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The East Midlands is an area of the country with a rich batmaking heritage. Gunn & Moore are based in Nottingham, along with Charlie French, Aldred bats in Derbyshire and even Slazenger have their offices in Mansfield. As of this week, the East Mids can claim another batmaker – with B3 cricket opening up their state of the art factory, offices and showroom.

B3 Cricket are a company formed by 2 stalwarts of the cricket industry, David Bacon and Russell Evans, who both left their positions at another East Midlands factory to put into action an idea which could turn the bespoke bat market upside down. By utilising a state of the art CNC machine, combining it with the ability to select your own willow, choose your own sticker colours and design your own shape of cricket bat an individual can ensure they get their cricket bat made to their specification.

In a factory on a small industrial estate conveniently situated just off junction 26 of the M1 is where B3 ply their trade. Inside you’re immediately welcomed into the large factory, by stacks of clefts and various machinery. Alongside the large factory area is their small office, where the bats are profiled using Computed Aided Design. They’re then sent to the ultra hi-tech CNC machine to manufacture.

For the majority of cricketers their main interraction will be through the website, where a cricketer can select their profile, edge and spine to create a bat. There’s over 120 varieties of shapes and if you include weights, grades and handle shapes there’s over 28080 different bat possibilities available, who knew buying a cricket bat could be such an art form? On request, B3 are also supplying willow photos – so you can choose your grain and profile. It really is a custom process.

The B3 factory is also open to all, and a full bespoke offer is available – whereby a cricketer will sit with the Dr (David Bacon) to tailor their bat to their strokeplay on the CAD package.

We’re huge fans of the process, and love the idea of combining technology with the romance of traditional podshaving to create a totally custom bat which you can order an exact replica year after year.

Get yours at http://www.b3cricket.com/