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[jamferg]

As above really... can a decent cleft be ruined by a cheap handle and can a low grade cleft be improved by the handle..this is in playing terms

[Coach]

in short yes, a poor quality handle will take up some of the energy rather than transferring it to the ball

[niceonechoppy]

GM keep the moisture content of both handle and cleft at certain levels, too minimise energy released through the handle....

[norbs]

GM keep the moisture content of both handle and cleft at certain levels, too minimise energy released through the handle....

Not strictly true as the youngs modulus of elasticity of willow and cane will differ regardless of moisture content

[n80krr]

What about the new carbon handles? or has anyone tried anything other than rubber as an insert? Such as polyester resin or polyurethane? Just trying to think outside the box a bit.

[Buzz]

n80krr - if you look on the Wiki page on youngs modulus, that will give you the answer to your question in theory...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young's_modulus

the E for Single-walled carbon nanotube is more than 1000 - which I gather is supposed to be a good thing. I have no idea what the carbon handles have, but I assume for cost reasons it is more likely to be carbon fibre reenforced plastic, with an E of (according to the WIki page) 125 ish. Given that most handles are made of cane (with a single figure E)  I can see the logic and this should improve the performance with the downside that, like thinning a golf ball on a cold day, miss-hits will cause more vibrations up the handle.

Going further, willow must be anisotropic and I assume the handle would be too - so the question raised then is, can the material in the handle be changed to work alongside the anistropic nature of the willow to improve performance?

I have to admit spending time thinking about the elastic potential of energy and hooks law is an interesting way to start a week.

[n80krr]

Too many equations for a Monday morning. Thanks for the in site that was a great way to see how science affects our lives. Polyethylene could be used which must be pretty close to some other polymer based products. I mainly work using polystyrene now I know this would be useless in a handle but we also use some polyurethane which can resemble either a rigid substance such as fiberglass or a flexible substance such as rubber. Fiberglass can be quite flexible but it depends on how it would be set, using some sort of adhesive resin. I hope this makes sence in some way as I'm not sure now.

[Buzz]

It probably does - you just need to make sure it is legal under the laws of cricket... although Law 6 doesn't talk about bat handles.

[n80krr]

just talks about the amount of materials that are acceptable in a handle, I'm not sure if 1/5 would be enough to give a strong enough material if using resins. I'd just love to see something which is different. Does anyone have any pics/info on the carbo handles?

[norbs]

"10% or less materials other than cane, wood and twine in the handle" Grade A and B. For C it is less then 20%

Basically handles can help with the overall resonance frequency of the bat which allows you to get performance gains from the bat.

10% is right on the cusp of what you can achieve and you will need to take into consideration preference of the user.  It is easy to make a bat unusable in the hands of a batmans because you are trying to eek out performance from a handle.  Also bear in mind that people disagree on the handles in the bat making world as well, some bat makers swear by whippy handles some swear by stiff handles


for Carbon Handles take a look at www.laverwood.co.nz the only chap to get it right in my opinion

[Buzz]

Also bear in mind that people disagree on the handles in the bat making world as well, some bat makers swear by whippy handles some swear by stiff handles

(without going into Monday morning inuendo) Presumably, this is a bit like a golfer or a hockey player, the stiffness of the shaft depends on the swin speed to get the timing right. So in cricket if you are a wristy player with quick hands then a stiffer handle will help you, where as if you have slower hand speed, you need the extra whip to give energy to the ball...
A 10% improvement - that is a lot in my book, the difference between 91 and 100 runs, or being caught on the fence or hitting a six...
Out of interest in a SAF bat, to your knowledge, is there normally a stiffer handle?

[norbs]

(without going into Monday morning inuendo) Presumably, this is a bit like a golfer or a hockey player, the stiffness of the shaft depends on the swin speed to get the timing right. So in cricket if you are a wristy player with quick hands then a stiffer handle will help you, where as if you have slower hand speed, you need the extra whip to give energy to the ball...

Yes you could say that there are 2 ways really at looking at how to impart performance to ball from your batting.

One is to stiffen the whole thing up so that you get less vibration and therefore energy loss in the bat, this could and does produce too much vibration to the hands of the batsmen.  The second is for a trampoline type effect, this is harder to produce, trampoline effect is basically trying to keep the ball in the hitting area as the bat does a full cycle of vibration and then pushes it out

Ok, as you know, we play cricket not baseball. So our aim isn't to slog the ball out of the park for every shot we play we need to get a happy medium but also have a bat with the potential to perform a dilema for the bat maker and the customer

A 10% improvement - that is a lot in my book, the difference between 91 and 100 runs, or being caught on the fence or hitting a six...
Out of interest in a SAF bat, to your knowledge, is there normally a stiffer handle?

Playing devils advocate here but 10% is ok but bear in mind that 10% may get you out as well, the ball travels a bit further to the hands of a fielder.  It hangs in the air a bit higher instead of going for a six.  There is always on offset with innovation!

SAF bats use a normal 3 spring handle there is a prototype handle that works on raising the natural frequencey higher in  [out of the] the bat-ball impact excitation range but the handle isn't stiffen with Carbon Fibre

[Buzz]

Playing devils advocate here but 10% is ok but bear in mind that 10% may get you out as well, the ball travels a bit further to the hands of a fielder.  It hangs in the air a bit higher instead of going for a six.  There is always on offset with innovation!

Indeed, but I like to think positively - I have been out this season caught on the fence "chipping" the ball for 1 - but it is a price I am willing to pay and I am not going to blame the bat for that, when I hit my first scoring shot for a 6 over an 80 yard boundery with a short arm, well timed jab... and given I have played pretty well so far this season (touch wood it continues)

ball impact excitation range

presumably that means "middle" to the rest of us!!! 
 

[n80krr]

Andy, would you suggest a new stiff handle for one of your t20 bats?

[norbs]

Indeed, but I like to think positively - I have been out this season caught on the fence "chipping" the ball for 1 - but it is a price I am willing to pay and I am not going to blame the bat for that, when I hit my first scoring shot for a 6 over an 80 boundery with a short arm, well timed jab... and given I have played pretty well so far this season (touch wood it continues)
 presumably that means "middle" to the rest of us!!! 

Yep don't blame the bat 

Excitation range is the vibrational energy created on impact, this excitation is related to the characteristics of the ball and bat on impact.  So in effect the vibration frequencies will be effected by overall bat stiffness [including handle], the mass characterisitcs of the bat and the ball, a softer ball has more deformation which means yada yada blah blah. 

The idea is to reduce that energy absorbtion by increasing the excitation range of the bat so it doesn't vibrate i.e you have an unexcited frequency in one of the bending modes [it gets a bit complicated so I'll stop]

Andy, would you suggest a new stiff handle for one of your t20 bats?

I would not suggest Andy uses a stiff handle in his T20 bat because it is based on swing speed and mass distribution of willow in the blade to get it's performance from