Cricket's crackdown on 'monster' bats

Those watching this year's Indian Premier League (IPL) are likely to have noticed the umpires brandishing a curious new piece of kit, said Nagraj Gollapudi on ESPN. When each new batter arrives at the crease, he must insert his bat into a "rectangular implement" with a cut-out shaped like a house.

The checks, introduced on 13 April, are designed to ensure that all bats conform to a law introduced by the England and Wales Cricket Board in 2018, restricting their dimensions. The law limits the thickness of a bat's edges to 4cm, its overall depth to 6.7cm, and its width to 10.8cm.

Hitherto, the IPL's checks on bat dimensions were sporadic and took place in dressing rooms before the game. That led to claims that players were submitting one bat for checks and then going out to bat with a heftier blade. The new "live" checks, far more rigorous, have so far snared two illegal bats, both belonging to members of Kolkata Knight Riders.

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"Bat makers have long striven for innovation," said Simon Wilde in The Sunday Times. Dennis Lillee famously used an aluminium bat in a Test against England in 1979, until Mike Brearley pointed out it was knocking the ball out of shape, and Lillee was forced to substitute it. There have been bats made of bamboo, and bats reinforced with graphite strips.

More recently, innovation has centred on adding to the blade's thickness – a development made possible by new moisture-removing techniques, which have enabled manufacturers to add depth to blades without making them impossibly heavy. An "extreme example" was David Warner's Gray-Nicolls Kaboom, whose edges were more than 5cm thick.

Such "monster" bats, which can send even mis-hit balls for six, have fuelled concerns that the game was becoming skewed in favour of batters. The 2018 law, and efforts to enforce it, are an attempt to restore a "better balance between bat and ball".