The Mongoose Bat

There is a new cricket bat doing the rounds that is supposed to revolutionise the game.  It is called the Mongoose.

Cricket bats have looked roughly the same for at least a hundred years, but the Mongoose is a radically different animal. “I was sceptical when I first saw it. But after hitting with it, I reckon it will take the world by storm,” Law said.

The Mongoose is the brainchild of inventor Marcus Codrington Fernandez, a former creative director at the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather. When he was forced out of the office by a stroke, Codrington Fernandez spent a couple of months laid up in bed, dreaming about ways to improve the boring old cricket bat.

His first conclusion was that, in the age of Twenty20 cricket, there is no point in having all that wood around the bat’s shoulders. The splice has no offensive capability in any case. So you might as well lengthen the handle, and make the blade shorter and heavier.

The average Mongoose has a toe that is about two inches thick, which means that even the perfect yorker can be driven for four. And when you take this rigid chunk of wood – effectively an 18-inch railway sleeper – and stick it on the end of an equally long handle, it starts to act like a giant golf club.

Law admits that he would think twice before using his sawn-off Mongoose against Steve Harmison. When the ball is flying around your nostrils, the shoulders of the old-fashioned bat have an important role to play. But he believes that on slow, low pitches – like the ones you encounter on the sub-continent, or in English club cricket – the Mongoose can double your power.

 

The basic concept is that in Twenty20, where the need for agression is paramount, you do not need the shoulders/splice area of the bat, which are entirely defensive.
So the blade has been shortened and the handle lengthened, and the meat of the bat is constructed to ensure maximum hitting power.  Apparantly, Stuart Law is impressed.
The problem with the whole “revolutionise the game” thing is that cricket tends to adapt to new methods and tactics.  So the bowling will adapt.  I wouldn’t fancy playing the fastest bowlers with half a blade.  I suspect the fast bowlers would fancy their chances against batsmen who use it.  We shall see.
There is also the possibility of the games lawmakers treating it with the same disdain as the aluminium bat.

Designing a Cricket Bat

I love cricket, I've been playing the sport for a longtime now. I played for my province and then played at the national level but then I had to quit because of a back injury. I will regret quitting all my life but then it wasn't really in my hands. But since i still love it as a sport but can't really contribute to it as a sportsman I want to contribute to the sport as an engineer. Well people might think whats so great about the design of a cricket bat its just a wooden piece, but its not that easy there are a lot of things that go into it. There a large number of factories all around the world making bats.

The blade of a cricket bat is a wooden block that is generally flat on the stiking face and with a ridge on the reverse (back) which concentrates wood in the middle where the ball is generally hit. The blade is connected to a long cylindrical cane handle, similar to that of a tennis racquet, by means of a splice. The edges of the blade closest to the handle are known as the shoulders of the bat, and the bottom of the blade is known as the toe of the bat.

The bat is traditionally made from willow wood, specifically from a variety of White Willow called Cricket Bat Willow, (Salix alba var. caerulea), treated with raw (unboiled) linseed oil. The oil has a protective function. This wood is used as it is very tough and shock-resistant, not being significantly dented nor splintering on the impact of a cricket ball at high speed, while also being light in weight. It incorporates a wooden spring design where the handle meets the blade. The current design of a cane handle spliced into a willow blade was the invention in the 1880s of Charles Richardson, a pupil of Brunel and the chief engineer of the Severn railway tunnel.^[1]

Law 6 of the Laws of Cricket,^[2] as the rules of the game are known, limit the size of the bat to not more than 38 in (965 mm) long and the blade may not be more than 4.25 in (108 mm) wide. Bats typically weigh from 2 lb 8 oz to 3 lb (1.1 to 1.4 kg) though there is no standard. The handle is usually covered with a rubber or cloth sleeve to enhance grip and the face of the bat may have a protective film. Appendix E of the Laws of Cricket set out more precise specifications.^[3] Modern bats are usually machine made, however a few specialists (6 in England and 2 in Australia) still make hand-made bats, mostly for professional players. The art of hand-making cricket bats is known as podshaving.

Also technology has influenced the manufactoring of bats in a great way. The hand-making process is no longer used. Only when a cricket bat is made on special request one by one of the greats of the game, then podshaving is probably used. But I'm not quite sure.
Australian cricketer Dennis Lillee briefly used an aluminium metal bat in 1979. After some discussion with the umpires, and after complaints by the English team that it was damaging the ball, he was urged by the Australian captain Greg Chappell to revert to a wooden bat.^[5] The rules of cricket were shortly thereafter amended, stating that the blade of a bat must be made solely of wood.^[2]
tenzin and Puma have created bats with lightweight carbon handles so that more weight can be used for the blade. In 2008, Gray-Nicolls trialed a double-sided bat.^[6]
In 2005, Kookaburra released a new type of bat that a Carbon fiber-reinforced polymer support down the spine of the bat. It was put on the bat to provide more support to the spine and blade of the bat, thus prolonging the life of the bat. The first player to use this new bat in international cricket was Australian Ricky Ponting. However this new innovation in cricketing technology was controversially banned by the ICC ^[7] as they were advised by the MCC that it unfairly gave more power in the shot and was unfair in competition as not all players had access to this new technology. But this was not taken lightly by Australian media as Ponting had scored plenty of runs since he started to use his new bat and English reporters blamed this on his new, 'unfair' piece of technology in his bat.
At IPL 2010 a new bat manufacturing company called Mongoose announced new design of cricket bat known as Mini Mongoose. The bat has a shorter thicker blade and an longer handle with the splice set in the handle to provide more hitting area in the bat face, to play huge shots. This is as the unique low centre of gravity gives the bat much greater bat speed and as it has a shorter blade the blade can be thicker for the same weight meaning there is more bat behind the ball allowing the ball to be hit further. This bat is in use by Andrew Symonds, Matthew Hayden, Stuart Law, Praneet Singh and Dwayne Smith. However it does have several drawbacks as it is shorter it is less useful for defensive batting and doesn't offer the same protection to a short ball. This means it helps the attacking game but at the expense of the defensive game. This restricts its usefulness to Twenty20 where attack is the aim rather than Test or championship cricket where longer innings require a more subtle approach.

 The Mini Mongoose

The Mini Mongoose in action

So after all its not just a wooden piece a lot of work goes into this and looking at the rise of T20 cricket and its entry into the olympics(http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/story/447930.html) looks like this industry has a very bright future. I would definitely look to work for this industry in the future.