narrow grains but it won't last as long as the younger tree with the wider grains JS wri ships its processed and graded clifts all over the world it's been supplying Serene Sports in India for about 50 years I've known jatin Serene since he was young lad hopefully I'll be dealing with his son one day Serene Sports makes 500 to 800 bats each day with the cliffs it receives from JS Wright one bat takes 24 to 36 hours from start to finish and will touch eight or nine different hands the process starts with smoothing out the clefts and cutting them down to size a vshape is also cut into one end with a band saw this is where the handle will [Music] go while the base of the bat is made from English Willow the handle is made from cane that Serene Sports imports from Singapore each piece of cane has layers of rubber inside for shock absorption the cane is smoothed down and then inserted into the [Music] V each handle is glued in place and it takes about 16 hours to dry workers use tools like a planer and an ads to carve the bat's basic shape and make it more lightweight a Cricut bat is flat on the face and curved at the back it's typically thicker toward the center or the sweet spot where it will make contact with the ball the face of the bat also needs to be compressed since the English Willow is so soft in its raw form warm each bat goes through a mechanical process like this one which compacts and hardens the wood grain Jeremy says this is one of the most important stages for ensuring the bat performs as expected if you didn't compress it at all the ball would hardly go anywhere when you hit the ball with the bat the face has to be compressed and every bat maker does it their own way finally workers finish the Handle by tightly winding a string around it and gluing a rubber grip on top the bats are then sanded and [Music] Polished in this section you can have a look these are the ready finished bats the bats are ready now to go high-end Serene Sports English Willow bats can sell for over $1,000 and as with many other expensive products fakes are a problem counterfeits often use cheaper wood like Indian Kashmir Willow and try to pass it off as English Willow Kashmir Willow is heavier than English Willow and typically more yellowish brown in color but police in India have been cracking down on illicit operations involving counterfeit bats over the past few years there are a lot of many people who will sell a Kashmir Willow bat with the English Willow stickers then that's a totally criminal act what what they're doing they're trying to make fool of the customers Jan says the best way to make sure you're getting a legit bat is by buying from a certified dealer but despite the risk of fakes Jan says business is booming and demand is increasing worldwide as Cricket expands [Music] [Music] I've seen the cricket Community grow in America now it's really starting to flourish good St good stff it's a huge amateur community and now it's starting to get professionalized in 2024 the T20 Cricket World Cup is being played in the USA for the first time ever and a new professional League called Major League cricket held its first season in 2023 Shake has been playing Cricket for 16 years so he knows what the perfect bat looks and feels like right now people buy a lot of bats online which is like going on a blind date you really don't know what you're going to get even though the brands try to promise a certain type of quality he says there are two ways to judge a bat pickup and ping pickup is the feel of it in your hands and getting a sense of the weight you see I'm constantly using my wrist and my forearm so if a bat is too heavy or unbalanced it's it's it Just Tires you out and then there's the Ping test the sound that Jan was listening for that most Cricket Pros know well a good English Willow when you hit it off The Sweet Spot will make a beautiful sound it's like that sound that you you hear that you know you hear the best part of the bat like that's my sweet spot that's why it's called The Sweet Spot but perhaps more than anything cricket players look at Aesthetics what makes a good bat a high grade English R bat is the cleanliness of it there's no stains it's just the lines are straight especially in the The Sweet Spot so where the thickness of the bat is you want the grain to be as clean as possible in that area but while these tightly grained pricey English Willow bats might be the most coveted by the pros the trees that make these bats could soon be in short supply according to Jeremy quality trees are becoming rarer since they're growing faster with increasingly warm temperatures we're getting a longer growing season so it's growing right up until probably November now so it's growing more so it's growing wider grains but he says wider grain bats aren't necessarily worse they might just require a bit more use before they're on the same level of play you ask a player he'll say yes the narrow grain one hits the ball better but we've we've had tests done with bat makers making bats from wide grain the Ping is the same it's all in the player's head some people always want the best don't they like Motor Cars is it you got your rollsroyce and you got your Fords you know it's it's the way it goes in life [Music]

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Length: 13min 52sec (832 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 02 2024