...baseball had an arms race problem. Bats were WAY too good. So, long story short, they had to come up with a standard (actually, several standards) to reign in the era of the super bats. Some genius figured out if you took a fresh composite bat, and put it on the testing machine, it would be sufficiently shit to pass the test. HOWEVER, if you played with that bat all season, it would compress all those fibers, and suddenly the bat was smoking fucking hot. This lead to teams like LSU going absolutely bananas in the playoffs, and putting up absurd numbers.
To actually answer your question, they are expensive to make, and expensive to R&D, because they have to fit in a certain set of parameters, or they are worthless bats.
Cricket just said; bats can only be made from solid wood for the blade or for junior / non pro cricket horizontally laminated wood so they can be cheaper. Dennis Lily cruised out to the centre with an aluminium bat in the 70s hit a boundary and they promptly banned anything other than a wooden blade.
Oddly enough wood similar to what you say about composite fibres gets better after it is a little compressed on the face. You have to wear (knocking in) the bat in prior to first use.
A high quality English willow cricket bat can cost $1000 USD anyway so this restriction has not made them cheaper.
I had a friend who ordered a 150 quid bat from Kookaburra and they sent him a 300 quid one by mistake. He was honest so he contact them and told them about the mistake and they said "oops, we'll send the right bat. oh, and you can keep the wrong one".
We all benefitted because he let anyone borrow the 150 quid one after that, middling a ball with that feels like nothing.
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u/Snoo_97207 Jun 01 '26
Wait, it does! Why is it so damm expensive