Making Your Own Cricket Bat for Dummies

cricket bat and ball

It's not unusual for us to run across posts, especially those that originate in the eHow.com family of niche websites, where a freelancer attempts to answer a question that just plain resists explanation. We've already seen a few, such as how do you build a bicycle, how do you make an arrow, and even how do you make a hockey stick. Someone familiar with the object of the question would realize that the OQ wants to know the manufacturing process for a bike, an arrow, a hockey stick. But a freelancer who wants the cash? Someone like SportsRec.com's Joanne Robitaille is perfectly happy to tell you "How to Make a Cricket Bat at Home."

We don't know how many women in eastern Canada play cricket. Heck, we don't know how many women – or men – in eastern Canada have ever seen a cricket match; but it's a safe bet Robitaille didn't learn how to manufacture a cricket bat while getting her BA in creative writing. We know, however, that what Joanne managed to accomplish was just to reword a description of the process from the now-defunct website of a British custom bat-maker. According to Joanne, all you need to do is

• Cut a willow blank and dry it
• Rough shape the blank and compress it
• Finish shaping the blank and glue on a handle
• Sand and varnish the finished bat

Sounds pretty darned simple, doesn't it? Of course, Joanne – being ignorant of all things woodworking – does a pretty crappy job of describing the various processes. Here are some of her more asinine suggestions...

• "A slow drying process before any work is done ensures that the wood won’t crack or warp after your project is complete." – Errr, Joanne? How long do you dry it? Air dry? Kiln dry?
• "Use a table saw to cut the basic shape of the cricket bat. The front of the cricket bat has a raised peak roughly halfway up the center (resembles a small hill from all angles). The back is left flat." – How do you cut such a "hill" with a table saw?
• "Compress the bat in order to strengthen the willow fibers. Surround the bat with flat pieces of scrap iron roughly the same size as the bat blade and use strong clamps to add pressure. The closer you can get to 2,000 pounds per square inch of compression, the stronger your bat will be." – Scarp iron? Where'd you get that notion? The press the bat-maker uses is a custom machine, which you need if you want to develop about 160 tons total pressure... moron.
• "Construct a handle using cane and rubber strips. The handle should be comfortable to grip, and the rubber strips should be glued to the wood before the whole piece is laminated." – First, cane isn't "wood"; second, what's the proper shape; third, isn't the handle supposed to be wrapped?
• "Glue the handle in place so that the top edge extends a tiny bit above the front face of the blade, and leave it to dry overnight." – Just glue it? That will hold?
• "Carve the blade using a draw knife so that it is perfectly balanced." – Oh, come on, Joanne: you don't even know what a draw knife is!
• "After sanding the wood, polish it with a compound wax." – With a what?

It's crystal clear that Robitaille merely reworded the company's description of a process that involves both tools and materials unavailable to the average cricketer and woodworker. As an aside, willow wood is also not widely available. What bugged us most is Joanne's pretense that john or Jane Doe could follow some half-assed directions to make a cricket bat. For her lack of effort, however, she did earn the coveted Dumbass of the Day award...

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