A cricket bat with a hole in it - Gray-Nicolls' NEOCORE is here to shake things up
If Bollywood were to make a ridiculous rom-com on cricket, with the bat and the ball as the lead characters, it might look something like the following:
The ball: An independent girl brought up in a conservative family, wanting to spend her life in the simplest way possible, averse to any massive changes. She likes the colors red and white the most and often wears pink dresses for night-outs.
The bat: A spoiled brat born in a family with a history of alcoholism, but strong and intelligent who can't live without constant travel, experimentation with his friendships and relationships, and a hatred for settling.
They somehow fall in love, somehow find a way for a middle ground, and live happily ever after. Right?
Well, as crazy as it sounds, the reality isn't too far off. Search "Evolution of the cricket bat" and "Evolution of the cricket ball" separately on Google and see for yourself.
While the ball has remained the same leather coating of a cork, only changing in colors and weight, the bat has had quite a journey.
You'd know of the famous 'Scoop' and the 'Mongoose' bats but there have also been attempts to patent bats made of Aluminium, bats with two handles sticking in like a 'V', bats with Kevlar (which is used to make bullet-proof vests) on it's back, bats with handles made of carbon fiber, and bats with electronic chips inside them -- the list outside the patent files is never-ending.
But the Marylebone Cricket Club, the rule-makers of the sport -- and in our movie's case, the ball's parents -- haven't been kind to the experimenting. They have cut down the wings over the years with two sweeping statements in the laws:
5.2.1 The handle is to be made principally of cane and/or wood.
5.3.2 The blade shall consist solely of wood.
That's it. That's all the breathing space you have to work with to continue to be in the sport.
It worked for a long time too. As attention turned to the size of the edges instead of the material, and they were brought within the rules too, bat and ball almost became equally standardized.
But now, the demand for lighter bats, which are somehow also more durable, is at an all time high and it doesn't care that there isn't enough low-density wood to fulfill all of it.
So, how do you get better with less, while staying within the MCC rules? Gray-Nicolls, the original patentors of the 'Scoop', answer, in their own unique way, which has always set them apart: "You put a hole inside the damned thing!"
Only, it's more complicated than that. That is why this new range of bats has a cool name - NEOCORE.
Sportskeeda recently sat down on a video conference with Paul Jenkins, who's been at Gray-Nicolls for the past 11 years and looks after the fundamental technologies (the make, look and performance) of all kinds of sporting equipment and Alex Hohenkerk, a master bat maker who started here 18 years ago as a laborer and has gone through years of hard work to be the main man at the workshop.
They explained to us the idea and need behind this innovation, how it has been tested, the feedback it has got from star cricketers like Karun Nair and Tammy Beaumont, the problems they have faced in the process, when does NEOCORE hit the market and more.
Q. How common are innovations in cricket bats, with the rules and everything, I don't think there would be too much breathing space…
Paul: Yeah, there's very little breathing space. The MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club) rules are very clear. And the MCC rules are very clear for a very, very good reason. Obviously, they want to have an even contest between the bat and the ball. They don't want the bat to be too powerful because obviously the batter can't dominate the bowler. They want to have that even contest.
And I think the thing that we're excited about with NEOCORE is very much that we're trying to achieve a bat that gives you those pro bat characteristics in terms of size, in terms of profile, in terms of pickup, but from a more of a sustainability point of view, that the industry, at the minute, is facing some issues when it comes to willow supply. And certainly — Alex will be well placed to comment on this in his role — there's a lot of heavy wood that the industry's having to process. And so our job as a product team, which was Alex and Ian Savage (R&D Engineer), and myself, predominantly, along with other people, was to come up with a solution to that. So how can we take these dense bits of wood which can deliver fantastic performance for club players and for pro players, and just make that a playable weight range? And so that's where NEOCORE started — in saying, can we take dense wood and make it a pro-quality bat that club players can access across the game?
