Cricket bats made of bamboo found more effective than willow bats, study says

According to a recent study conducted by the University of Cambridge, cricket bats should be made of bamboo and not willow. Going by the findings, bamboo cricket bats are stronger, providing a ‘better sweet spot’ and more energy than the traditional willow. It would not only make the sports more environment friendly but also help the sport grow in poorer parts of the world.

Ben Tinkler-Davies and Dr Darshil Shah compared the performance of the bamboo cricket bats prototypes with the willow bats. The investigations involved video capture technology, microscopic analysis, compression testing, computer modelling and testing for vibrations. The researchers found that bamboo is 22% stiffer than willow which also increases the speed at which the ball leaves the bat.

Bamboo bats show the way into the future

“This is a batsman’s dream. 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. We’d just need to adjust our technique to make the most of it, and the bat’s design requires a little optimisation too,” Shah, a former member of Thailand’s under-19 national cricket team, was quoted as saying in TechXplore.

“Cricket brings you really close to nature, you spend hours out in the field, but I think the sport can do a lot more for the environment by promoting sustainability. We’ve identified a golden opportunity to achieve that while also helping lower-income countries to produce bats at lower cost,” Tinkler-Davies said.

The study also showed that the bamboo is stronger and will be able to hold higher weights, meaning the bats would be lighter while remaining as strong as willow. During manufacture, the surface of cricket bats is compressed to create a hardened layer.

After comparison of the knock-in effect of both materials, it was found that the bamboo’s surface hardness had increased to twice as that of willow after five hours. The sweet spot of the bamboo blade performed 19 per cent better than the traditional willow bat.

The sweet spot was 20 mm wide and 40 mm long, larger than a willow bat. The study also shows that there is a dearth of good quality willow, which takes up to 15 years to mature.

On the contrary, Moso and Guadua are the two most suitable types of structural bamboo, which grow in China. The bamboos mature twice as fast as willow.