Ricky Ponting and Adam Gilchrist secretly used handcrafted bats

Hand crafted bats were a common sight before mass commercial factory production took over. It has always been a painstaking job to shape the English willows into finely carved cricket bats of definite measurements and size. India and Pakistan are two major places that are involved in large scale production of bats now, they import them all over the cricket world.

However, apart from the East, there is one Fremantle factory in Western Australia that still continues to shape the willows in hand. It has been the passion of Paul Bradbury and his wife Sally Bradbury for 25 long years now. Paul Bradbury said, “I get satisfaction out of personally seeing, whether it is a little kid or a top-end player, really liking a bat and saying this is fantastic.”

For Paul and Sally, crafting cricket bats in hand with no production line down there is solely about passion for cricket. He added, “There have been times when I think what else would I do? But I think this is what I am good at.”

Secretly using Bradbury’s bats

It is reported that many cricketers secretly use Bradbury’s hand crafted bats and it remains a secret as they are overshadowed by the big brands that lure the cricketers to use stickers of their brands. Back when players found it harder to get good quality bats from their sponsors, some would use the superior bats made by the Bradbury, with another brand’s stickers placed on them, as reported by ABC Online.

Australian Test all-rounder Hilton Cartwright used the Bradbury’s bats for the last six years. “Sometimes here in the middle of summer it is genuine sweat going into the bats, so I can see the love being put into them and you can tell the difference in a bat when you get them from here,” Cartwright said.

Bradbury revealed some of the great names who used his manufactured bats. “Blokes like Ricky Ponting did it for a long time. Steve Waugh for a long time and to be fair most of the Aussie cricketers. The likes of Adam Gilchrist and Justin Langer used it as well” – he said.