A Perth entrepreneur has developed a device to measure the ‘ping’ of a cricket bat.
Summer is almost upon us with its stinging sun, slops of sun cream, sand between your toes and the crack of leather on willow.
As amateur cricketers dust off their gear and practise square cuts with a ruler into bathroom mirrors, some of us may venture out to invest in a new cricket bat.
We each have our own method of determining if a bat is right or not.
We may go with the feel, the look, the brand name or the price. We will probably practise some crashing off drives in the shop mirror, and then, perhaps based on what we can afford, hand over our credit card and trust that this year we have the equipment to make some meaningful runs.
Know the ping score
One enterprising local cricketer has been thinking about this bat selection process for a while and put his PhD engineering brain to the test.
Phil Heckley has devised a piece of machinery that can measure how fast the ball rebounds off the face of the bat, known as the ‘ping’.
“Some cricket bats retail for $1,700 these days,” Mr Heckley told Business News.
“Yet they may not be as good as some $500 or even $300 bats. Cricket bats are priced on how good the wood looks, not on how well they hit a cricket ball. There is no relationship between wood aesthetics and ping.”
In fact, he has proved this to be the case, and found $160 Kashmir willow bats can be as good, if not better, than some English willow bats 10 times the price.
Using his own devised method, called PingMaster, Mr Heckley measures the bat ping at four locations along the face. “Adding up these four ping scores creates the overall ping score for the bat,” he said.
“Every bat will have a different score, meaning every bat has a different ping.”
Mr Heckley recently bought 30 cricket bats of the same type from a well-known brand that would normally retail for about $500 each. However, their ping scores varied greatly.
“I’ve gone into cricket clubs and tested bats, even those of local professional cricketers, and players are amazed at the results,” Mr Heckley said.
In an experiment with a local cricket retailer over three months earlier this year, he tested about 20 per cent of the bats available for sale and placed his PingMaster labels on those bats for customers to review.
Customers tended to buy the bat that felt right for them, regardless of the ping score, but only bats with a ping score were purchased during the trial.
“When buying a bat, it still needs to feel comfortable for the player to use. That’s most important,” Mr Heckley said.
“However, if there are several bats that feel right, then using the PingMaster system will help you buy the best bat for your budget.”
Disruptive tech
The market for cricket bats is significant and growing, especially in cricket-loving India where more than a million bats are made every year. Fewer than 100,000 bats are produced by non-Indian manufacturers annually, yet these bats dominate the top end of the market.
Most professional and serious amateur cricketers want English willow, which, as tradition has it, makes the best bats. The vast majority of these bats come from one supplier in Essex, England, where it takes 15 years to grow one willow tree (from which 40 bats are made, on average).
If a $160 Kashmir willow bat can be as good as a $1,700 English willow bat, why are we spending $1,700? And if we can measure the ping score of every bat, irrespective of price and willow type, might the ping score become the best measure of bat quality?
If so, perhaps we will be buying bats based on the ping score, not just some arbitrary look and feel, in the future.
One local startup entrepreneur thinks so, at least.
• Charlie Gunningham has spent 25 years in WA’s startup sector in various roles
