How to Make a Cricket Bat Ready for Playing

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Naveed Khan from the Nashville Cricket Club and today I'm going to talk about how to prepare a cricket bat. A cricket bat is made of different various kind of willows, there are various qualities in these willows, and each willow has different grains basically. So when you look at a cricket bat, you'll notice the number of grains. It could vary from five to twelve or maybe more. From the willow, based on the quality of the willow, some bats come in all prepared. But the others, you have to, you have to do a little bit preparation on that. So the first thing we do is, put some linseed oil on the surface of the bat. So after, and then we let it soak basically, for a day or so. You know, you don't want to put too much oil on that, otherwise it'll get the willow rotten. So you just kind of, put little oil on the surface, on the edges. And then after a day or so, you would like to knock in, the process is called Knock In the Bat. First you do with a mallet, knock the edges of the bat. Very slow strokes, kind of go one stroke at a time and cover the edges, both sides of the bat. And after that, you want to come in the middle of the bat and start knocking the bat. So basically, what you're doing is, you're chipping the bat basically, you're compressing the bat, the willow within the bat. So that when the ball strikes the bat, it won't chip in. And the process again, like I said, it's all based upon different kinds of willows. For an average kind of willow, the process may take basically a couple of weeks, you know, I would say, an hour a day for couple of weeks, you know. And again, when the bat is all ready and how would you know is, when you bounce a mallet or a ball on the bat, it will really bounce back. If it bounced back, the mallet or a ball form the bat, then you'll notice that it is, or you'll know that it is all prepared. But if you hear a noise like, something like that, you know, I mean the mallet is not bouncing. It means that the bat really, that side needs to be knocked a little bit more. So and knocking is very important, if you don't knock your bat, you can pretty much you know, you can, the bat can be broken pretty easily during your practice or you're in a match. That's pretty much about knocking the bat."