Alex: Yeah, absolutely, it's just, it's the way the game was developed over time. Actually, historically, there was a market to make cricket bats into sort of standard stock and retail shapes in 2lb 12oz, 2lb 13oz, 2lb 14oz weights. But it's really not anymore. The game’s changed, the soul’s changed. And yeah, when 30, about 30% of all the wood that you have access to and produce is of is naturally high in its density, you end up stockpiling timber you either can't use or you have to make into very small specification cricket bats, which, again, still have great performance, but people will pass them up because they don't look like the bats they see on the telly, or, you know, the bat that they've always dreamed of. So it's sort of trying to find a way to create that size and that look and that feel whilst using timber that's it's great to work with. It's great to perform with. It's bats and timber that tend to hold up. It's a bit more durable with it being a bit higher intensity, but it's just trying to find a way to use that more.
Paul: Yeah, as we said at the start, as per your question, really there's not a lot of room in the rules for innovation. So I think that Alex is well used to his time in the workshop of finding ways to make bats as per players' specifications so that they are picked up in a certain way, so they have a certain profile, etc. But essentially, those are bound within the rules that every bat maker works to. So to be able to look at those rules and say, well, actually there is scope for some change that really it has to be a solid Willow blade with a wooden handle which inserts into it. And really that's the that's the part of the rules where you think there's a little bit of opportunity there, because the way that the wooden handle inserts into the willow blade, it doesn't say in the rules what that should look like. And so therefore our joint mechanism is absolutely valid. And what we're really excited about, from a sustainability point of view, as Alex has said, is it means that we can use heavier wood, which is going to give good value for players, and hopefully, being that from a sustainability side of things, we can use a lot more of that wood which deserves to find its way into the hands of players.
Q. So it's basically solving two problems. First of all, it's solving the supply problem that you have with the wood. And it's also making the current batch better. It's giving players better bats to work with?
Paul: I think better is a point of view. I think that there are some people who like it and there other people that don't like it. What it does do is that it means that players can access bats that are big and match pro profiles, but that pick up incredibly well. You cannot go on, on scale weight with the NEOCRE. I think, Alex, you'd agree that a player holding a NEOCORE in the hand would probably guess incorrectly the weight of the bat by up to three or four ounces. It's so much lighter to pick up.
Alex: Yeah, the way the weight is through the bat… it's I, I've not seen anyone get guess it correctly yet, you know, and it is, you know, we use, you know, scale weight and pick up weight and pick up is very individual so we are used to people maybe being half an ounce or an ounce out, but when you've got pro players being three or four ounces out on what this actually is. It's a testament to its design of it and how works and how all the component parts fit together. So it's great.
Paul: And as much as Alex is right, the pickup is subjective, that a player will prefer it, the next player won't. What you can do with NEOCORE is demonstrate the pickup, because you can do a very simple test, which is to put it onto a scale machine where you'll have a pivot point in the middle, and you'll put your bat on it, and you'll be able to see at what point the balance is. And on the NEOCRE, it's consistently 10 to 15 millimeters closer to the handle. So you can demonstrate that the bat the balance point. Of the bat is higher up the bat, and therefore the player has so much more control over their shots, because their hand speed can be so much quicker. They can get through their shots quicker because the balance points closer to their hands. So pick-up is important for players, but with NEOCORE It means that genuinely, you can get better hand speed and therefore more control over your shots.
Q. So, if you could explain it to a 10-year-old, what exactly are we looking at here, the innovation and what has changed from the bats that we have seen before?
Alex: So the innovation is, is two parts. You've got the way that the handle joint works. But even key to that is the internal core, the internal scoopwork core, down inside the blade, in something that I've never seen before in such a consistent and precise way. So all that allows is you've got more torsional stability in the blades. You're keeping all your weight to the outside edges of the blade, so you're keeping the black square through its shots, so you get more surface area on the ball, which is, again, something that we pioneered years ago with the single scoop. That was the idea with single scoop technologies about keeping large amounts of surface area striking through the ball. And the Neo core works in the same way, but without having the big visible scoop out the back of it, you know, you look at the back and crikey, that's a great big bat, because we've done all the scoop work inside it, the handle joint itself as well. It's a really, it's beautifully consistent fit and line of balance as well in the handle.
