Your bat is heavier than you think

Everybody knows somebody who bats with a plank. They will tell you it goes further when they middle it, and they are right, and they middle it about once a month.

Bat weight is the decision most club players get wrong, and they get it wrong in the same direction every time.

What too much bat actually does

It does not stop you driving. That is the trap, because the drive is what you play in the shop and in the first four balls of a net, and a heavy bat is fine when you have a full delivery and time to set yourself.

It shows up square of the wicket. The cut and the pull are late decisions, and a bat that takes an extra fraction to arrive turns a controlled cut into a top edge. It also shows up at the end of an innings, in the eighteenth over, when your hands have gone and every shot is a fraction behind the ball.

And it changes what you can leave. Getting a heavy bat out of the way of a ball you have decided against is a genuine physical problem, which is why heavy-bat players nick so many they never meant to play at.

How to find your weight

Ignore the number on the sticker for a moment and do this instead. Hold the bat out in front of you, one hand, arm straight, for thirty seconds. If your arm is shaking at twenty, that is not your bat.

Then shadow bat for two minutes without stopping. Not shots you like. Cut, pull, defend, leave, repeat. The bat you can still control at the end of two minutes is the bat you can control at the end of an innings.

Then, if you can, take two bats to a net and face the same bowler with both. Most people are astonished at how much later they can play with less bat, and slightly annoyed about it.

The thing that confuses everyone

Pickup and weight are different, which is why the scales lie to you. Two bats can weigh the same and feel a pound apart depending on where the wood sits, so a well balanced heavier bat can be easier to use than a badly balanced lighter one.

This is also why buying a bat online, by weight alone, is a gamble. If you must, buy from somewhere that will let you send it back.

Junior players

The rule here is simple and it gets ignored constantly. If a young player cannot hold the bat still at the top of the backlift, the bat is too heavy for them, and they will develop a bottom-handed slog to compensate. That habit takes years to remove. Buy light, buy the right size, and buy again next year.