Following last week's net with the Mongoose, I took the Joker along to last night's session. With the slightly narrower but longer blade versus the mongoose I thought it would be an interesting comparison.
The first guy to bat asked if he could borrow it, and it became immediately obvious that he was forgetting how to bat and having a slog, so we told him to calm down and play some cricket shots. This improved his performance no end, and it looked like he was enjoying himself with it. I was up next and as he walked out, his comment was "It's still tricky to play shorter stuff with it!". Unfortunately this was overheard by a couple of people, who, although not especially quick, can bowl a nasty bouncer.
Cue the barrage of short stuff. Well, not quite. I received a fair amount of decently pitched balls, and the spinner took a hammering after I started watching his hand, pinging one straioght back down the pitch and narrowly missing someone's head. As with the Mongoose, in this fashion, it worked very well, and I'd have no worries about using it on most of the pitches we play on.
What about the short stuff? Well I received bouncers, leg side long hops and an interesting left arm bouncer that went past me outside off. In most cases, hooking, pulling and upper cutting worked a treat and I was more worried that anything hitting my helmet would give me the protection that an Ayrtek would. I felt reasonably comfortable with the way that I was hitting them (although to be fair, I'm never that comfortable against short stuff), and got a couple of humungus hooks in that flew off the middle. In that respect, for such a large bat I was able to wristily flick in a way that I was quite surprised at. It felt a reasonably nimble bat to use and seemed to enjoy this kind of approach. I guess that due to the "Harrow-sized" blade, it doesn't have quite as much inertia as you are expecting.
Other batsmen also wanted a go, and seemed to enjoy themselves quite a bit, although one of them was timing it so badly last night that he managed to edge the ball using the edge and the back of the bat. Lovely seam shaped dent there now!
So what's my conclusion? Well, I was very impressed. It does have an enormous middle and I haven't hit a straight lofted drive quite as hard as that one last night. There's a real "crack" noise in the air when you batter one, and once again, it's very fulfilling to be able to hit the ball so hard! A good confidence booster by any estimation. I also learned that against the short ball, it performed admirably, and I was battering a lot of the stuff I was receiving! It also doesn't attract the cries of derision that an MMi3 seems to get, so people just look at it and go "Wow that's a big bat".
I guess I should answer the question I posed in the subject, and I'd say that yes it does. People think you are having a laugh with a smaller bat, but the joke is on them!
I'm not going to draw conclusions yet between the MMi3 and the Joker, as I also have a Bulldog SpiriT20 to have a go with, and with the knocking in taking place on Sunday evening for that, I'll post a review and then a comparison of all three bats next week.
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Topic: The Black Cat Joker - does it live up to its name? (Read 6466 times)