Source :- THE AGE NEWS
From his garage in the paddock-gobbling Geelong suburb of Armstrong Creek, Raj Gurung makes a claim that’s hard to dispute: “I am the world’s first Nepalese cricket bat maker!”
He’s also part of bat making’s craft brewing-style evolution, where young artisans are shaking up an industry that’s long been dominated by traditional players, offering a bespoke service that delivers the customer a treasured product that has been made locally and just for them.
Like 31-year-old Jake Brown, who could name only a handful of Australian bat makers when he started doing repairs in his parents’ garage and at a local sports store, while hammering YouTube for hints. Now his King Brown Cricket is one of “four or five different brands in Geelong alone – that’s massive”.
Raj Gurung came to Australia on a student visa in 2008. He taught himself bat-making via YouTube.Credit: Justin McManus
Gurung came to Australia in 2008 on a student visa, having played some tennis-ball cricket in Nepal but with no experience in bat repair. He was working in administration at Geelong Hospital and playing cricket on weekends when he ordered some part-made willow clefts from England. YouTube was his bat technician’s classroom; after wife Malti had their first child, Raj made a career-defining call.
“I repaired a friend’s bat, and gradually I invested in better machinery. I started with a $40 sander from Aldi, then there was a bat-cutting machine, and my own bat press machine.”
Malti was understandably wary. “But I explained to her it’s a money-making machine,” Gurung says.
At length his ‘Mustaang Bat Repairs’ morphed into MBR bats. At last count he’s made 189 of them, mainly for local cricketers, ranging in price from $500 to $1000. Word of mouth is key – Gurung’s work catching the eye of state cricketer James Seymour swelled his clientele. Now he travels to Melbourne to play Sunday matches and Premier cricketers either bring their broken bats to the ground or meet him at a service station.
Some of the bats Gurung is working on.Credit: Justin McManus
Two summers ago, a Pakistani teammate of Seymour’s reached out to say Test all-rounder Salman Ali Agha needed a couple of his bats repaired in a hurry. Gurung fixed them, dropped them back to Agha at the team hotel in Melbourne, and almost burst with pride watching him score half-centuries in the Boxing Day and Sydney Tests.
Getting visibility on your bats is enormous. Josh Gavan is 29. A decade ago he spent a fortnight learning bat-repair in an Indian factory, “ruined all my favourite bats practising”, and took the plunge into bat-making from there. Now, JPGavan Cricket has its own factory in Sydney’s west, and a global superstar of the game uses a range of its gear that she helped design.
“Other than moving out of our garage into a factory this year, signing Ellyse Perry while we were still in a garage is our biggest leap,” Gavan says.
The relationship with Perry was built through bat repair – Gavan fixed one of her “sticks” in 2017, and the next day she used it to score a double hundred against England. He’s sure Perry turned down higher sponsorship offers from bigger bat makers, and delighted with the credibility she’s given his eponymous brand.
“The opportunity came up with Ellyse, absolutely we were going to jump at it – the best player in the world, who’ll represent our company better than anyone I can think of.”
Further north in Queensland, the Cooper Cricket story has taken local produce to another level. Rod Grey and wife Roxanne named the business after the son they never had, and toiled away in a string of different sheds and garages. They were struggling to make inroads in the market when Brisbane grade cricketer Josh Brown came on board to help with sticker design, soon learning repair and bat making.
On New Year’s Day 2023, Rod and Roxanne watched from their couch as Brown – in his second BBL game for Brisbane Heat – smashed 62 off 23 balls using a Cooper Cricket bat that he’d made himself. As the ball flew to and beyond the boundary, they literally watched their business take off.
Jake Brown at his workshop in the Barwon Regional Cricket Centre.Credit: Justin McManus
Fresh eyes on old practices bring new methods. Cricket bats have traditionally been crafted from English willow but Kashmir grown in India became a cheaper alternative as the UK and sub-continent dominated global bat production. Lachlan Fisher, a pioneer of independent Australian bat making, started growing his own willow in Gippsland more than 30 years ago. His Fisher Bats have long been hailed by connoisseurs.
