By Dave Swanton
The Village Bat Company was founded in 2020 in Essex by two cricketing friends, Freddie Chatt and George Simmons. Both pay for Great Baddow Cricket Club and a bat break brought about a great business opportunity.
Freddie takes up the story: “A few years ago my cricket bat broke which was gutting as I really loved that bat. Even though I had been playing with it for around 5 years, at the same time I was excited at the prospect of getting a brand-new bat. It had obviously been a while since I had bought a new bat and the prices just seemed crazy. Most bats were coming in over £400, and some as high as £700.”
Freddie added; “This got me thinking that surely there was something that could be done to disrupt this space as these really expensive bats were created for professionals. And most of us were grassroots players and didn’t need that sort of equipment to enjoy the game.
Over the course of about 12 months, I was consumed by the whole cricket bat manufacturing process and learned so much that it got really deep. I started to challenge the traditional beliefs we learn as cricketers and tested out different types of willow to see if we could find some affordable price points for village cricketers.
This is one of the strongest held beliefs in cricket, that English willow is the only willow you can use if you play cricket as all others are inferior in comparison. But we thought – what if this wasn’t the case? After all, Kashmir willow is used commonly amongst Indian recreational players and was even used by Sachin Tendulkar and Sir Viv Richards at points during their careers. So we challenged it.”
From the considerable amount of information Freddie and George had absorbed they took the plunge. Freddie said: “We sourced some sample bats directly from India, using the highest grade of Kashmir willow before the 2019 season began. We wanted to test if they would survive a match let alone a season. We had our own doubts considering it was such a strongly held belief from across the cricketing community. The rest of the story is pretty obvious, to the point that we probably wouldn’t have set up Village Cricket Co. If the bats hadn’t performed well. We were astounded that the bats performed and held up exactly the same as our previous bats costing around £200-300. They had the same pickup, the same ping when you middle it, the edges even seemed to fly (which was fortunate for us).
We were sold, we even got some clubmates to try them out and they were astounded too and have since become our first customers. A massive bonus to the club cricketers is that the Village Bats arrive on your doorstep, ready knocked in so there is no need to spend countless hours hammering and creating a sweet spot of your own!”
The bats are presented in a smart carrying case and the bats bear the logo of Village Bats which will undoubtedly raise questions during games and at practice.
Visit the website at www.villagecricket.co – Bats are made in adult and junior sizes.
