Kashmir or English willow for a tape-ball season

A tape ball weighs about 90 grams once it is wrapped. A leather ball weighs 156. Almost everything on this page follows from those two numbers.

The ball decides this, not the bat

English willow is softer and more fibrous than Kashmir willow. Against a hard ball it compresses at impact and springs back, and that spring is most of what the extra money buys. A taped tennis ball never pushes hard enough into the face to use it. The ball deforms instead of the blade, and the rebound comes from the ball and from your bat speed.

We have swapped bats between two players mid-innings at a club game without telling them which was which. Nobody has picked the willow blind yet.

What kills a tape-ball bat is the ground, not the ball. Tape skids low, so the toe scrapes brick dust and concrete on almost every defensive shot, and the adhesive lifts fibres off a bare face. That is abrasion, and against abrasion the softer wood is the worse wood.

Against abrasion, the softer wood is the worse wood.

What grain count predicts

Grains are annual growth rings, one per year of the tree. A six-grain cleft came off a younger, faster-grown tree. A twelve-grain cleft came off an old slow one. The count predicts timing, not runs.

Five to seven grains: softer, opens up in fewer knocks, plays well from the first month, finishes sooner.
Eight to twelve grains: harder and drier, needs more knocking-in, holds its shape for more seasons.
Straightness beats count. A grain that runs off the edge halfway down the blade is a weak point at the place it leaves.
Anyone who tells you a twelve-grain bat hits harder is selling you a twelve-grain bat.

On Kashmir willow the grains are tight, faint and often slightly wavy. That is the wood, not a fault. Printed grain lines also exist in this market. Real grain has texture under a thumbnail. Ink does not.

Pressing, and why Kashmir arrives ready

Pressing is a roller crushing the top two or three millimetres of the face into a compressed skin, and that skin takes the impact. Under-pressed, a bat plays beautifully for six weeks and then cracks. Over-pressed, it never wakes up.

Kashmir willow is denser to begin with and gets pressed harder at the factory because it has to be. That is why it can be close to usable out of the wrapper while an English bat cannot, and why it sounds duller off the mallet. Against tape, the dull sound costs nothing.

Knocking-in, and what skipping it costs

English willow needs roughly six hours with a mallet: edges and toe rounded first, then the face worked outward from the middle, then fifty to a hundred throwdowns with an old ball. Kashmir willow for a tape season needs about three hours, nearly all of it on the edges and the toe.

Skip it and the surface fibres tear apart instead of compressing together. A hairline crack crosses the face inside twenty deliveries, then an edge opens. It cannot be repaired back to new. Our knocking bench does it free on a bat bought here. Kashmir takes three hours on the mallet, so a bat on the bench on Wednesday ships on Friday. Add the usual courier days outside Dhaka.

Dhaka humidity and your kit bag

From June to September the air here sits above 80 percent humidity for weeks. A bat zipped into a bag with a wet shirt takes on 20 to 40 grams of water. The weight leaves when it dries. The damage does not, because it is the swelling and shrinking that splits a toe and softens an edge.

Store it out of the bag and upright, not against a wall that sweats.
Rubber toe guard, fitted. End grain drinks off a wet outfield faster than anything else on the bat.
Anti-scuff sheet on the face. The cheapest thing that extends a tape-ball bat.
Raw linseed oil, one teaspoon spread thin, twice a season, never on the splice or the labels. None at all if the face is already sheeted. Oil past that adds weight and deadens the press.

The weight people ask for

The most common request we get is 1250 grams or more. The most common weight our club players still own at the end of a season is 1130 to 1190 grams, which is 2lb 8oz to 2lb 10oz.

Tape skids and stays low. Contact sits nearer the toe than it does with a leather ball, and the scoring shots are cuts, pulls and flat drives played late. Late needs bat speed. A bat you can still swing straight in the nineteenth over is worth more than 60 grams of extra wood.

Pickup is not weight. A well-balanced 1190 gram bat feels lighter in the hands than a badly balanced 1140. Test it here: shadow a straight drive and hold the finish. If the toe falls below your hands, the bat is too heavy for you, whatever the sticker says.

What these cost

Kashmir willow, entry: ৳2,400 to ৳3,600
Kashmir willow, the ones we recommend: ৳4,500 to ৳6,500
English willow, Grade 5 and Grade 4: ৳11,000 to ৳17,000
English willow, Grade 3: ৳19,000 to ৳28,000
English willow, Grade 1 players' cleft: ৳35,900 to ৳95,000
Toe guard, anti-scuff and two grips, fitted: ৳650
Knocking-in on our bench: Free, two working days

The comparison worth making is a ৳5,400 Kashmir bat against a ৳27,000 Grade 3. Five times the price, and against a tape ball you will not measure the difference over a season.

When English willow is worth it

You face a leather ball at all, in a club side, a division side or a corporate leather tournament. Kashmir willow against a new ball at pace will crack, and it will crack mid-season.
You bat in the top four and face forty or more balls a week, which is enough use for the middle to open up and stay open.
You already own a working tape-ball bat. Two bats with one job each is the right way round. One bat doing both jobs is how a ৳27,000 blade ends up with a flat middle by September.

What we would buy

Kashmir willow, short handle, 1130 to 1190 grams, ৳4,500 to ৳6,500. Toe guard and anti-scuff fitted before it leaves the shop, three hours on the bench, free. That is a fifth of what a Grade 3 English bat costs, and over a tape season it will outlast one.

Buy English willow the week you start facing leather, and buy it as a second bat.