Sally Bradbury

Sally Bradbury is Managing Director and one of the only women in the world making cricket bats. She played County cricket for Somerset in the UK and represented Western Australia in first class cricket.

Paul Bradbury

Paul Bradbury worked as an "apprentice" for four years with one bat company before it changed hands to a multinational corporation. This was when Bradbury Bats was established. Paul had never crafted a bat until he started making under his own label.

Pressing

In order to make the most out of any piece of English willow, clefts are pressed using a specialised metal roller. Pressing is the most essential part of the batmaking process.

Danny from Toojay

The Bradbury workshop welcomes creatures from all walks of life. Danny visited us this season to have a good look around. He especially admired our stacks of English willow clefts.

Horse's shinbone

Stacked clefts

We hand pick clefts for your individual needs when you order a custom bat at Bradbury. When it's sunny enough you can often see stacks of clefts out the front of our factory-shop.

Choosing willow

When you walk through our shop and into our workshop, you'll see hundreds of English willow clefts stacked all the way to the roof. Order a custom bat and have the opportunity to not only choose one of those clefts to suit your individual needs, but you will get to watch as it's crafted into a bat by Paul or Sally.

Coat of Arms

The Bradbury logo includes the 'tygre passant' taken directly from the Bradbury family coat of arms.

Drawknife

We use a combination of traditional and refined techniques. The drawknife is the first tool used when handcrafting a bat. It shears off strips of willow to begin to form the basic shape of your bat.

Poshaving

The name given for the handcrafting of cricket bats is Podshaving. This word has been ommitted from the Oxford Dictionary due to lack of use.

Grading

All of our bats are graded by the batmakers according to appearance, pick-up and ping.