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[cheese]

May get an idea of the concaving on the Xenon from these pictures...

[jamesisapayne]

Do Kookaburra do anything BUT that shape? (except for the Bubble) All their bats seem almost identical apart from the stickers - even the middle positions are almost the same give or take a couple of centimetres.

I do love their branding, but all the Kook bats I've seen have been concaved to within an inch of it's life. Had a Kahuna and anything off centre jarred the hands and the toe was dead.

[wayward_hayward]

Looks like a standard kookaburra profile to me.

[joeljonno]

May get an idea of the concaving on the Xenon from these pictures...

Not sure yet, can we have a pic with a laggy band round it to show the con caving. :-)


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[Warneymonster]

It's disappointing how much scooping is going on at kooks now, I'm sure it's not a problem for the pros who time everything but they can't be ideal for the average club player.


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[uknsaunders]

The pro's either get lightweight clefts with no concaving or use another manufacturers bat stickered up as a kook. Where have you been lol

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[Vitas Cricket]

Still don't get the concaving is bad argument. My best 2 bats are/were concaved, one of them quite heavily.

Pressing is the major factor affecting performance. The scoop would have been an awful bat if removing wood from the back made such a difference.

I do agree that Kook bats are mostly a similar shape though.

Pros bats from Kook. Having seen a couple, they are not concaved much, if at all.

[smokem]

A bit disappointing to see so much concaving as I do love the Kook livery.

Jake my personal experience with concaved bats is that they are magic when you middle it. But on an off day where you don't find the middle, it's not so great. My current bats have little to no concaving and I much prefer them. But who knows, maybe it's all mental...

[lbg]

The players on my club side all look for bats to have as much concaving as possible. They just want the edges and spine to be as big as they can get them and don't put much more thought into it. I will say though that the effect on the middle is unusual. Balls at the outdoor nets get slightly wet atm so you get quite consistent and clear cherries from one ball to the next. One thing I have noticed is that the bats handle varying bounce quite well. Driving a bit higher than you had planned isn't too disastrous but anything left or right of the bats central area feels a bit dead. That is until you really edge it and then it flies (straight to slip! )


Not quite the way around I would want it. Surely very dependent on the bats overall quality but you can't get around the basic correlation between big edges and the old top edge to fine leg trick. Having said that I have seen a fair few top edges for six from stronger batsmen than myself.

[Nmcgee]

Do Kookaburra do anything BUT that shape? (except for the Bubble) All their bats seem almost identical apart from the stickers - even the middle positions are almost the same give or take a couple of centimetres.

I do love their branding, but all the Kook bats I've seen have been concaved to within an inch of it's life. Had a Kahuna and anything off centre jarred the hands and the toe was dead.

Agreed. Never seen a Kooka that has made me weak at the knees yet...and not holding my breath. Really nice stickers on the Xenon, but that's about it.

[Neon Cricket]

Agreed. Never seen a Kooka that has made me weak at the knees yet...and not holding my breath. Really nice stickers on the Xenon, but that's about it.

Sadly that's all they need though - if it's pretty, people will buy it

[gerhard303]

Okay, after spending some time over the weekend in Sydney's cricket retailers looking at the new 2014-2015 season gear, I can confirm what most of you have said - there's little innovation and substance behind Kookaburra's range.

At least I was impressed by the Kookaburra Bubble reboot and and the underrated Kookaburra Midas protective gear (gloves, pads et. al). This season it seems that even the Bubble has been a bit more scalloped. Of course the players grade bats have a fuller profile, but as many of us have noticed - the fuller profile bat is now more desirable.

I did notice, however, that many of the other off-the-shelf brands are catching on. The Gray-Nicolls Elite, F18, Matrix and Colossus all present full-fuller profiles and I noticed a few GMs and maybe even a Puma which are also following suit.

It's possible that the SG factory templates (where the Kookaburras are made) are too expensive to redesign/reconfigure - which is a terrible shame for Kookaburra. You'd have to think that dropping the ball like this could prove a bit costly for them this season.

Lastly, like others have said - the new Kookaburra stickers look pretty attractive for 2014-2015. One store I popped by had a unique range called the Patriot (perhaps exclusive to the Greg Chappell Cricket Centre). As a full kit, the the Patriots look brilliant. However the only thing worth mentioning is the Patriot bat is its very high spine and great stickers. The pads and gloves of this range look great and at first glance one would think that the Patriot is simply a revamp of the 2013-2014 Midas range. However IMHO the Midas kit offered much more protection than the Patriot range. e.g. the Patriot pads are fully HDV whilst the Midas have 7 cane front runners and the Midas gloves were sausage finger, whilst the Patriots are V split etc. It would appear to me that the Xenon kit is the successor to the Midas range. That's a little surprising as the Midas' colour coordination (and sponsorship of guys like Chris Rogers) seemed to me like it Kookaburra was targeting a slightly older demographic, whilst the Xenon is targeting a much younger demographic.

 The video review of the Patriot bat can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV4ZVa6fRjM#t=15