It’s a sad day – one of England’s home grown players (as opposed to our approaching South African half team) has decided to move from using Gunn & Moore equipment to the powerhouse of Adidas. Broad is the third England player to make the move to Adidas after Ian Bell and, of course, Kevin Pietersen.

23-year old Broad moving from Gunn & Moore is somewhat of a suprise, with them being a Nottingham based company and Broad being born in Nottingham and playing for Nottinghamshire, but I imagine that money talks, and who can blame Broad for making the most he can during his career. He has turned down playing lucrative IPL cricket so far though, so money isn’t necessarily the over-riding factor in this switch, who knows. He’s got to pay for that Range Rover Sport and Jaguar XKR somehow though!

Adidas undoubtedly see Broad as someone who can market their brand well, and with his raised profile over the last year and young boy looks he will fit the bill for them pretty well. Kids will see him using the equipment and want to use the same kit as him (he should be using the Adidas Libro), and he’ll appear in numerous billboards/magzine adverts over the coming months. I’m still not sold on either the looks of the Adidas equipment, or the fact that it is being made elsewhere and Adidas stickers just being added on but hey, I’m not really their target market!

The Adidas Pellara is the flagship bat in the Adidas cricket bat range, endorsed by none other than Kevin Pietersen! He has used Adidas bats for the last year or so, and although 2009 wasn’t the best year of his career due to injury, his recent showing in the 2010 T20’s against Pakistan show he is headed back to his best with the Adidas Pellara in his hand.

Updated for the 2010 season, the Pellara has a low and long middle designed for the player who likes to get forward and drive the ball aggressively. This season it also has a ridged profile as you can see in the images – this helps put the weight and wood where you want it most, in the middle. By reducing the amount of weight on the outside of the bat this also means it stays lightweight, as most bats need to do these days. It also helps with keeping the pick up light and balanced, without which you will never play a good shot!

The Pellara is available in various grades of wood as follows:
Adidas Pellara Elite (approx £270)
Adidas Pellara Pro (£210)
Adidas Pellara County (£160)
Adidas Pellara Club (£120)
Adidas Pellara County Junior (£80)

Despite all the fuss surrounding Adidas’ entrance into the cricket equipment market I didn’t see many of these bats on the club circuit last year, so if you like to stand out then the Adidas Pellara will certainly do that. The yellow and black colourway of the Pellara may put some people off, but it doesn’t look too brash when actually being used, it just makes a statement that you mean business!

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