Notes for owners · Industry playbooks
Selling cricket bats online: what a buyer needs to see before paying
A cricket bat is chosen by weight, willow, grade and pickup, so an online listing has to show the actual weight of that bat, its grains, its edges, and which ball it is made for.
The GullySales team · Updated 17 Oct 2026 · 6 min read
On this page
- What he checks in a shop, and what the listing shows instead
- English willow and Kashmir willow are different purchases
- Tennis ball or leather ball: put it in the title
- One bat per listing, or one model with weight bands?
- For example: a bat workshop in Meerut selling direct
- What a listing cannot do
- What to do next
"What is the exact weight of this one? Can you send a photo of the grains?" Bat sellers get this question often, and more so as the price goes up. In a shop the player picks up five bats, takes his stance, taps the face, and puts down the four that feel heavy. Online he can lift nothing. So the listing has to carry what his hands would have told him. That means the actual weight of this bat, the willow and its grade, the pickup, the edges, the handle, and which ball it is made for.
What he checks in a shop, and what the listing shows instead
| In a shop, the player... | So the listing shows |
|---|---|
| Lifts it and feels the pickup | The weight of this bat in grams, and an honest note on pickup compared with your other bats of the same weight |
| Turns it to look at the face | A straight-on photo of the face in daylight, so the grains can be counted |
| Runs a thumb along the edges | A side photo, with the edge thickness in millimetres |
| Taps the face with a ball | A short clip of a ball bounced along the middle |
| Takes his stance | Short or long handle, round or oval grip, and the size |
| Asks the shopkeeper | Whether it is knocked in, and how much more it needs |
| Mentions where he plays | Leather ball, tennis ball or tape ball |
The last row causes the most trouble, and it gets its own section below.
English willow and Kashmir willow are different purchases
The willow decides the price band, so the buyer wants it settled first. English willow bats are graded by the maker, and the grade is read mostly from the face: how straight the grains run, how many there are, and how clean the blade is. Kashmir willow is harder and denser. It sits lower in price, feels heavier for its size, and is bought by school players, club cricketers starting out, and a great many tennis-ball players.
Grades are set by each maker, not by one common standard. Grade 1 from your workshop is not grade 1 from the next, and an experienced buyer knows it. Show what your grades mean: a grade 1 face next to a grade 3, photographed the same way, on one page.
And do not sell on grain count alone. Buyers count grains, and a listing that shouts "12 grains" invites the question of how it plays, which grains cannot answer. Show the count. Then describe the bat.
Tennis ball or leather ball: put it in the title
This is where online bat sales go most painfully wrong. A bat made for tennis-ball cricket is lighter and thinner and is not prepared for a hard ball; take it into a leather-ball net and it can crack in the first session. A teenager who plays both does not know this, and neither does the uncle buying it for his birthday.
So the ball goes in the product title, not halfway down the page. "Kashmir willow bat for tennis ball" and "Kashmir willow bat for leather ball, knocked in" are different products. Players search that way, along with phrases like "English willow grade 1", "short handle bat for leather ball" and "size 5 bat". Build your titles and collection pages around those exact phrases; that is the on-page SEO work for a bat seller, and it is mostly naming.
One bat per listing, or one model with weight bands?
Use this rule.
- High-grade English willow: one listing per bat. At that price the buyer is choosing a piece of wood, not a model. Weigh it, photograph the face, back and both edges, and sell that bat. He will send back one that does not match the photo.
- Kashmir willow, tennis-ball and junior bats: one model, with weight bands. Let the buyer pick a lighter or a heavier band and promise the bat will fall inside it.
- In between: pick from three. The buyer gives you his preferred weight, you send a short video of three bats on WhatsApp, and he chooses. It costs your time, so keep it for bats where the margin pays for that.
For example: a bat workshop in Meerut selling direct
Imagine a family workshop in Meerut that has sold bats to sports shops for years and now starts selling direct through its own site and a marketplace. It photographs one bat of each model in a studio and uses those photos for every piece of that model, with the weight given as a range.
Returns follow on the top grades. Buyers write that the bat that arrived has fewer grains than the photo, or a mark on the face, or sits at the heavy end of the range when they expected the light end. Each return costs two courier legs and comes back with a scuffed toe.
So the top two English willow grades move to one listing per bat. Each is weighed, photographed face, back and both edges in daylight, and given a short phone clip of a ball bounced along the middle. Kashmir willow and junior bats stay as models with weight bands. Every title names the ball. The questions that still come in are about sizes and handles, and a size guide answers those.
What a listing cannot do
Some players will never buy an expensive bat without holding it, and no photograph will change their mind. For them, the listing's job is to start a conversation, and the pick-from-three video call is your shop counter.
Pickup is partly a feeling, too. Describe it against your own range ("feels lighter than our other 1,180 gram bats") rather than with "superb balance", which every listing uses. And write down what you treat as a fault and what you treat as wear. Willow marks with use, and the buyer should know where you draw the line before the first hairline appears on the face, not after. Agree that line with your maker first.
What to do next
Write down the reason for every bat that came back this season, in the buyer's own words. If most come down to weight, grains or the wrong ball, the listing is the problem. Photographs and titles usually do more than a price cut. Start with your top grade. Bats are one shelf of the sports categories under e-commerce sales and marketing. If you want the listings, the clips and the titles rebuilt for your range, e-commerce and marketplace marketing is the service, and tell us what you need is the first step.
