MSD's influence in the Indian dressing room still rings true with his custom-made bat a hit among the young power-hitters
MS Dhoni is known for his ability to strike the ball hard and over the boundary in the most opportune of moments for India, as was displayed by the six that won India the ODI World Cup in 2011. One of the strategies that helped Dhoni is when he decided to convert the bottom of his bat into a curved shape, facilitating a lot of power-hitting.
And this strategy caught the attention of many players in the Team India dressing room, with the likes of Hardik Pandya, KL Rahul and Rishabh Pant also preferring to use such bats, according to reports from a prominent English news daily. Dhoni, who has been a mentor for Pandya and Pant, had suggested to them to try round-bottomed bats to improve their T20 power-hitting.
“It was Dhoni who had first started using this kind of bat before the 2019 World Cup. And now these Indian players have started asking for this kind of bat,” Paras Anand, managing director of leading sports equipment manufacturer Sanspareils Greenlands (SG), told TOI.
“These bats are ordered specially for shorter formats. The players claim that it helps them access all directions of the ground while shot-making. A bat with a flat bottom prompts a relatively closed stance whereas the round-bottomed bat enables them to have a more open stance that helps them to manoeuvre the bat easily from the word go,” the managing director explained.
“If one shaves the bottom and makes it round, the bat has a thicker base and has more meat at the bottom,” Anand added.
Such heavy bottoms can be touted as an explanation for countering deliveries hurled in the block hole. The players using these bats have also claimed that they feel the pick-up while the bat swing is much smoother, as it replicates a baseball bat. Pandya was struggling to hit big in T20s since the second leg of IPL in UAE in 2021, which culminated in a poor show in the subsequent T20 World Cup.
He went on to lose his place in the Indian team for four months before making a stellar comeback while leading Gujarat Titans in their victorious IPL campaign in April-May this year. During the break, he also reworked the shape of his bat besides working on his fitness to bowl at full tilt.
TOI has learnt that Pant, who too has struggled to keep up the momentum in T20s of late, approached Dhoni after the IPL. “Dhoni told him to try the round-bottomed bat. He is slowly getting used to it. The curve on his bat is not as pronounced yet. But he can feel some difference,” a source said.
