The Scoop revolution
In 1974 a Gray-Nicolls bat-maker carved a concave channel into the back of a blade and changed cricket. Within a decade every major manufacturer had copied the idea, edges got bigger, and the bat became the most important piece of equipment on the field.
1974 — the Scoop arrives
The Gray-Nicolls Scoop was the first bat with a hollowed concave back. By scooping willow out of the centre, the maker redistributed mass to the edges and the sweet spot — the bat felt lighter to pick up but hit heavier. Clive Lloyd and Greg Chappell adopted it immediately; within five years the entire industry was producing scoop-back variants of their own.Gray-Nicolls remains the most associated brand with the era it created.
Duncan Fearnley, Botham and Richards
The 1980s belonged to Duncan Fearnley. Fearnley's Worcester workshop pressed the triple-striped Magnum that Ian Botham carried through the 1981 Ashes — including the 149* at Headingley — and the near-3lb monster that Vivian Richards swung without a helmet through his West Indies peak.
The yellow Fearnley sticker became one of the most copied schoolyard aesthetics in British cricket history. A generation of English club players grew up trying to be either Botham or Richards, with a Fearnley Colt for their first bat.
GM, Lara, and the records that still stand
In 1985 Gunn & Moore released the Original L.E. — "Lighter Edge" — a profile built for the new generation of stroke-makers. Eleven years later, in April 1994,Brian Lara carried a GM Original to 375 against England in Antigua, and two months after that to 501 not out for Warwickshire against Durham at Edgbaston — still the highest individual first-class score ever. In 2004, on the same Antigua ground, he reclaimed the Test record with 400 not out, also with a Gunn & Moore.
Kookaburra entered the bat market seriously in the 1990s and released the Kahuna, the bat that would define Ricky Ponting's career and become the most-copied professional profile in the world. In India, the MRF sponsorship of Sachin Tendulkar in 1999 added the most famous sticker in cricket to the most prolific batter in cricket.