How to choose a cricket bat without being sold one
Pickup, weight and willow, and the parts of the sales patter that mean nothing at all.
Buying a bat is the one purchase in cricket where almost everybody gets talked into something. The blade is enormous, the grains are beautiful, whoever is serving says it is a lovely piece of wood, and you walk out with something you cannot pick up after forty overs in the field.
Here is the order that actually matters.
Pickup first, and pickup is not weight
Two bats on the same scales can feel completely different in your hands, because what you notice is where the weight sits. A bat with mass low in the blade feels heavy through the swing even at a modest number on the label. A bat with the mass higher up feels light and lively and will not do as much for you on a slow outfield.
Pick it up. Play a shadow drive. Then play twenty. If your hands are complaining by the end of that, the bat has already told you the answer.
Weight second, and it is covered on its own page
Most club players are carrying more bat than they can use. It is the single most common mistake in a cricket shop and it costs you runs square of the wicket. There is a whole page on it: your bat is heavier than you think.
Willow grades are a sales tool
Grading is not a standard. There is no independent body checking grades, no agreed test, and no legal definition, so grade one at one maker is not grade one at another. What the grade broadly describes is the cosmetic quality of the face: number of grains, straightness, absence of marks and butterfly stain.
The awkward truth is that a marked, slightly ugly cleft often performs perfectly well and costs noticeably less, because you are being charged for the look. If you are buying for a Saturday second XI rather than a photograph, buy the ugly one and put the difference towards a decent pair of gloves.
Grains tell you less than the shop suggests
More grains usually means older, slower-grown timber, which tends to be harder and takes longer to come good. Fewer, wider grains often means the bat performs sooner and may not last as long. Neither is better in the abstract. If you play twenty innings a season and want the bat now, wide grains are fine.
The size limits, in case anyone tells you otherwise
The Laws cap the bat, and they cap it precisely.
The overall length of the bat, when the lower portion of the handle is inserted, shall not be more than 38 in/96.52 cm.
The blade of the bat shall not exceed the following dimensions: Width: 4.25in / 10.8 cm. Depth: 2.64in / 6.7 cm. Edges: 1.56in / 4.0cm.
MCC Laws of Cricket, Law 5.7
So a legal bat can have a forty millimetre edge and no more. If a blade looks like a door, it is either at the limit or it is not legal, and it should also pass through a bat gauge. The Law also says the blade must be made solely of wood, which is worth remembering when somebody offers you something clever.
Sizing
Junior sizes go by the player's height, and every maker publishes its own chart. Those charts do not agree with each other, so use the chart of the brand you are buying and get the child to stand next to the actual bat. A bat that is one size too big teaches a young player to slog, because it is the only way they can move it.
Then prepare it
A new bat is a soft bat, and taking it straight into a match is how bats die in April. See knocking in.
The short version
Pick it up before you look at it. Buy lighter than you want to. Pay for the wood that plays rather than the wood that photographs well.