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There’s been a bit of activity on the forum discussing the Player’s Edition bats that GM have released this year, so I thought I would discuss the concept and how it was born.

I guess the first place to start is the bats provided to the Pro cricketer. The majority, and by majority I mean all but a handful of players have of the shelf designs, either from the current GM range or from older DXM designs.  There are a few Pro’s that have specific bats designed for them – these being Jonathan Trott,  Graeme  Smith, Shane Watson and Ross Taylor.

Jonathan Trott (Icon Stickers) & Graeme Smith (Now Epic Stickers)

These bats were designed from existing handmade bat designs,  almost reverse engineering of a CAD model. Both these bats have a flat back profile (not concaved) and are both very traditional in shape with large shoulder profiles. The Graeme Smith bat has a slightly lower swell. During the Forum tour people loved the JT shape.

Ross Taylor (Icon Stickers)

Ross used the Icon profile for a while but wanted to the design tweeking which involved flatten the profile at the toe. So the profile shape is the same as an Icon, just much bigger (much bigger even than a GM+) with the toe flattened off.

Shane Watson (Flare Stickers)

Shane’s bat shape was designed during a consultation with myself during a factory visit – from which the Flare production bat was based. This bat like the JT and GS bats has a flat profile, but the swell is much higher, with absolutely enormous edge and swell profiles. The size of the edge at the shoulder and toe is quite small which extenuates the size of the edge.

The beauty of the DXM process is that once a bat has been designed and a CAM program produced, an exact replica can be consistently made, whether this be a bat for Jonathon Trott, a Shane Watson Players Edition or an Icon bat for retail. It was because of this consistency that GM decided to offer the Players Edition range to allow the club cricketer to use the exact bat design of an international cricketer.

Players Edition Willow

The willow is hand selected from the very best of Grade 1 clefts normally saved for the Pro’s, and is selected on performance, density and grain structure.

I hope this helps,

Streaky