With the cricket season just starting many people who enjoy and play the game will be buying new equipment ready for the season ahead. Cricket equipment can be expensive, especially if you buy the well known cricket makes such as readers, gray-nicholls etc at the top end of the market. Of all the cricket you can buy today the most expensive and probably most treasured peices buy their owners are the cricket bats, after all this is what you are going to be scoring you're runs with, hopefully! There is a huge selection of cricket bats available to purchase from a number of different brands, each offering different designs of bat with different wood, different sweet spots, different handles and different sizes - it is very complicated and I would advise anybody buying a bat to ask as much information about them as possible when in the sportshop to make sure the one you buy is the correct size and weight for you. If the bat is too light you won't be able to hit the ball as far as you would like and if its too heavy you won't get to the ball in time, meaning you may miss it completely, miss-time it or edge it behind.
Although I am more of a bowler than a batsmen I do enjoy batting and for this reason have always had nice bats. I tend to buy them at the end of the season though when cricket manufacturers are thinking of next years products and therefore reduce the stock from the season just passed. I have always done this and typically you get between 30 and 50% of the advertised price. The bat I currently use is the V600 SUPER made by Slazenger; it is the bat used by Mark Butcher of Surrey and England. As bats go it is quite large and weighty and has a large sweetspot meaning you don't have to hit the ball in the middle of the bat for the ball to travel off of the bat at speed, which is nice. I puchased mine from my local sportshop for £50.00 at the end of the season, it was pre knocked-in which means I didn't have to sit there for hours striking it with the mallet! Anybody who doesn't know what knocking-in is it is when you strike the bat hundreds and hundreds of times with a mallet with a cricket ball on the end of it before you ever play an innings with it. This process suposedly hepls the bat from breaking when hit with large impacts, bats which haven't been knocked-in or have been done so badly, tend to crack or split after a while, so I definately recommend that you either spend a good few hours doing this before you use it or like I did pay for it to be done for you.
The bat is lovely to look at, on the fron it has V600 written in large letters and on the back has a large slazenger panther which runs the length of the bat - this is black and has slazenger written all over it in shinny writing. It was handmade in England of natural willow and features a short handle design; but as I mentioned earlier you can buy bats in virtually any size. Of the 'V Series' you can get bats in V100, V200, V300, V400, V500, V600, V800 and V1200. Typically, the larger the number the heavier and more powerful the bat is. The lower numbered designs tend to be for children, while the V800 and V1200 designs are more professional bats.
As cricket makes go Slazenger a relatively new - they haven't been around for as long as Readers or Gray-Nicholls for example. However, this hasn't stopped them from producing lots of top class equipment. As far as i'm aware they do every type of cricket equipment, but specialize in bats. I certainly have no complaints with the bat the I purchased and would definately buy a Slazenger again.
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Price
£50.00
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