Its not a "Bat", its Materials Engineering

They say cricket is ruled by batsmen. Unfortunately people get more entertainment for watching boundaries and overboundaries not by waiting for a wicket to fall. All these fun comes from couple of pieces rather few pieces of wood, called bat. International Cicket Council has a poor definition of this piece. A bat looks like this
can not be longer than 96.5 cm including the handle and maximum width shouldn’t exceed 10.8 cm. must be made of wood. There is no restrictions on the weight of the bat (typically 3 lb), the shape: well its understood, there is no definition by ICC. The blade of the bat can be covered with some material for protection and repair, should not strengthen the bat and the thickness of this cover should not exceed 1.56 mm. Recently a committee headed by Sunil Gavaskar, recommended some more criteria, the important one for this case is that you can not infiltrate anything in the blade moreover it should be made of one solid piece of wood.
Where is the scope for improvement? Material scientists and engineers step in here, before addressing this issue let us know where we need improvement. Of course ball should travel faster than what they do now. When a ball hits the bat at a very high speed, there are lots of vibrations and minimizing this has been challenge for sometimes. Striking the ball hard is easy when its hits at the “sweet spot”. This region is almost 12 cm above the bottom of the bat, the thickest part, we define this place as the place where minimum vibration is felt and the ball travels much faster. The sound we say heavenly when it hit this sweet spot. So extending the sweet spot region is also an important issue.
How to go about it? There are few research institute and Universities in Australia and in England are really doing quite a bit of research in these field. The departments associated with this are Material Science and Design, so its science and engineering combination. Lets see a bat, it has go 2 parts, one is solid part the one piece wood one and the other is the handle. The handle is a composite material its made up of canes put together with rubber and adhesive in between. This actually dampens the vibration which comes after the ball hits the bat. In RMIT university in Australia researchers are trying to make the handle with a composite material containing carbon fiber and polymer, this dampens the vibration more compared to conventional handle. This is the bat which probably Rickey Ponting wanted to use last year, under ICC supervision. In case of base ball bat the vibration control system is a piezoelectric device, which generates voltage to nullify the effect of vibration, it’s a software controlled process and these software were developed after a rigorous study on vibration, soon in cricket too we will see such modification setting in. Due to the rules we can not progress much with the blade part from the material science point of view, this is a pure problem for designers, design aspect only can extend the sweet spot. Tennis and Golf has progressed a lot in these regards. They are using the best possible materials for such application, reinforced graphite of bulk metallic glass are few should be named. Lets hope ICC will overcome its conservative resistance and make cricket more exciting.

Some links:

ICC home page

Bat size specification

The big controversy in cricket

Probably the biggest controversy in the recent times in cricket has hit the media. Nup! not Saurav or Greig, its with the greatest spinner Murlitharan and Shane Warne. After the controversial stament by Shane where he indiacted to a famous bowler (presumably Murli) in the world cricket captured lot of wicktes playing against minnows like bangladesh an Zimbabwe. Well Arjuna Ranatunga the fighter fought back saying that Shane's most of the wicketes came from the teams like South Africa and England and Westindies, who doesn't play spin well, not against India the masters against spin (thank god they didn;t forget it). Most of his wickets came as tail enderes and he is an overrated bowler. i am sure there going to be huge discussions about it statistics has been already popping up, but seeing the statistics i was wondering both the partys should keep quite if their performence is kept agains Kapils performence, who never played against Zimbabwe or bangladesh, and he was a Fast bowler from India! if we take out 150 wickets from both of these bowlers, Statistics from Kapils career would look certainly brighter. May be they should stop at this because both of these spinners are really greats and their bowling it is always a treat to watch, perhaps its a time they along with their friends keep quite because we can put Kapil ahead of them :D

Cricketing memories

.....Its a quite old event, i mean its 3 months old event, before i broke my finger and before we faced all kind of problems. This was our first match in league and we won it as we had won the last one. These are the big stars of IISc cricket team, and the small stars are at the bottom. partha got 6 wickets and I scored 75 in that match. Most of the team performed in similar fashion in other matches but unfortunately Sandeep's camera couldn't catch them. Kapil the caps is not here. ViveK, Mahesh are also missing.

Srini, Sachin, Partha, Atul, Kumar, Venu (star faculty), Jackie (Santanu)
Sandeep, Uncle (Surinder), OP, Saru(Sarendra) and me

Me and Partha

Game over!

Time to write some good things! It was really beautiful 4 seasons Yes! I am talking about cricket seasons. It was an opportunity I never thought I will get, but with my luck was shining at its best, I got the chance to play serious cricket after a gap of 4 years. People fall in love, so did I, with this great game called Cricket. I always felt happy when I stayed long in the crease. It won’t be wrong to say that destiny was grinning when I was batting last weekend. That was probably my last serious cricket match where I spend the longest time in the crease!
I met with cricket quite early age of my life. I had a friend called Santanu who had a proper kit; we used to play with cork balls which were extremely hard. We used to play wearing one pad, most of the players were Rightie so they used to tell me to tie the pad in the left leg, I was a natural leftie so it was the wrong leg for me so one ball one day came and straight away hit my front right leg’s sean bone, I was hurt on the my first cricket match and what a consequence, my last day was very similar, i had an injured hand; One day I had started playing it on the other day I left it. I had many friends into my life; some left me some I had left! But this is more than any pain I came accross. By this time if you are reading it you might have gave up on me but believe me its my soul speaking not me :D You had enough fun, leave me now the game is over!

Eden gardens

Lash green out field with a 22 yard land lying bare. from the edge of the field the huge galleries have gone up to the sky. If you are in the middle you will feel like a gladiator and i can' t imagine how it will be when 1oo thousand people chant your name! It is one of my most cherished loacation on earth, I am talking about the world's one of the best cricket grounds: EDEN GARDENS.
The name Eden does not go to any mytholgy, its come from histroy. Legend is calcutta cricket club (CCC) which came to existence in the year 1792 has shifted to this place called parkland in the year 1864. This place was under the supervison of Governor Lord Auckland, and two of her family members called Eden sisters used to take care of this park and probaly from there the name "Eedn gardens" desended. The ambience of the ground was once mesmirising and heaven for the swing bowlers. The breeze from the higcourt end was nightmare for the batsmen.
Edengardens was not only a cricket ground but was a bit of football was played here also.
The first test cricket was played in 1926 at Eden gardens, between MCC vs. India and then on the ball stared rolling, from the Sobers outsanding catches to Salim Maliks devastation, Azhars golden batting and Lakshman 's epical batting, Eden is the dream ground of cricketers accross the world. The attraction is partly because of the crowd. Although breeze doesnot enter the ground still people come to watch then people.
If you happen to appear in front of the CAB office in Eden you may mistake it as the MCC office in London may be better. With the centinary museum coming up, Eden has starting from Indoor practice ground to ultra mordern Gym. Huges stands and Lights in the night. If you come to Kolkata dont miss Eden gardens, my cherished dream ground.