Thanks for that Paul, very interesting to see.
I was wondering, the part made bats that looked great but didn't seem to have the performance, did they suggest that these would be downgraded at all?
Possibly, although I got the impression that cosmetics was the most important consideration for their grading. That being said, everything there performed well, it was merely a case of what performed well and what was really, really good. I'd say the worst sounding bat I heard was still 7/10 in my eyes, but it was nice to be in a position to pick 10/10 ones across the board!
I agree with what Asad said about hand picking being based on performance just as much, if not more, than looks. In a factory like theirs you are limited to what you can do in terms of testing performance, but I'd say we spent more time tapping bats up than we did discussing grains etc.
In my opinion, not every bat there was 10/10 in both looks and performance - in fact, a very small percentage were - even in the Players grades - but making the effort to hand pick ensures that we could find these elusive bats and so you literally are picking the cream of the crop. Likewise with Asad, who I'm sure would concur. The interesting thing is: only a handful of retailers (and very few of the large ones) bother to hand pick in the first place...
Author
Topic: Visiting Salix (Read 28278 times)