Talking kit

"Does kit imitate cricket?" begins the famous Andy Warhol quote, "Or does cricket imitate kit?"

Okay, so Warhol was really talking about life and art, rather than cricket and kit, but the question is genuine: has the game changed, especially with the introduction of bigger, harder-hitting bats (and batsmen) because of the gear, or has player evolution forced the kit to mutate too?

Arriving at the Lord's AOC Cricket Expo, a trade fair where suppliers of anything remotely to do with the game - from player insurance, tours to Barbados, and websites to record player and team averages - gathered to parade and sell their wares, I wondered if I might discover a genesis moment.

Artificial pitches were well represented, and stands carpeted in various guises of plastic grass were manned by keen sales staff eager to talk "durability". Wandering between the tables of green I came across a representative for a "synthetic surfacing" company. Being the complaining fast bowler that I am, I immediately asked about whether his wickets could take a spike, and quickly found out that the search for "spike resistance" was the equivalent of the Holy Grail in artificial tracks. Countering my old-fashioned gripes about plastic pitches, he explained that player retention in school-aged kids was enhanced by all-weather surfaces. "When kids turn up and can't play because it's wet," he explained, citing findings of the ECB player survey, "they don't come back next week." The "grocer's grass" wicket, as I accidentally phrased years of engineering research and design, has been a key innovation in keeping children at the crease.

This desire to simply get people playing was apparently the original motivation behind the Flicx roll-out wicket. The "2G pitch", a heavy-duty plastic mesh that can be transported and laid on non-cricketing surfaces (accompanying photos in the marketing bumph showed the wicket rolled out on beaches, on a frozen lake, and on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro) started life in Johannesburg, where Richard Beghin, the South African whose idea it was, felt the need to help poor schools find solutions for a chronic lack of facilities. Perhaps his webbed wickets don't impress the purists, but an instant track that could be set in the middle of a bare mud football pitch provided cheap and recyclable pitches in non-cricket communities - something the ECB realised in 1999, when it ordered nearly 800 Flicx pitches for inner-city schools across the UK.

And then there's the "Crazy Catch" net, a sprung target that balls rebound off for catching practice. A simple idea, as many great designs are, that has put the expensive, heavy, and often tricky to use, slip cradle into the clubhouse garage.

Despite the modernisations and innovations, there were other stands at the fair representing cricket vintage: old-fashioned and beautifully engineered sit-down lawnmowers for cutting squares, along with bat manufacturers lining up blades of willow for inspection. Unlike the "Pimp My Stumps" stand, a bespoke stump-decorating service, or Zing bails, a flashing set of bails that light up when knocked off the stumps. An unnecessary novelty? Just a flashy gimmick to jazz up the Big Bash? Not if you consider that the distributor has pre-sold 500 and has thousands more in production.

Bedazzled by the various innovations and products pitched to me by enthusiastic sales staff, it seemed a good idea to speak to Aff Naseem, the Lord's Cricket Store supervisor. Aff, a former Pakistan Under-19 and Surrey Academy player, offers what you can't when you buy kit blindly off the internet - advice and opinion from a cricketer. Try buying cut-price gear from a cut-price sports shop in the UK and you'll get what you pay for in poor advice and dubious quality. The Lord's shop may be a little pricey for some, but in a country where specialist cricket kit shops are becoming a rare breed, customers are happy to dig into their pockets when the gear is a recognisable brand, the shop is based at the Home of Cricket, and you can talk to a proper cricketer about what is best for you.

Innovations in helmet design were surprisingly absent at the fair - although I was told that a leading manufacturer was about to reveal a new "neck protector" in light of the Phillip Hughes tragedy - and the bat, as I've written about before is still limited by regulations, especially in regard to its materials.

Apart from the Zing bails pyrotechnics the most obvious ground-breaker was a new contoured batting grip, a stiff rubber tube with raised nubs to enhance control and feel. Contoured to fit directly into a palm, the design dictates where the hands would have to rest. As I didn't feel the grip actually on a bat, it feels unfair to judge the product, and so I probably shouldn't.

Ultimately, and happily, I hope that Beghin is right about what makes his products successful - having fun. Selling cricket kit is hardly immune to capitalism, but as three school kids dived around the fair fielding balls rebounding off the Crazy Catch net, fun did seem the vital investment.