Now, the 'instant' bat

From timeless Tests to Twenty20, cricket has been increasingly compressed as a sport. Some traditions were sacred, but they too are falling by the wayside - the latest being the practice of players breaking in their bats by knocking balls around over several days. Well, a Bangalore-based entrepreneur claims to have a quick-fix solution: a bat-seasoning machine that does the needful in 25 minutes flat.

The process is simple – the machine bounces a leather ball on the bat 4,000 times (or whatever be the number of bounces programmed in) at high speed, and the bat is good to go. While the jury’s still out on the authenticity of the ‘seasoning’, you can’t question the business reasoning behind the idea. “Now those who buy bats from us can also get it seasoned within minutes,” the machine’s inventor told Mail Today. “We installed the machine a few days ago and some people come just to see how it works, they find it so fascinating.”