"A Half-Brick On a Stick"!!!!!!!!!

Well for the past week, Many people in India had a common point of talk in their conversations with friends, relatives, collegues etc... It was about this "Mongoose Bat" which had garnered a lot of interest after Hayden, a player of the Chennai Superkings team in the IPL had decided to use it in one of the league games against delhi daredevils. Hayden had successfully used the mongoose bat by smashin almost a century in 40 odd balls. The devastation he did with it was something the people had never seen before. Initially he had used d normal bat and when he got used to the pitch conditions he decided to have a go with it. CSK had won that game hands down due to that one man effort from hayden with help from the Mongoose bat.  Since then players from the other teams are trying to practice with the bat and tryin to get a feel of it.

  So for many of you who don't have an idea on what a "Mongoose Bat" is, The Mongoose MMi3 Cricket Bat is a cricket bat specifically designed for Twenty 20 cricket. The design is unusual in that the blade is 33% shorter than a conventional bat and the handle is 43% longer. The manufacturer claims that this provides 20% more power and 15% more bat speed and gives the batsman an advantage for clearing the boundary. This kind of a bat is smaller and lighter than the traditional cricket bat. The decreased length of the blade helps to reduce the bat's weight while the long handle allows optimum reach to the batsman. The lightness of the bat helps in increasing the bat speed and allows the batsmen to hit the ball harder while batting. The manufacturers claim the change in the length of the blade does not affect the performance of the batsman in any way since it is the middle of the bat(the part which is located on the backside of the thick scoop of the bat)that is usually used for hitting the ball. So this is technical part of how the mongoose bat is made to suit big hitting which is necessary for T20.

 The First player who came out and used a mongoose bat was the Ex-Aussie player Stuart Law. It was used in a T20 county game between Derbyshire and Durham on May 27th 2009. Stuart Law who plays for derbyshire decided to unveil the mongoose bat for the first time in a match. He Initially played with the normal bat, but once he was settled at the crease he called for the mongoose bat and even cracked a huge towering six over the mid-wicket area but perished shortly by getting run out. He calls it "a half-brick on a stick". But Law admits that he would think twice before using his sawn-off Mongoose against Fast Bowlers. When the ball is flying around your nostrils, the shoulders of the old-fashioned bat have an important role to play. But he believes that on slow, low pitches like the ones you encounter on the sub-continent, or in English club cricket the Mongoose can double your power.

The Marylebone Cricket Club declared the bat legal and permitted its use in India and worldwide. These Bats are priced between Rs. 17,000 to Rs. 23,000. For the moment, 100 bats in two categories will be launched in India and all of them would be signed by Mathew Hayden who has been signed as the Brand Ambassador of the mongoose cricket bat. And as far as i know West Indian All-rounder Dwayne Smith who plays for the Deccan chargers in the IPL has signed a contract with the makers of the Mongoose bat. So Now the big question everyone is pondering at the moment is will this new invention for the batsmen be a setback to bowlers or will the bowlers come up with some strategy against this mongoose bat, We have to wait and see in the matches to follow. So till then this is me signing off for today.......