Strauss Lends Weight to the Case for Taming Bat Strength

Among the technical tinkerings and tickles made by Andrew Strauss so that once more he conveys the image of an international-class batsman was to put away his old bat and use something altogether lighter. The result, evident at Old Trafford on Monday, is a method based on subtler skills than the block and bash that characterizes modern cricket.

Colin Cowdrey, perhaps the finest of all caressers with a bat in his hand, used to opine that there was little sense in beating the ball senseless. Indeed there was something rather satisfying in watching a perspiring fielder, on a hot day, pursuing the ball to the boundary only to get beaten by a short head. "Hard enough for four is hard enough," he would say. Strauss compiled a fine technical innings, full of deftness, with deflections, glides, nudges and the occasional punchiness. When he looked for the boundary, it was rare that he didn't find it. And you can bet your life that his arms didn't ache afterwards either.

This column has consistently argued for what Strauss has discovered for himself, namely a restriction on the size and weight of bats, something that at last the MCC, the organization still responsible for policing the game, has recognized needs addressing. The argument, basically, is that the batsman has become too powerful with today's implements, which combine volume with a lack of density to provide springiness but which, when given weight as well, resemble something that might support the ceiling of a Tudor house.

The dimensions of the modern bat compared to its predecessors, of a kind on view in the Lord's museum, are telling, with a standard width as specified in the Laws but a thickness out of all proportion. Had Walter Hammond had one during those net sessions when he turned his bat and played with the edge, he would not have noticed much difference. Whereas his blade, at the edges, would have measured less than a centimeter, a modern bat could be four times that for a gain in weight of no more than seven or eight ounces. The MCC will recommend a maximum thickness in the middle - tantamount to saying that bats must again be pressed properly.

However, there was a time in the last three decades when the appearance of bats did not belie their weight. These were massive hunks of wood with a handle at one end, tipping the scales at up to 3½lbs (to put this in context Peter May, a powerful batsman, used a blade of around 2lb 2oz). The provenance of this surge for more power, I was told, was because increased demand for cricket bats coincided with a decline, through disease, of the cricket bat willow and thus in quality: to produce a bat with the same playability as May's, it was necessary to leave more wood in it.

The problem was only immensely strong players - Ian Botham and Clive Lloyd for example - had the capacity to use them but were imitated by others nonetheless. This was one reason batsmen suffered so much in the blitz years when hostile super-fast bowlers ruled. Heavy bats are fine for pendulum shots - drives in other words - where gravity works in the batsman's favor. But for the cross-bat strokes - cuts, pulls and hooks - they are detrimental. There are exceptions - Sachin Tendulkar uses a blunderbuss but even he has required elbow surgery for his pains - but they do not prove the rule. I think batsmanship, as opposed to merely the ability to mis-hit sixes, would improve by reining in the power of the implements. Strauss has shown what can be done.

In any case, bats should have some standardization beyond simply the width. Everything else does. There is no heavy ball for bowlers. And other artificial elements that are creeping in require monitoring. The MCC has its eye on the use of graphite for example, both in the handle, which is made traditionally using Sarawak cane with rubber springs glued in, and on the face. Latest of these is the black bat that Sir Allen Stanford insists is used for his Twenty20 tournament in Antigua and which has been a topic of discussion during his recent meetings with the England and Wales Cricket Board. There may yet need to be a compromise over its use for the proposed quadrangular tournament in this country. I can never see pictures of Sir Allen without invoking Tennyson's Come Into The Garden, Maud, and thinking of him as the black bat knight.