I posted a couple of months ago about my cricketing 50th anniversary — 50 years since I first played, back in 1973. And I have just realised that I am using a bat that is modelled on one I bought 40 years ago.
Not quite Trigger’s broom (or Plutarch’s Ship of Theseus, for the more Classically-minded), but there is a direct lineage from my old Gray-Nicolls GN500 to the bat(s) I have used this season with the Essex Seniors over60s.
I bought this bat second-hand in 1983, for a fiver, on returning from a post-Finals cricket tour with the University of Sheffield Cricket Club.
Just 2lb 7oz — already an anachronism when I first had it, and impossible to replace off the shelf. 2lb 10oz was considered a light bat, back in the late ‘80s when I finally broke the “4-scoop”, from toe to splice.
So I had the old GN copied, for weight & balance if not design, by Kippax, on several occasions. This one, quite possibly the first copy, is now way beyond repair.
Split from toe (again).
A slightly more recent copy by Kippax has just been refurbished by Gray-Nicolls’ workshop, as has my favourite, below.
This was a modified Kippax production blade with dropped shoulders, but closely matched for weight and balance to that original GN 500.
It weighs in now at just 2lb 6oz! It has probably dried out a little (I don’t oil as assiduously as I should), but the middle sounds as good as ever (when I manage to find it). Carry of nearly 70 yards on Tuesday…unfortunately, straight into the hands of wide long on, stationed 5 yards inside the boundary.
I have already scored a few runs with it this year…it’s my fault that I’ve yet to emulate the form that I enjoyed towards the end of last season.
But with perhaps three or four more games yet to play, there is still scope to boost the kitty for Runs4Research.
What do you think? Leave a reply.