It wasn't a deliberate move, but it was because Andy "SAF Bats" had some big bats on sale for £100 in
Jan and I thought it would be rude not to hoover one up (that was before he was a famous award winning batmaker!!!) At the time I was thinking about going for a SAF or Hawk and the price sealed it... see
http://custombats.co.uk/cbforum/index.php?topic=4136.0 - I got the Genus and Andy took a bit of weight off it, but it is still huge.
The bat Andy sent was his second choice as the AOC bat (so he says
) and it is a splendid bat. I have put about and inch of a double thinkness grip around the top of the handle as a counter balance and it picks up almost as well as my old 2lbs 9 bat (a pak bat, similar to the AS ones)
The grains aren't as good as yours above but the middle must be - by way of reference, my league average last year was 402 runs at 40 (which I considered to be a decent return) and this year is (so far) 590 runs at 86 (because of family comitments I've only played 7 games so missed out on a few 0's which would bring my average back to a normal level (!!) and concentrated much harder when I have batted).