borrowed bats in cricket

Last week, Abhishek Sharma smashed his maiden international century with a bat borrowed from Shubman Gill. It's not the first time a borrowed bat brought success, and it certainly won't be the last time. 

Here's a collection of famous and not-so-famous cricketing tales around borrowed willows, some dating as far back as the early 20th century.

The blunderbuss

So astonishing and captivating was Victor Trumper’s unprecedented array of shots that George Beldam’s capture of him stepping out to play a shot remains, even after more than a century, one of cricket’s most iconic photographs. Naturally, getting him to endorse a bat would have been a manufacturer’s dream.

It was with these aspirations that a youngster arrived at the MCG dressing-room during the fourth Test match of South Africa’s 1911/12 tour of Australia. Would Mr Trumper use his bat that day?

At three pounds six ounces (1.53 kg), it was an exceptionally heavy piece of lumber for the era. “Surely you won’t use that blunderbuss, Vic?” asked a colleague. “He’s only a young chap and he’s starting out for business,” said Trumper: he made 87 (while being “seen at his best”), wrote “a hearty recommendation” on the back of the bat, and returned it to the grateful owner.

A world record score

It was a different era, 1930. As England’s West Indies tour wore on, Andy Sandham sold his spare bats one by one. He was down to his last bat, which cracked ahead of the final Test match, at Kingston. With little option, he had to request Freddie Calthorpe, his captain, for a spare.

Calthorpe’s bat had too long a handle for Sandham (“not a bat I would have chosen myself”). He also had to borrow boots from Patsy Hendren (it kept slipping). But even in his 40th year, Sandham – who would have played many more than 14 Tests had his career not coincided with Hobbs and Sutcliffe – made 325, the first triple hundred in the history of Test cricket.

No space for a bat

For England’s 1955 home series against South Africa, chair of selectors Gubby Allen and captain Peter May were insistent on every member showing up at the nets by three in the afternoon. It was not until very late that Denis Compton, with his family on the beach in Sussex, realised that he would never make it in time at Old Trafford. So he contacted a friend and neighbour who owned a light aircraft (what are the odds?) and requested for a lift.

It backfired. Inclement weather forced a landing in Derby, and it was not until dinner that an apologetic Compton finally made it. The problem was, he had arrived without his kit, for there was no space in the aircraft. So, he borrowed a bat from a reluctant Fred Titmus (who was “afraid Denis would break it”), walked out at 22-2, and smashed 158 against the dangerous Neil Adcock and Peter Heine.

It was not the first instance of Compton batting with a borrowed bat, but the first of him having happy memories of. At only 16, he had to borrow the oversized gear – bat included – from George Brown when his kitbag did not show up for his first major match, for MCC against Suffolk in 1934. Rendered to near-immobility by the tent-sized equipment, Compton made a duck – but got 118 in the second innings once his kit arrived.

The man who never carried a bat

Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi famously never carried a bat to Test matches. His usual routine involved picking up the bat nearest to the door of the dressing room and stepping out to bat, often with a different bat after every session. While it contributed to his remarkable aura that has stood the test of time, one cannot help but wonder whether he would have got away but for his royal lineage.

Quality over quantity

Ajit Wadekar was in no mood to relent against Baroda in the Ranji Trophy clash of 1966/67. He raced to 152 in no time when his bat broke. Bombay’s new 12th man, a youngster called Sunil Gavaskar, rummaged through Wadekar’s kitbag for spare bats and, before rushing out (“I don’t know why”) carried one of his own bats.

Wadekar picked Gavaskar’s bat, put each of the three next balls away to the fence, and fell off the fourth ball. “I brought you bad luck,” sighed the youngster as Wadekar returned the bat. “Maybe, but those three shots were the best of the innings,” responded Gavaskar’s future state and national captain.

Gifted, not borrowed; stolen to boot

Is a lucky bat a thing? Ask Mohinder Amarnath. Equipped with a bat gifted by Sandeep Patil, Mohinder Amarnath made 584 runs in the 1982/83 Test series in Pakistan and another 598 on the West Indies tour that followed, and was named the Player of the Match in the semi-final and the final as India won the World Cup.

Then the bat was stolen, and Amarnath had a run of 4, 7, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0 across the Pakistan and the West Indies series at home and was dropped.