So like Paul says, it raises allows that balance point to be higher. You've also got in it, there's a payoff in getting the joint as strong as possible. Stiff is a difficult word, but if you've got slightly less flex in that joint, you've got more energy transferring back through the blade as well. So it's a bit of a common misconception that you want, that people want thin, whippy handles, because actually humongous lots of energy in that, in that whippiness. And actually you'll get far more value through your shots when the blades get as much energy transferring back through the middle as possible. So the joint itself is all night is also all bigger. So you're looking at the larger surface area, looking at the stronger joint and stronger sealant, and that's a great thing.
Paul: Some terminology to make sure that we're very clear about what it was that the technology enabled us to do: Alex very eloquently mentioned torsional stability, so the fact that bat doesn't twist as much when it's hit because it's a scoop, and that's what scoops do. Also just mentioning that the balance point shifting up, the technical definition would be the moment of inertia. So we control the moment of inertia by making sure that the balance between the size and the volume of the core in relation to the size and the volume of material on the handle and the shoulders of the bat is such that the player gets incredibly good timing out of their shots. So yeah, it's torsional stability, it's moment of inertia, and it's engineering those two things to make sure the players have as much control over the shot as possible.
And what I will say is that the joint itself is absolutely conformative to the MCC rules. Yeah, I've seen, I've seen some misinformation online about the NEOCORE from people saying it's a longer handle. It's not a longer handle the joints, not longer it descends into the plate as much as a standard splice bat. It's just that it's internal and you can't see it.
Q. So where did this conversation start? Was it because of the problem that the industry was facing with the wood or did you get some feedback from players that we needed a bat with a better pick-up…
Paul: The initiation point was very much a conversation in a board level. So the Grays brand is owned by the Grays family, and Neil Gray, who's the managing director, was keen from a stock point of view. So mainly for retail, not so much for the top-end players, he was keen to make sure that they were getting the best value for money that they could for the product. So he knew that the sales force were feeding back and saying that these are the kind of weight ranges that players want to see, the consumers want to see, but we've got a lot of heavy wood. You know, the industry does as a whole, not just Gray-Nicolls. So what can we as a product team do to facilitate a meaningful loss in weight?
So it was a question then, of myself, of my colleagues, Adam Braddock and Ian Savage, working with Alex, the bat maker, to find a way that we can, from an R&D point of view and into a production point of view, reduce that waste, and we trialed a number of different methods to do it. And the beauty of this process was that, as Alex said, we found that we could get tremendous accuracy and control with how we were removing the material, but without compromising on the shape. There's no concaving at all on the NEOCORE. It's completely full, which means that not only does it look big, but it means you'll get a lot of structural strength around the shoulders, which is inherently a vulnerability with cricket bats. So yeah, it was an iterative process. We went through many different versions, and it was tested over a period of two, three years. So it's not something that we threw together quickly and hope will work. We're confident, and, yeah, it's been a real team effort.
Alex: I think that's, that's the key thing — we've taken time, you know? There are mistakes have been made. Things haven't worked. And we've had players on board who — and I think that's a really key thing — is we've had high-level professionals using this from the start, and they've stuck with it. And they are now championing it, and which in itself, is a testament to the bat, because there is nobody pickier about cricket bat than a professional cricket player. And if you've got players — it's not guys who are 19, or 20, and just coming on the stage — these are world season pros who, at the back end of their careers and they're going, “Yeah, all right, that's brilliant.” So it's that thing of we know it works. We know, you know, there'll always be people that will struggle to get on board with the concept. But not everybody liked the single scoop when that came out. And that's, you know, one of the most defining bats of cricket in history. And, yeah, that did pretty well, so…
Paul: I think the actual design process for it was, was really good fun. One of the big issues was that we got, we got a bit too greedy at certain points. So back in the early days of it, sort of, you know, year one of NEOCORE, we were removing huge amounts of core from the inside. We were removing as much as seven to eight ounces of material and the bats that people were using in the nets. Because before we took this to, sort of pros, we got good cricketers who worked for Gray-Nicolls and we were testing in-house, Joe Lamb being one of them, and these bats were like matchsticks. They weighed nothing. We were getting very excited. But of course, the strength wasn't quite there. But yeah, over a period of sort of 12 to 18 months of fundamental R&D, we were able to say what the optimal amount of weight loss was, what the optimal shape of the core was, the depth of the core, and lots and lots of one-percenters, which had to be worked through over a period of time to make it work. It's had a lot of work go into it.
