All feels a little postseason for me at the moment: not playing cricket, days spent rehabbing various parts of my body, and just spent the last two days sanding down and adding new stickers and scuff sheets to my two Williamson Boucher (@BoucherCricket) bats as the weather was, for a change, really pleasant.
Took the opportunity to clean the other bats up and give my borderline OCD a ‘treat’ by matching up the grips and the stickers on the back of the bats.
You may notice that I have a little quirk when it comes to the scuff sheets: I add two strips of bat tape to the bottom of the bat for extra toe protection and one across the top of the scuff sheet to help keep it place and hide the fact that I can’t cut straight!!!! I also put a strip of tape down each side of the bat both for protection and to keep the scuff sheet in place. I use two grips, the original that comes with the bat and either the Blue/Yellow or Rainbow. Finally, the red a yellow bat handle tape is put on randomly – although now I have said that I am thinking maybe should link a colour to a grip!!??
I have zero reason to have this many bats, but I do have a rather complicated logic/excuse:
- When I played all those years ago I was a HUGE Gray-Nicolls fan and that was never going to go away
- I love the bats made by my friend Gareth Boucher and he has been incredibly supportive of both myself and No Boundaries
- I was introduced to Masuri by a player I know and they have been very supportive and generous as well
- I firmly believe that if you ‘depend’ on something you should have a spare/back up ready to use straight away
- The trend of having matching bat, gloves and pads and not only brand but product range is something I tried to ignore but failed
- I do not believe in using a match bat in the nets against either bowling machine balls or old/hard/damp/damaged cricket balls.
I have had to concoct a rather elaborate plan to use them all, helped recently by Masuri’s to decision move away from providing bats.
So ….
For Staffordshire Cricket and Club red ball games I use the Williamson Boucher Bat(s) along with my Masuri ELine Pro Pads and Gloves.
For Charity, XL Club and Guest red ball games I use the Gray-Nicolls Hypernova 1.0 Bat(s) along with my Hypernova 2000 Gloves and Pads
As a ‘rule’ if I am batting in the Top 4 and am at risk of having to play a long innings I use the lighter bat, if I am looking to push the score along then the heavier bats get an outing.
White Ball games tend to be the heavier Williamson Boucher Bat or the really heavy Gray-Nicolls Hypernova 1.3 along with the Black Gray-Nicolls Legend Pads and Black Gray-Nicolls Gloves.
I sort of mirror the above with Nets: Masuri for Staffordshire Cricket and Gray-Nicolls for club