We've all seen the pattern, all been known to say it. 'My new bat is the best I've ever used' 'It blows away the previous one' 'It was well worth the £400, so much better than my £200 bats'
But is it really true?
I will be the first to concede that testing a bat with only a mallet is a flawed method. For absolute results one needs to use the bat(s) in a real world, i.e match situation. But for the moment that isn't possible, so well will have to trust the mallet.
Assuming that then, a few honest observations.
1. Of the dozen or so bats I've bought in the last few months, there is no discernable variation in rebound between them all. I could not honestly pick one as the best.
2. Further to this, none of my recently purchased (modern style) bats perform discernably better than my bats from 10-15 years ago. The comparison is done side by side, I'm not relying on memory. Further to that, my older bats range from budget level to premium. Again, there is not such an obvious difference between them that the original price differences were justified.
I'm beginning to think if all this talk of 'mega-ping' and 'gun bats' is at least in part our attempt to justify the cost to ourselves. By saying it on here, or to team mates at nets, we feel a bit better about spending £200 on something we didn't honestly need.
I now own two bats that were originally made with the intent of being used by pros. Nice bats, both of them, but are they clearly a different class to my 'made for mortals' bats? Not really.
So am I only going to spend under £100 on bats from now on? Sod off. Whether it is justified or not, I want the best. Without the best I would doubt my kit and thus lose confidence. I'm sure many of us are the same. It defies logic and sense but it is how it is for me and I think it's also true of many of you. Not a criticism, it's the same for me.
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Topic: Are we kidding ourselves a bit? (Read 3586 times)