Over the last year or so there has been a growing trend for bat makers to declare that they have graded certain clefts as performance clefts. Now I have seen some bats made from these which truly are spectacular performers, infact I know of a bat maker openly rejecting perfect 10 grain clefts as they are not performing how he wants them to perform.
On the other hand I have seen some shockers. In my opinion one company is putting out a lot of under 5 grain pieces of firewood under the idea of a "performance cleft" and relying on the reputation of the bat maker for people to assume that if they say the bat will be a top performer then that will be what it will be!
The other day I saw a bat which a very well known bat maker, had listed as a performance cleft. 5 grains widely spread, but obviously had been quite low density as had a massive spine. However it was a hard hard piece of wood, with a horrible sound to it. This "performance" based bat was taken to two other bat makers who both declared that it was not up to standard and even after a lot of playing in, would only be a average bat. Now as much as there is nothing wrong with average, when you are paying close to £300 you deserve a little better than that. - On top of that this well known bat maker has refused a refund telling the customer to keep using it!
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Topic: There is no such thing as grading a bat on "performance"... (Read 10778 times)