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[nwillam12]

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[Joe]

Not really bothered about number of grains or straightness or heartwood, as long as they are clean.

[The_Bird]

Perfection, light colour and grain wise for me

[Colesy]

Between 7-14 straight grains and made of English willow. I'm never going to be good enough to notice a difference in performance between a 7 grained Ayrtek with half heartwood and a 14 grained Ayrtek with no heartwood (example)

[paul090971]

mainly go for 10-12 grains, but the best bat I've ever had was a salix royal  14 grains, half heartwood on the inside.  That bat ( not the players ) scored 1000runs in 3 months then broke in half!  To this day I've never found a better bat

[Riggers]

That is perfect grains. I love that bat.

[RoCo Da Pixie]

I am a no heartwood person and prefer 8-10 straight grains.

[ajm90]

Not really bothered about looks at all to be honest as my lastbat was a ricky ponting kahuna with 14 fairly perfect grains and was a plank and ny current bat is a 6/7 grained gm 808 that goes  like a train

[awp]

I've spoken to Julian about this many times over a 20+ year period.  His thoughts haven't changed in that time.  As you guys know, he's made bats for many international players, at times in the 90's the whole Australian test team were using his bats.  his thoughts are that he has produced 'pro performance' bats in wide, medium and narrow grain bats in pretty much equal proportions.  He says grain numbers are a fad and change over time one way or the other.  he generally recommends 7-9 grains as a good rule of thumb.

[Kaz092]

I guess next time we watch a game be interesting to see the grains and structure on the pro players blades

Or if someone could start a post with players and their bats showing the grains and face of the ba

I remember Kallis using a bat that was half heartwood

Comes back to that old argument do we prefer looks over performance

One of the best bats I used had 6 grains

One of the worst had 19 grains

Having said that in my experience I have felt that the narrow grain bats perform better from the start guess that's why I've always be inclined to buy or look at bats with narrow grains

Tough one but down to the individual I guess !!!!!

[Cover_Drive]

I have seen nearly all Pakistani players bats and there were very few who had good looking grains but each and every bat performed exceptionally well.

Some looked crap that if they were on sale on CBF I'm sure no one would buy them.

[mad_abt_cricket]

This is an excellent article by andy on this subject...

http://www.safbats.co.uk/BAT-BLOG/cricket-bat/cricket-bat-voodoo-willow-and-performance

From my point of view, following things have happened in the last few years:

1. Players stopped caring about the longevity of their bats as they get loads of free bats from all over.
2. That means 'Pro bats' are softly pressed, most probably have lot of grains in order to play well right from the start and I assume even drier in order to get lot of wood in less weight.
Thats the reason why we see quite a number of bats being cracked or broken in
international matches these days.

I think we as club cricketers have also become impatient and want the bat to perform right from the start. Also many of us are buying  new bats  and selling bats just after one season of use.

In nut shell we are following the international players with the only difference is we paymoney from our pocket to buy new bats while they don't.

That's the reason why Julian's opinion has not changed over twenty years, as 7-9 grains bat are likely to live longer and turn into absolute performer after the initial preparation..

[roco]

Don't mind about heartwood or number of grains as I feel if you are too picky with that you greatly restrict the willow availiable for your bat

I just ask for a bog profile and it to go like a train and tend to get that

[kaustav]

Don't mind about heartwood or number of grains as I feel if you are too picky with that you greatly restrict the willow availiable for your bat

I just ask for a bog profile and it to go like a train and tend to get that

And the 'bog' profile is easy to get anyway when you use bats which weigh 3 lbs. 

[roco]

its the next size up from big

damn spellcheck