Cricket has found a strong foothold in the Samba nation crazy about football. So when global COVID-19 pandemic threatened to stop the bat imports and the local body – Cricket Brazil- running out of bats it hit upon the idea to start manufacturing their own. (More Cricket News)
As per report in News18 website, Matt Featherstone, the former England amateur cricketer, who now heads the Cricket Brazil found a carpenter Luiz Roberto Francisco willing to take a plunge into bat manufacturing.
With English willow unavailable, the bats are being manufactured from pine, cedar and eucalyptus woods. Around 80 bats have been produced and are in hands of budding Brazilian cricketers who are honing their skills. Francisco now expects to ramp up his production post pandemic. Top cricketers are still using the imported willow bats while youngsters have been handed these new bats for practice.
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Featherstone said a small town like Pocos de Caldas has more than 5,000 youngsters in cricket progamme which has expanded to 50 schools in the city. The kids are mostly playing T10 and T20 formats and for training purposes nets and bowling machines have been made available with Lord’s Taverners, a leading cricketing charity in the UK. chipping in with material and equipment.
Featherstone, who moved here 21 years ago, said now there are two training centres and the sport has caught the fancy of females as well with the Brazil’s women’s teams winning four of the last five South American championships.
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“We have around 5,000 young people in the development programme and it’s impossible to bringing bats or material for overseas in these pandemic times so we have to source it here,” Featherstone said, adding they are also trying to find an alternate for English willow in the Amazon Rainforest.
