Over the Easter weekend I caught my first view of the new England one-day international kit for 2009. Now at first you’ll probably think (like me), didn’t they only release one last year? Well yes, they did – but in these times where a company such as Adidas is on board they are clearly trying to stitch up the public like they do in football by releasing a new kit as often as possible.

Moaning out of the way though – it doesn’t look all that different from the previous kit as you can see in the image to the right. There is a hint more white in it with a new collar and piping, but otherwise it is still the dark blue of the 2008 version (if not even darker than that one).

I can’t say I’ll be buying it myself, but if you want to pre-order you can do so from Kitbag here.

And as if they weren’t going to make enough money out of the ashes, there is also talk of a special England vs Australia odi kit (maybe it’ll have 5-0 or however many odi’s we’re playing written on it already!)

The first warm up game is taking place out in the West Indies and with club nets starting around now for the new season I thought it might be worth checking out which England players are using what equipment. (I’m fully aware that they may not necessarily be using what is stickered on their bats, but lets pretend they are!)

• Captain Strauss – Managed to top edge the second ball of the tour using his Gray Nicolls Ignite, having moved to these bats from the Predator last summer.
• Vice Captain Cook – Wants to be like the captain and uses a Gray Nicolls Nitro, having previously used a powerbow. Gray Nicolls will be hoping for these two to have some good opening partnerships to give their bats good coverage!
• Ian Bell – Will be scratching round for runs using his new Adidas Incurza, having just followed KP to the Adidas stable. He’d be better off with a light saber.
• Kevin Pietersen – Had a high profile move to Adidas at the back end of last year and will be using the Adidas Pellara in the Caribbean.
• Paul Collingwood – A Slazenger player, Colly uses the i-blade to score some big runs just as he’s about to be dropped.
• Owais Shah – Scores a ton with his Kookaburra Blade in a warm up game, but will probably get overlooked incorrectly for one of the Slazenger boys.
• Freddie Flintoff – With the original Woodworm company not making it out of 2008, Freddie moved to Puma where he uses the pink Puma Evolution. Not the best colour for a bat, but I’m not going to argue with him!
• Matt Prior – Another Slazenger player, he uses the Air Blade like Bell did until this month, but generally with greater success.
• Tim Ambrose – Didn’t have a great time with his Kookaburra Ice last summer and will be lucky to get a chance to use it on this tour.
• Stuart Broad – A man after my own heart using a Gunn & Moore, he tries to be the (GM) Hero.
• Adil Rashid – A new entry into the squad, and another Slazenger user he’ll be hoping to get a chance with his Hyper Blade.
• Graham Swann – Back to the Gray Nicolls users, Swanny likes to biff the ball around with the GN Powerbow.
• James Anderson – Ever since he moved from Woodworm to Gray Nicolls and use the GN Nitro he turned into a decent lower order player – coincidence?!
• Ryan Sidebottom – Uses the re-introduced for the ‘08 season Gunn and Moore Cannon, when he’s playing and not injured.
• Steve Harmison – Has used Gunn and Moore’s of various models for a while now – he used to use the hero but now tries his slog sweeps with the GM Cannon.
• Monty Panesar – A bit of a loner with his choice of bat, Monty follows Ashley Giles’ path and uses a Hunts County Glory.

What can we tell from the above… well not a lot really since what they “use” is determined by their sponsorship package – so unsurprisingly most of the big names are represented. Looking for a bat for yourself – then you’ll probably start at one of these big companies, but don’t think that these are the only ones out there as there are plenty of smaller companies that can offer a more bespoke experience and you’ll come out with a great bat at the end of it. However, if you want to emulate your favourite England player you now know which bat you need to get!

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

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

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..

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!)