Origins — the hockey-stick bat
The earliest cricket bats were hewn from a single piece of willow and looked nothing like the modern blade. For 150 years the bat curved like a hockey stick, met an underarm ball rolled along the ground, and was made by village carpenters rather than dedicated bat-makers.
From shepherd's crook to playing field
Cricket itself is first recorded by name in 1597 in a Guildford court case, but the earliest surviving cricket bat is the 1729 "Chertsey" bat held by the Sandham Memorial Hall in Hampshire. It is curved, heavy at the toe, and carved from a single billet of willow — closer to a shepherd's crook than to anything a modern county player would recognise.
These one-piece bats suited the bowling of the day, which was rolled along the ground underarm. A scooped, curved blade with weight at the toe was the right tool for the job — much like a hockey stick is for a hockey ball.
The 1771 Monster Bat and the first width law
In a famous incident in September 1771, Chertsey batter Thomas "Daddy" White walked out against Hambledon with a bat as wide as the wicket itself. The Hambledon club met four days later and wrote the first equipment law in any sport: the cricket bat could be no wider than 4¼ inches. That limit, set in protest, still stands today.
The MCC's codification of the Laws in 1788 enshrined the rule and added a length limit (38 inches). The bat's outline had been fixed; only its shape, weight, and construction would evolve from here.
The straight bat and the spliced handle
When bowling moved from underarm to roundarm in the 1820s, the curved blade became a liability. Bat-makers began producing straight, flat-fronted blades, and in 1853 Thomas Nixon of Sussex introduced the spliced cane handle — a separate piece of cane glued and pinned into a tongue cut in the willow. It absorbed shock, allowed for a thinner, springier handle, and made the bat a true two-piece instrument for the first time.
By the time bowlers were permitted to bowl overarm in 1864, the cricket bat had its modern silhouette: a straight, flat, spliced blade of English willow, no more than 4¼ inches wide and 38 inches long. Everything that came after would be refinement of this template — and the workshops about to lead that refinement, Stuart Surridge (founded 1881), Gray-Nicolls (Henry Gray's workshop, 1855) and Gunn & Moore (1885), were already opening their doors.