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LRB blog

Kahuna Chaos

Inigo Thomas · Cricket Bats

Cricket bats were once distinguished only by the makers' names; now they sound like tools superheroes might use in computer games or cartoons. These are some of the names given to bats by the leading manufacturers:

Beast, Fiery Beast, Angry Beast, Wild Beast, Blade Runner, Blade Strike, Ice Sub 10, Big Kahuna, Biggest Kahuna, Kahuna Chaos, Kahuna Carnage, Kahuna Twins, Kahuna Mayhem, Catalyst, Hero, Icon, Purist, Blazer, Genius, Wizard, B52, Navarone, Samurai, Uzi, Zeus, Air Blade, Don, V389, Hard Drive, Alpha, Beta, Mega Bit, Satellite, Fusion, Ignite, Nitro, Powerbow, Predator, Viper, Xiphos.

Xiphos is the ancient Greek word for a single-hand double-edged sword. Cricket bats are held with both hands, and have a single face.

cricket

Comments

  • 20 July 2009 at 2:19pm
    Martin says:
    Although, if you allow T20 to count as cricket, David Warner, the young Australian batsman, did use a double-sided bat earlier this year - perfect for reverse sweeps. Oddly, Gray-Nicholls, the manufacturers of this bat and Xiphos, missed out on the chance to name it Xiphos, preferring the more prosaic Dual T20. Either way Warner used it to great effect, clobbering 65 runs including four sixes.
    Apparently the first double-sided bats were made in India in the early 1980s. But unless you're KP you'd probably still use both hands.