The first conversations that we had about it were in early 2020. That's when the initial brief from from the board, the Gray's board, came and Adam Braddock, Ian Savage, Alex and myself were having those early conversations around them. But then, of course, Covid came along and disrupted things. So there was some work being done in the background during covid, but obviously we couldn't do a lot because of the restrictions. It didn't really start to hit the ground running until 2021 and from there, it's been, you know, gathering pace ever since.
Q. Can you explain what this issue with the low-density wood shortage exactly is?
Alex: The wood is, ultimately the same as we've had, that has been produced for decades and decades and decades. It's more the fact that we've lost the ability to use higher-density wood. It's all naturally occurring. You have no control over density. As a willow grower, there's nothing you can do to the trees. If we could find a way of growing low-density trees, we'd be all over it, but it's just not a thing. And we've been trying for a long time, and it's just it's not there. It's a naturally occurring thing. The high-density timber has always been there, and it's just a case of finding a way to use it. Different parts of the world may have some success. You know, for example, Grey Nicolls Australia have sort of consistently had a fairly giant range, or an extreme range, you know, which uses a good quantity of high-density timber in the UK and Europe, we don't have that market. We don't have people that buy into that. So you're stuck with these clefts, and you've got to find a way to use them. You know, things haven't changed. We're not getting more timber. It's the same the same amounts. It's just we've got less scope to use it than we have had in the past. When, you know, you could make bats with a maybe a smaller profile, or you had a percentage of class you can make Standard Profile, but in the 2’11, 12, 13, 14 weight range, whereas now that's maybe 5% of what we need to make, needs to be there. So it's all it's the same timber, it's the same quality, it's the same volume. It's just we have to find a way to use that that denser wood.
Q. You are the first company to do it. But haven't other companies tried doing similar things before? Where do they face difficulties and or do they deliberately try to work around the material and you know, and not this kind of innovation?
Alex: In trying to core Willow, I've seen various guises, going back maybe even 35 years, but it's a very poor attempt. There's nothing — to put it into context, we've had to build machinery to do this coring to the consistency and quality that it's done. You know, it still pops up. Now you'll have companies that are trying to, they'll do coring underneath a standard splice and hop to try and hide it, to never show it. And you see results where it's basically people with almost like an electric hand drill, and it's drilled off to the side, and there's no consistency, or the core itself is so so small, the weight reduction is not worth the effort and stresses that you put the blade through. And that was, again, one of the key things in the whole process of building. You're trying to remove wood from an area that doesn't affect how the bat performs. That's the key thing.
This was one of the things with the original scoop, people couldn't, you know, it's the, ‘Oh, you've taken the middle off. Actually, you haven't taken the middle off if you've pressed the back, well, the surface of the blade will always hit. And what you do on the back is how you support the front.’ And we've just taken that concept and, you know, we've put it inside the bat, so you've still got the look, you've got all that support, all that torsional stability, and it's there.
So there are people out there already, since the launch, that have said they don't like it, and that's fine. That's their you know, that's the way they want to do it. And, you know, it's, I think it's one thing to try and put a hole inside a bat and hide it. It's a very different thing to take ownership of it. This is how you do it, you know, this is, this is how it's done. And look, we can make these bats, and they're great.
Paul: Alex is absolutely right that one of the real challenges is controlling the hole. So Alex said putting it where you need it, he's absolutely right, but to do that is extraordinarily difficult because the willow takes the whatever cutting implement you're using, the willow will take it in whatever direction the grain of the wood wants it to go. So as Alex is saying, people will put small holes in so that they don't risk coming out the back of the bat or to the side of the bat.
