Adidas Cricket Equipment Update
There has been a lot of interest in news and images surrounding the new Adidas cricket bats and equipment, and we are now in a position to show a little bit more. Ok, the images below aren’t exactly groundbreaking but hopefully you’ll like them nonetheless.
The image above shows from top to bottom the Adidas Incurza Cricket Bat, Adidas Libro Cricket Bat and the Adidas Pellara Cricket Bat. The Adidas Incurza is said to be for aggressive players, the Adidas Libro for back foot batsmen and the Adidas Pellara for the front foot player (including Kevin Pietersen).
I ‘ve got to be honest when I say I’m not that taken on the looks of these bats, and if you take that away what have you got left? An overpriced bat selling on the basis of sponsorship. Having said that, the interest created in these bats already is nothing short of phenomenal considering Adidas have done little to no PR, they’ve let people like me do that for them for free!!
I’d like to have a look at the bats and the soft goods in greater detail before casting too much judgement though on the feeling of quality of the whole range as a whole. There are a few places offering pre-orders on the range of Adidas bats, gloves, pads etc now, along with the new Adidas cricket spikes they have released (which I think they’ve ruined - but thats a post for another day!)
Read my previous post on Adidas Cricket Equipment
Adidas Cricket Equipment
I’ve mentioned before about Adidas coming into the world of cricket equipment (bats, pads etc), and today there is a picture available, courtesy of The Sun, of KP holding one of the new bats.
There is a fair bit of build up to the Stanford Twenty20 competition now in the papers and on sky, which is the first time that KP will be sponsored by Adidas, and using their new “Pellara” bat. The other bats in the range are the “Incurza” and “Libro” which aren’t exactly names which roll off the tongue but I guess they are distinctive.
One thing is for sure, and that is that Adidas won’t be doing anything particularly different to Woodworm in that they won’t be making these bats themselves as they don’t have the manufacturing background, but they do have a lot more resource behind them to make sure that it doesn’t become a repeat of that.
We’ll have to wait a bit until we find out much more about the bat ranges and the pads and gloves that will go with it, but when it appears I’ll let you know about it!
Edit: I have updated the blog today with some more information about Adidas Cricket Equipment
KP and Freddie leave as Woodworm gets eaten up by the Credit Crunch
Big news in the world of cricket equipment and sponsorship today as news that Pietersen and Flintoff have left their Woodworm sponsorship contracts has led to speculation that the company is soon to go to the wall in the tough current business environment. Both of the players were understood to have life time deals with the company, so for them to be allowed to break these agreements must mean that something is happening, even if no concrete news about Woodworm’s future is currently available.
Woodworm seemed to be quite a good marketing company, and I remember reading about how successful they had been a few years back (especially in the junior market), but I guess the profit margins just weren’t as high as they needed to be to survive the quieter months of the year when they were buying in the equipment from Hunts County. They are still essentially a UK brand, and the cricket market has a few too many “quiet” months in it, that I can imagine how it might be difficult if the summer doesn’t work out that well and enough money isn’t brought in.
I noticed their website about a week ago had a holding page which suggested they were about to build a new site, but maybe it was the other way round and it was the start of the decline. If they don’t manage to come out of this at all it’ll be a real shame as they have managed to build a brand in a short space of time, and with the Ashes next summer they would have been a lot of interest around them. Cricket is a good market to be in at the moment with all the growth in money available (for the players), and as a result press exposure (for everyone).
As we already knew, Adidas were releasing some cricket equipment soon, and KP becoming available now is probably the best timing they could have hoped for. Sign up the England captain and watch the sales fly in, it will happen..
2009 Slazenger Bats
Slazenger were one of the first brands last season to release new equipment for their sponsored stars (Bell, Collingwood and Prior to name three), and they are doing the same with their 2009 Slazenger equipment as well. It has been used in the past few weeks and getting a bit of air time in the recent ODI series, meaning people are starting to look for info on it.
They havn’t changed that much from the last year, but they have introduced the Slazenger i-blade and the Slazenger air blade to the bat range. Collingwood will use the i-blade, the bat which is the “power” bat in the new Slazenger range. The air blade bats are Slazenger’s lightest ever bat range, and will be used by Ian Bell. Pictures will follow as I find some good’uns (I’ve only seen rubbish ones so far!)
New Albion NXT 2009 Cricket Helmet
I went and did a bit of a hunt for information after talking the other day about the Albion helmet for 2009 which Andre Nel wore in the first two ODI’s against England and found a bit more info to continue the hunt for new 2009 cricket equipment!
It is called the Albion NXT, and it will eventually replace the current Albion helmet, which has been very successful and taken a good chunk of the market share (especially in Australia, Albion’s home market).
The basic idea behind the helmet is to make the most comfortable helmet based around a newly developed “articulated shell assembly”, which appears to be a cross between their standard helmet and those from companies such as Masuri.
I still think the helmet looks a bit too much like Police riot gear, but you can’t argue against improvement, especially in an area such as safety (especially of your head). I’m not sure the slightly odd looks will appeal to everyone, but then the plastic look of the previous helmet was different and we quickly got used to that.
The Albion NXT isn’t available to purchase yet (they are saying December but that could be just in Australia), but as soon as it is it will no doubt be available in all the usual online stores!
