For well over a century, the Laws of Cricket allowed only one type of bat: a blade cut from a single, solid piece of willow. That changed when the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), the custodian of the Laws of Cricket since 1787, announced a significant shift as part of its latest round of law changes. From 1 October 2026, laminated bats, known officially as Type D bats, are permitted in open-age recreational cricket for the first time. Previously, this construction method was restricted to junior bats only.
It is a change that has generated plenty of conversation among players, coaches and retailers alike, and at VKS we think it deserves a proper, honest explanation. So this guide covers why the MCC made this change, exactly how laminate bats are constructed under the new laws, what one actually feels and sounds like compared with a traditional bat, and why, despite understanding the reasoning, we remain cautious about how some manufacturers are choosing to use it.
The driving force behind this change is simple: a genuine, well-documented shortage of high-grade English willow, combined with years of rising prices that have pushed a decent cricket bat further and further out of reach for ordinary club and recreational players. English willow, the wood almost every serious cricket bat has traditionally been made from, is a naturally slow-growing, carefully cultivated timber. It takes years for a willow tree to mature to a usable size, and the pool of top-grade clefts available to bat makers each season is limited.
As demand for cricket bats has grown globally, that scarcity has pushed prices upward across the board. The MCC's own laws committee was explicit about the motivation: this is part of a deliberate attempt to slow the rising cost of bats worldwide, and to make the sport more affordable at grassroots and recreational level without altering the fundamental dynamics of the game at the top end. The thinking is that by allowing bats built from multiple pieces of wood, rather than a single solid cleft, manufacturers can stretch the limited supply of premium willow much further, using smaller or lower-grade sections that would previously have gone to waste, while still producing a playable, law-compliant bat.
The intent behind the rule change is clear and, frankly, sensible: laminate construction exists to bring the cost of a cricket bat down for everyday players, not to create a new premium category. If the entire justification for permitting Type D bats is affordability and accessibility, then laminate bats from every brand making them should genuinely reflect that in their pricing. That is the standard we think the market should be held to, and it's a point we come back to later in this guide.
Under the current Laws of Cricket, bats fall into four recognised categories:
The key detail in the new law is that the additional pieces used in a Type D bat do not have to be willow at all. Manufacturers are permitted to use other, more readily available and cheaper types of wood behind the main hitting face, reserving the willow itself for the section of the bat that actually makes contact with the ball. In practice, this typically means a thin face of English willow is bonded to a body made from a different, lesser-performing wood, such as Kashmir willow or another timber entirely.
The MCC has been clear that this construction is not intended to hand batters a performance advantage. Its laws manager stated that extensive testing was carried out in partnership with bat manufacturers before the change was approved, and that any performance benefit from a Type D bat over a traditional single-piece blade is expected to be marginal at best. Elite and professional cricket is expected to continue relying on Type A, B and C single-piece willow bats, with lamination aimed squarely at the recreational and grassroots end of the game, where cost is the real barrier to participation.
Several established bat makers have publicly welcomed the change too, framing it less as a shortcut and more as a way to responsibly use timber that would otherwise be wasted. The argument runs that a huge proportion of a willow tree never yields wood good enough for a premium single-piece bat, and lamination allows those lower grades and offcuts to be put to use, supporting a bigger cricket-playing population without stripping out more prime willow than the supply can sustain.
Specs and law text only tell you so much. Pick up a laminated bat next to a traditional single-piece English willow bat and the difference is immediately obvious, both in how it plays and in how it sounds off the middle.
A single-piece bat is one continuous run of willow from splice to toe. That unbroken length of timber is what gives a well-made bat its depth of sound and that sweet, pingy feedback through the hands when you catch one out of the middle. The vibration from the ball has an unbroken piece of wood to travel through, and that continuity is a big part of what makes a good bat feel alive.
A laminated bat doesn't have that. Because the blade is built from separate pieces bonded together, the glued join sits directly in the path of that vibration. In practice, the performance and feel you get is really coming from the top laminated piece, the thin willow face, rather than from a single piece of wood carried all the way through. The join breaks up that continuity, and you can hear it as much as feel it: laminated bats tend to sound flatter and duller off the bat compared with the crisp, resonant crack of a genuine single-piece willow blade. For players who care about touch, timing feedback and that classic sound at the middle, this is a real and noticeable difference, not a marginal one.