For us to be able to put a core in of this size to mimic an external scoop of putting it internally has meant some fundamental machinery that's had to be built. And you'll notice in the marketing films that have been put out so far that would never show how that hole is put in it, and we never will show how that hole is introduced, because that is that's the area of the bat that has taken so much time and R&D and we'll protect that very, very carefully, because other people will try it, and other people are welcome to try it, but it's very difficult to do and do it consistently and give it the performance that's required is a real challenge. And to make sure that we can own that story as much as possible.
The handle technology is the real key to how to achieve the characteristics that we're looking for. And we have, we have patented that handle technology as well. So we've gone to the time and the trouble and the expense to do that because we believe in the technology, and we feel as though we want to have as much ownership of that as possible.
Q. Can you explain the layers of testing that have gone behind it?
Paul: So the testing started pretty much in 2021 and those initial tests were very much internal. So you have some people who are very, very bad at cricket, like me trying it, and some who are really quite good at cricket, like Joe Lamb at the top of your screen there, who tried it. We've got a number of good players in the company.
So Adam Braddock, who's one of the product developers of NEOCORE, plays for the England over-40 team currently and is a good batsman, so he was trying it as well. So the initial process, just to make sure we can control it and make sure that it was a good idea before anyone else saw it, was very much internal, and we used a lot of indoor schools and academies in Sussex so that we could go there and have hitting sessions. It's work. We enjoyed it, but yeah, it was a lot of fun for us to be paid to go and play cricket for an afternoon here and there. So that was good fun.
But after we did those initial internal tests, and as Alex alluded to earlier, we went through many iterations in the NEOCORE. When we got to a configuration that we were confident with, that's where we started to seed it out with some professional players and some club players as well. So it was being used in the first-class game around about, sort of late 2021 the winter of 2021, certainly into 2022 and players were using it, as I said, first-class level. And some, the majority of those players who were told there was a different handle technology, but had no idea at all that there was a core.
And the reason for that mainly was because we didn't want people to be influenced by it in a negative way. Because we didn't want people to say, “Well, it's got a hole in it. It's not going to work, or it's going to break, or it's going to not give me the same middle and the same performance.” We didn't want anyone to have any doubts. We just wanted them to look at a bat that looked like a big, pro-shaped bat and picked up really well, and they could use it confidently.
So the testing snowballed from there. And you'll notice on some of our bats over the last couple of years, there'll be standard Gray-Nicolls bats, but if you see one that has a black dot beneath the Gray-Nicolls name on the side stamp, that means it's a NEOCORE, so that we were able to track it, so the players weren't aware that there was a core. We were aware, and we could get feedback accordingly. And then after we were confident that the technology was working, then we started to notify certain players that, yes, there was actually a core in it, and that's where their minds started to be a bit blown.
And certainly, John Simpson, who's been one of our chief testers, who, at the time, was at Middlesex; he's now captain of Sussex, but he used that bat in all formats against red ball, against the white ball and scored lots of runs and said to us, “Do you know what? I'm not sure if I knew there was a core in that, I'd have even tested it for you. I'm not sure I'd have risked my my game with that product, but I'm glad you didn't tell me, and I trust this product, and I'm now going to keep using this product.” So it was a very carefully controlled test period, and we went from being very much in-house to first-class professionals, controlling as much as possible.
Alex: And I think that's the thing — the professionals that we've used, we've got that the quality of runs scored across every format. It's not like, this is a white-ball bat or a T20 bat. Actually we've got centuries in every format, barring Test cricket using that. You know, it's just phenomenal. What's going on with it and players having the absolute time of their life, you know, and having wonderful seasons the last couple of seasons. John Simpson was one of them, you know, he's had a phenomenal last couple of years, of which, predominantly, it's been NEOCORE. And there are others out there that just, you know, they ask for it first.
Paul: Yes, great. And it has been an international test process as well. It starts in the UK, but we've had Karun Nair using it as well, and we've had women cricketers like Tammy Beaumont using it. So it's been very much a male and female test process and an international process with players from various countries using it. Pakistani test Captain Shaan Masood has used it. So it's had, it's had a lot of very good players from across the world testing it for us.
