What is the best make of cricket bat?

ok i don't know much about bats really.....but this topic interesting....

i have only really heard about like one or two of the ones metioned above......the only bat that i am really familiar with is the MRF....i don't know how good it is but that is about the only bat that i know about.

 i have to say fusion cricket bats are bril, but so are Bellingham and Smith.

woodworm are not always what you think they are, very few bats are made by themselves (thats all ill say)!

the main problem with bats such as kooka, gm, gn, newbery and some others is that they are machine pressed, i.e. not pressed individualy, and as Bill from Fusion says, if you do the correct pressing for each individual cleft, you can make a good bat from average wood, but bad pressing can ruin a bat from great wood!

The best big name company is gm, as they use the best willow on their bats.

Although top 4 have got to be lavr&wood, bradbury, fusion, B&S

yo ubuy one of them usually you won't go wrong.

Can someone please tell me about Newbery especially regards to pressing. I was told on two occasions I think that Graham Thorpe for example uses (at the time) Newbery with Kooka stickers. Newbery themselves say that several players use their bats.

Thanks

There is no such thing as the best of anything!!!You can't say that x is better than y.Well you can but it is only your opinion.It would make much more sense if the topic was called "the most popular bat".If you are looking for out and out performance,sure you can get a good Grays,GM,Hunts,Kooka,but in my experience it's a lottery.By buying a less well known brand you are more likely to get a good bat,as they absolutely have to live or die by their product.I was in a shop yesterday buying a cricket bag.Whilst I was there I had a quick look at the bats,and the bats that caught my eye were the Salix bats.They were all beautifully made,balanced,and just smacked of high quality.That being said I myself have gone for a Fusion Superbest,as I can pick my willow from the same pile as the test players can ,who have their bats made by them.There is no distinction.As far as I know this is unique in the industry as other companies have private reserve stocks for the pros!!

Mark.

Agreed.  But I do believe you can get a great gun from certain batmakers more regularly, while others can be a bit of hit and miss at times.  In my book Laver and Wood makes bloody top bats.