Lights! Camera! Action! - A list of improvements for cricket broadcasting

Show more about players’ bats

Quinton de Kock has endorsed GM’s 2017 series, and has used his GM Neon DXM to good use

In football, if a player wears a pair of new studs, it’s headline news. Kids and teenagers run screaming to their parents, begging them for extraordinary sums of money to buy that exact same pair of cleats. Cricket, a sport wherein equipment is exponentially more important, does not see this trend.

We know very little about the players’ key weapon of destruction: the bat. While Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers emblazon the proud MRF logo on their willows, little is known about the weight of their bats, their sweet spot, their maker, their shape and their profile. A player’s bat can define their game, and often, a bat can be the difference between a mishit to long-on and clearing the rope.

Yet, the TV audience is kept in the dark. GM, Kookaburra, Gray-Nicholls, SS and SG have been fine contributors to the game for decades, yet their names are shrouded to the confines of cricket stores and the recesses of the internet.

It’s simple logic. The public wants to know about players’ bats, especially in the shortest format, where innovative shapes, sizes and types of bats are being manufactured to send the ball those few extra meters. It is a giant cash cow. The increase in sponsorships and endorsements alone would be enough to convince broadcasters to display the name and a few key details about the bats used by cricketers.