Q. And what has been their feedback? What was Karun’s, Tammy’s and Shaan’s feedback about this?
Alex: Karun, again, was a player who had no clue what bat he was using. He came in saying, it was too light which was a nice moment, you know? He said, I'm not sure. He was hitting the ball really nicely. So I think he was a bit quick through the shot. I think it's only about 2lb 8oz and Karun is 2lb 10oz, you know, that was always a good thing. With the players, the thing is, pretty much, they want consistency, they want shape, they want size, they want performance. They just want their NEOORE to be the same as their traditionally made bats. They're not asking for any exceptions, because it's a NEOCORE. It's that just, they're just happy to as long as it, as long as their NEOCORE matches their traditionally made bats and then that's it, they're happy to go.
Paul: Shaan, one of the reasons he really likes it is that… I think that he was asking of us a few months ago to have a shorter blade and a longer handle because he wanted those pickup characteristics. But as a tall person, he found that, of course, that meant he was having to get into less comfortable batting positions to have a shorter blade and a longer handle. So when we gave him NEOCORE, he was very happy, because he could have a pickup that he wanted, but with a full-length blade that he needed. So for him, it was really good, because he gave him the size and the length of that, but with a pickup, which was the same, approximately the same as a short handle bat.
Q. Who came up with the name NEOCORE, what does it signify?
Paul: So Neo was an idea that the product team came up with. And Neo is Latin for new and what we're introducing is the core scoop. So it's basically a new scoop is what we're calling it. NEOCORE was also the name that, to be honest, we thought sounded cool, so it has relevance, but it sounds cool as well. So that, yeah, there's multiple reasons.
Q. I suppose it won’t be affected by a difference in conditions across the world?
Alex: I wouldn't, I certainly wouldn't expect it to be affected in any different way, as a standard. But you know, you move through moving around the world, professional players, playing all various different climates and most continents. I've got no belief from what we've seen and where it's been used and like saying, we've seen it used out in India, and we've seen it used out sort of across the world, with various players. I don't believe there will be any issues with that.
Q. Paul, when are we planning to see it in the market? And will it cost more?
Paul: It's going to come at a range of price points as any cricket bat should. The whole project started at the board level as a consumer project. We wanted to introduce playable weight range bats with good pro sizes and profiles, and we wanted to make sure that club players could access this technology. So it'll come at a range of price points to suit.
There will be a pro-grade which would be more expensive, but there'll be a couple of other grades as well, which trickle down through the price points. So it should be affordable to the club player and to the club player with a bit more money to spend as well. And that would be available at our normal kind of release timelines which I think is around November of 2024 so just a few months away now.
Q. And now that you have taken such a big step. Are there any planned updates of future, future models in Python? Is there? Is there something that, is it like a thing where you can build upon it more and more?
Paul: We definitely can. And I think that the other thing to say is, as a company, we're very proud of the fact that the R&D never stops. So we've come up with a concept that we're very happy with, but we'd be the first to admit that we can always do better, and when we get it better, we'll be saying we can do better, and we'll keep trying. So I think that between the design team, between Alex in the bat-making department, we'll keep pushing, and we'll look at different ways to improve the blade, different ways to improve the handle, and it'll get better and better as the years go on, even though we believe in it now, it'll continue to improve.
And I think the thing for me will be what the consumer uptake is like. If the consumer likes it, then of course, you'll start to see it being produced more. You'll probably start to see it in grades, in other bat families. So obviously we call our our range ‘families’, and you'll have currently the Classics, or the Shockwave family or the Tempests family, you'll start to see the NEOCORE being introduced into those as well. So the players who perhaps like a slightly different bat shape, maybe a higher middle, maybe a lower middle, will start to introduce that technology into those shapes as well, if the consumer likes the concept.
Q. Final question, haven't you met any bowlers who have requested you to not find more innovations in bats?
Alex: That's really important to say here — we've been very careful, firstly, because we believe it should be an even bats contest between the ball and the bat, and we've been very careful not to upset the lawmakers as well. We were not trying to make a bat that is better than a standard bat. We're trying to make it back in a different way, which is as good as the current ones.