Borrowing a borrowed bat – and another world record

Some time in the 1990s, Sachin Tendulkar gave Waqar Younis one of his bats to get replicas made from Sialkot, the Pakistani city that used to be a major hub of sporting equipment in the subcontinent. After losing a wicket against Sri Lanka at Nairobi in 1996, Pakistan promoted a young leg-spinner.

Waqar lent him the bat (“it could prove lucky as it belonged to a great player”). The youngster, Shahid Afridi blasted his way to set a new world record for the fastest ODI hundred, off 37 balls.

Newman to a new man

Mark Ramprakash was anxious. He had started 2008 with 97 hundreds, and added two to that tally in his first three matches of the summer. Then he broke his “favourite” bat. Famously particular about his willow, Ramprakash went through five bats. Then, after a throwdown session at Headingley, he picked up one of the Gray Nicholls his teammate Scott Newman owned.

Despite being “a couple of ounces lighter than the blade he normally uses,” Ramprakash liked it. In the same game, he remained unbeaten on 112 to become the 25th and, till date, last, batter to hit a hundred first-class hundreds. He followed it with 200 not out, 178, 43, and 127 for good measure. While there is no update, it is unlikely that Newman got his bat back.

Anything for a partner

Before he made his Test debut, Shikhar Dhawan shifted through several bat stickers. It used to be SS during his U19 days, and Reebok in his formative IPL years. By the time he wore the India blue, he was operating with a Slazenger willow. Yet, for his famous Test debut – and the 187 that followed – Dhawan actually borrowed fellow opener M Vijay’s SS bat.

He liked the weight balance so much that he continued with it beyond the record-breaking Test debut, smashing two more centuries on ODI comeback in the 2013 Champions Trophy, where he finished as the leading run scorer and the Player of the Tournament. One wonders if he should have shared his ‘Golden Bat’ award with Vijay.

Strikers, keepers

After restricting Afghanistan to only 129-6 in the 2022 Asia Cup match, Pakistan seemed safe at 87-3 in the 16th over. Then they collapsed in spectacular fashion, and were left to chase 12 in seven balls when No.11 Mohammad Hasnain joined No.10 Naseem Shah.

The batters had crossed, which brought Naseem on strike. Hasnain, clearly under the belief that he owned the superior of the bats, offered it to Naseem – but on the condition that they would swap bats once the strike switched. While a common practice in gully cricket, where there is often only one quality bat per game, it is an unusual sight at the highest level.

Not that it was needed. Naseem ran a single to retain strike and, in Fazalhaq Farooqi’s last over, lofted the first two balls over long-off for six to seal the match. The next day, Hasnain gifted the bat to Naseem, who, in turn, gave it away to raise money for the Pakistan flood victims.

A bag for a bat and a question mark

Liam Livingstone’s 348 runs were 116 clear of anyone else’s tally at The Hundred in 2021. He hit 27 sixes when no one else crossed 15, while he also topped the strike rates chart with 178. In short, he was the batter of the season.

In a subsequent interview, Livingstone revealed the barter that helped him acquire his Rajasthan Royals teammate Riyan Parag’s bat (“he wanted one of my cricket bags and I wanted one of his bats, so we did a little trade”).

Curiously, when Riyan claimed the same, the Royals pointed out that the two batters used different brands.

Yet another world record!

Nitish Rana made 317 runs at a strike rate of 139 in the 2022/23 Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy before stepping in as Kolkata Knight Riders captain for that summer’s IPL. He continued with his SS before switching bats for the game against the Gujarat Titans.

Rinku Singh liked the “pick up” of this light piece of willow. Rana, initially reluctant to part with his favourite bat, caved in. Rinku hit five consecutive sixes to pull off arguably the greatest heist in IPL history… and kept the bat.

It is another thing that in 2024, he was spotted chasing Virat Kohli for a bat.

“In sickness and in health … and with the bat”

Mitchell Starc managed his best Test score in four years when he decided to borrow the willow from Australia Women great, and his wife, Alyssa Healy. In July 2023, Starc revealed he had been using Healy's Kookaburra for seven months: he had initially picked it for its lighter feel and as a combative measure for Anrich Nortje’s rapidness.

“She didn’t know it was gone, so it was fine. I was cleaning out a few cricket bags at home, she was away on a tour. I said: ‘You know there’s three bats in this bag’, and she didn’t know. I said, ‘there’s two now, the other is in my bag!’”

Interestingly, the roles had been reversed from a few years earlier, when Healy picked one out of Starc’s kit to help Sydney Sixers win the 2016/17 BBL.

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