There's also a fair question to ask about timing. The original justification for allowing laminated construction was a genuine shortage of premium English willow and the rising costs that came with it. That was the stated reasoning behind the law change, and it's a reasonable one. But it's worth asking whether that shortage is being used as an ongoing justification for pricing decisions that don't really reflect where supply stands today. If the willow position has eased at all since the rule was introduced, then bats built mostly from cheaper, non-English material have even less excuse to be priced close to a full willow bat. We'd rather see manufacturers make the case on current supply data than lean indefinitely on the shortage narrative that got the law changed in the first place.
We understand the ideology behind the change, and in principle we support anything that keeps cricket affordable for club players, juniors and weekend cricketers who simply want a decent bat without paying premium prices. But understanding the intention behind a law is different from trusting how every manufacturer will apply it, and this is where we think buyers need to be careful.
The law permits a laminated bat to carry only a thin veneer of genuine English willow across the striking face, with the rest of the blade made up of cheaper, non-English willow or other wood entirely. That is a legitimate construction method under the new rules. The problem is what some manufacturers appear to be doing with it commercially: producing bats built almost entirely from lower-grade, non-English materials, with just a slim strip of premium willow at the front for looks and marketing, then pricing those bats at levels that sit close to, or in some cases barely below, genuine full English willow bats.
That pricing simply doesn't stack up. If the entire regulatory case for laminate bats is affordability, a Type D bat built mostly from cheaper wood should be priced meaningfully lower than a full English willow bat, not close to it. When it isn't, the customer ends up paying premium-adjacent money for a bat that, structurally, contains only a fraction of the material a traditional bat is made from, and as covered above, a noticeably flatter, less connected feel to go with it.
This is really the crux of it. Why would you pay laminate level money for a bat that gives up depth of sound, feel and performance continuity, when a well made, non laminated, full English willow bat is available at a genuinely comparable price? Ranges like Gunn & Moore's Signature bats are a good example of what's out there: proper single-piece English willow, built by an established maker, at prices that hold their own against inflated laminate options. If a full willow bat is on the shelf next to a laminate one for similar money, the laminate bat needs a very good reason to be the pick, and right now, for most buyers, it isn't.
Our advice to customers browsing laminate options is straightforward: ask what proportion of the bat is actually genuine English willow, ask what the rest of the blade is made from, and compare the price directly against a full willow bat in the same bracket before deciding. Lamination should be the budget-friendly choice it was designed to be, not a way to charge premium prices for a bat that uses a fraction of the premium material.
There is a second, more practical concern that goes beyond pricing and feel: how long a laminated bat is likely to last. A traditional single-piece willow bat is one continuous piece of timber, shaped and pressed as a whole. A laminated bat, by contrast, is fundamentally two or three separate pieces of wood bonded together with adhesive along a joint or joints running through the blade.
Any glued joint in a piece of sports equipment that absorbs repeated, high-force impact is a potential point of failure. Cricket bats take an enormous amount of punishment over their working life, repeated ball strikes at speed, knocking-in, changes in humidity and temperature, and the natural flexing of the willow as it's used. A solid, single-piece bat has no internal seam for that stress to concentrate on. A laminated bat does, and over time there is a real possibility that the bond between the layers begins to weaken, delaminate, or separate, potentially well before a comparable single-piece bat would show the same signs of wear.
The MCC and manufacturers have suggested that testing shows Type D bats performing adequately and that any downside is marginal and we don't dispute that they meet the required standard to be legal for play, but meeting a legal performance standard on day one is a different question to how a glued, multi-piece blade holds up across two or three seasons of genuine use compared with a traditional bat. This is an area we think deserves ongoing scrutiny as more laminate bats reach the market and get put through real match and net use, rather than something that should simply be taken on trust.
Laminate bats exist for a good reason: to stretch a genuinely limited supply of premium willow further and to keep cricket accessible to more players at a lower cost. That's an aim we fully support. Where we remain cautious is in how that opportunity is being used commercially by some manufacturers, in how a laminated blade actually feels and sounds compared with a traditional one, and in how a glued, multi-piece construction will hold up over a bat's realistic lifespan.
Our recommendation for now is simple. If you're buying a laminate bat, buy it because it's genuinely affordable, and check what you're actually paying for. If a full English willow bat is available at a similar price, in most cases, it remains the stronger choice on feel, sound and long-term durability alike.
