How to Make a Cricket Bat Feel Lighter?

A good cricket bat is all that a batsmen need. It becomes a key parameter for his game and has a significant impact on his form. The balance of the bat and how it feels when a batsman holds it has an immense impact on the performance. A cricket bat should feel like an extension of a batsman’s arm.

Let’s talk about how to make a cricket bat feel lighter.

A cricket bat could be made lighter in multiple ways. Firstly, you can lighten it by sanding the wooden surface. Stickers and toe guards add extra weight, which when removed make the bat lighter. Cricketers do strength training to gain the strength that will make bat lifting easier. Lastly choosing the best possible size for your bat is the ideal option.

How Do You Lighten a Bat?

There are different ways to lighten a bat. A person need not buy a new bat if it does not fit their requirement. They can always lighten it with the following methods:

Remove Stickers

Even though this method will not significantly add to making the bat lighter, it does help to some extent. Take off all the stickers from the bat. Let the glue which was holding the stickers dry out. Rubbing with sandpaper also helps in further reducing weight by ½ oz. This may not be an ideal method since the stickers do not heavily contribute to the weight. On the other hand, cricketers get a hefty amount for applying sponsored stickers on the bat, and thus no one wants to use this method of lightening the bat.

Add or Remove Bat grip

A grip, made of rubber is applied on the bat’s handle for ease of use. If the bat is heavy, add extra grip. This may sound contradictory to our topic, but adding extra grip helps in weight distribution which will eventually make the bat lighter. You can feel the change in your hands by adding the extra grip or two. One can experiment with power and balance and then add a grip accordingly.

Gain Strength

Gaining strength is an out-of-the-box option and is not directly related to the bat. One of the methods is to shadow practice shots with one hand. This is one of the most effective ways to increase the strength of your non-dominant hand which we usually use for batting.

This will help you in match situations where we use two hands to bat, which will automatically make it light. Lifting weights and training your upper body also helps, since these are the muscles that help you swing. The muscles include the chest, biceps, triceps, shoulders, and upper back, all of which help in bat swing. Exercises such as bench press, rowing, push-ups and pulls up help significantly.

Sanding

Using 80-100 grit sandpaper helps in reducing bat weight. Once this is done, gradually work your way up to 400 grit to give the bat a smooth finish. Use a plane, along with some sandpaper or an electric sander with a low grit paper to remove weight off the bat.

Be extremely conservative during this process. It is a lot easier to cut the weight away from the bat than to add it. One should be cautious enough to not sacrifice the sweet spot for lighter weight. It would be counterproductive.

Toe of the Bat

Some players avoid using toe guards on the bat. It adds weight making the bat heavier. An alternative to the toe of the bat is shoe goo which helps in reducing weight.

Avoid Linseed Buildup

We read on multiple websites/articles how linseed oil helps in maintaining the bat and increasing its life as well. But the only drawback of the linseed oil is the additional weight it adds on the bat. This can make the bat heavy and can ruin the purpose of the bat. Linseed oil does not improve the efficiency of the bat and only increases its life.

Materials

The material of the bat is another factor that adds to the weight. Fibreglass scuff sheets are lighter and hence preferred by the batsmen. Binding is lighter than using a second grip. So, you can add extra binding to get the desired thicker handle without compromising on the weight of the bat

Choose the Right Size of Cricket Bat

Finally, the most basic answer to using a suitable cricket bat is to buy one that fits your requirement. If the bat is too big or heavy for your stature, then change the bat as per your fit and requirement. Many a times, we see cricketers changing bats as per the situation of the game.

During the start of an innings or in a test match usually heavy bats are used to keep the batsman stable. A heavy bat will not make the bat swing easy and the batsman will not lose his wicket. They usually change their bats at the end of the innings, switching to a lighter bat which will help in slogging.

Conclusion

With this, we can conclude that there are multiple ways to lighten the bat. The batsman needs to evaluate which is the best way for him to go about making the bat lighter. Since every player is different, they need to customize their bats accordingly. Strength training helps in other aspects on the game as well, ignore it at your own peril.