Gavan could buy a finished bat for around $40 on that first visit to India. Now, an English willow cleft alone can cost many times that, depending on quality. The search for alternatives has arrived at Serbian willow, a low-density tree that can produce bigger bats at lighter weights – the holy grail of bat making, as this spreads the sweet spot. The downside is they are softer, so more prone to breaking.
Cricket bat devotees rival trainspotters in their zeal, and their community hums with stories of who is using what. Steve Smith is believed to have dabbled in Serbian willow bats. Melbourne Star and former Test batter Hilton Cartwright has used them, although it’s unclear what kind of willow launched his massive 121-metre six in a recent BBL game.
JPGavan’s range includes ‘Secret’ willow bats; he won’t say where the willow is grown, only that it’s not England, Australia or the sub-continent. He rates them “absolutely perfect for women’s cricket”, producing bigger-profile bats and thus more power without added weight.
Perry’s ‘Staple’ range is made from English willow because she likes to use the same bat for multiple years. South African batter Lizelle Lee is a ‘Secret’ willow adopter, and hit two centuries for the Hobart Hurricanes in the recent WBBL using her JPGavan secret weapon.
“We’ve tried all the alternate willows, [and] we’ve settled on one we love,” says Gavan, whose cheapest ‘Secret’ willow bat sells for $325, compared to a base-level English willow bat at $499. “We want to keep it a secret, keep it to ourselves. It’s been a really good, cost-effective option. It is very important that there is competition to English willow.”
Australian superstar Ellyse Perry uses JPGavan bats.Credit: Getty Images
He estimates sales to female cricketers since signing Perry in 2021 have more than trebled. The personalised experience of dealing with a boutique bat maker – parents and their children and cricketers of all abilities visiting a workshop, choosing a cleft, weight and profile – has shifted the dynamic from walking into a sports store and picking a bat off the rack.
“It’s the 30 and 40-year-olds, but also the young kids coming through with the world in the palm of their hands,” Brown says. “They want a bat that has that personal feel. To be part of that process is such a big pulling point, that’s what drives hand-made cricket bats.”
The cricket bat industry, Brown says, can be “secretive – no one wants to give away anything”. But it is collegiate too. He’s grateful for his friendship with another young artisan, Lachie Dinger, who is now head bat maker with Kookaburra. Gurung fondly recalls driving to Lachlan Fisher’s Lismore workshop to cut handles for his early MBR bats.
This week, King Brown Cricket’s new home in the Barwon Regional Cricket Centre at Kardinia Park was visited by a young wannabe bat maker seeking guidance about using a splicing saw. “I think what I have is pretty unique, and I’m sure other bat makers think the same way,” Brown says of his bats. “I’ve got no worries sharing [information] – I’m not going to give everything away, but I’m happy to help.”
Cricket’s endless quirkiness extends to its community of “bat nerds”, of which Phil Holzinger is a card-carrying member. The small boy who stared longingly at seemingly hundreds of bats in his local sports store has never left him. Holzinger restores old bats, and has more than 200 Duncan Fearnleys displayed in a room at his Gold Coast home that he calls “the bat cave”.
“It’s therapy for addicts,” he says of the multiple cricket bat Facebook groups he’s part of. Now in his 50s, he notes what a game-changer the internet age has been – not just for the likes of Gurung, Brown and others in honing their craft. “You could sit there 40 years ago and think there’s something wrong with me, I’m a bit of a freak. Now the internet has brought us freaks together.”
As a former grade cricketer who still plays, Holzinger is a veritable crash test dummy for bats. He’s felt the extra “ping” off a Serbian willow bat, and thinks a Gray-Nicolls ‘Kaboom’ made to the same bulbous specifications as David Warner’s ultimately outlawed bat (see sidebar) “is the best piece of willow I’ve used”.
He’s by no means a bat snob, having used a bat made from supposedly inferior Kashmir willow to great effect for many seasons at a good level. “It cost me 90 bucks around the time the Kaboom was the first $1000 bat, and it weighed nearly four pounds!” Holzinger says.
That’s railway sleeper territory – bats nudging three pounds (1.35kg) are considered heavy. “I bought it because it was the biggest bat on the market. But I was bodybuilding at the time.”
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