The Return Of The Predator | The Metallica Of Bats

The Gray-Nicolls Predator brings out something primal in me. Maybe it was the hours of watching Straussy rock back and cut it on Ashes ’05 DVDs, or the catalogue pics of him holding a Pred aloft with an Investec sticker covering half the back of it. Maybe it was the hours spent poring over online descriptions that said it had a great high middle for playing off the back foot (not actually that useful on village wickets in Gloucestershire). Maybe it was the new-fangled and soon to be outlawed carbon handle that came with it. Maybe it was just the unsubtle brutality of two scimitar blades and sets of red claws on the stickers. 

Whatever it was, it came to a head between Christmas and New Year 2006 when Andrew Symonds walked to the crease to join a well-set Matthew Hayden, fidgeting with his box as he went, and unleashed a volley of terror on the England attack.

Slap, slap, slap went Symo with what I can only think is the most dismissive maiden Test century of all time, guiding Australia from a vulnerable 84-5 to a near-certain whitewash at 363-6. England were done, and that bat was something else. I needed it.

A lot of us search for identity in a bat: class, technique, purism, guile. But in this case, it was just about becoming the most intimidating, aggressive and primitive type of hitter possible. That’s all I wanted. It might’ve just been the onset of teenage aggro but I imagined myself out at the crease dispatching boundaries with the weaponised finesse of Soulcalibur III and the burly, masculine heft of Metallica. I wasn’t going to bat, I was going to consume bowlers with brutal efficiency. I was going to destroy.

“I was Symo, playing ‘Ride The Lightning’ in cricketing form”

After that day at the MCG, my old Freddie Flintoff Woodworm just wasn’t going to cut it anymore. ’05 was for English heroes, but I was Symo now, playing ‘Ride The Lightning’ in cricketing form.

The Predator is a bat that got me my first 50, my first six, my first first baller and furnished countless other moments along the way. Thanks to a ten-year hiatus from the game, I still bat with it today, now with a deep linseed tan and a hundred cracks papered over with fibreglass tape. And while I’m no longer dreaming of Straussy and Symo – I can now see I’m just a 6ft2 lad from Gloucestershire who camps on the back foot – maybe it’s about time I got a new one.

The Gray-Nicolls Predator Original returns for the 2022 season. For updates, keep an eye on gray-nicolls.co.uk