Rise of the cricket bat nerd

The bat nerd is tragic character. The most annoying person in a cricket team. And Australia have some of the worst.

Marnus Labuschagne rivals Steve Smith for his obsessiveness about bats. Picture: Peter Wallis

The tapping can drive you mad. Donk. Donk. Donk. Late into the night. Donk. Donk. Donk. Every morning. Coming down the corridor. Through the walls. Throughout the day.

The obsession is something to behold. They collect and hoard and covet. It’s a disease. They’re known to steal from mates. You look around and they’re rustling through your stuff desperate to get their hands on another one. ­Always weighing them up, feeling them, nagging you if they think you’ve got a good one.

“Can I have it?” they ask. If you don’t give it up, they plead and whine. Keep coming back to the topic.

The bat nerd is a tragic character. The most annoying person in a cricket team. They are at the far end of the nuffie spectrum. Way out there.

They’re a figure of fun because they have such single focus. They’ve always got a bat in their hand — one of the stupid number they carry or one of yours. They’re always hunting for new ones. Talking about the grip, the blade, the weight, the sound. If you’ve got a good one, you have to keep a close eye on it.

They bounce balls off them constantly. That’s the donk sound. But it’s not the only one. There’s a “tonk” that you hear when they tap the bat on the carpeted floors as they anticipate the delivery of imaginary balls. Teammates become experts at identifying the difference in much the way an expert on frogs can identity a species by its sounds.

Marnus is hitting the ball tonight. Donk. Donk. And that must be Steve shadow batting. Tonk. Tonk. Teammates bang on walls in frustration. Wander sleepily down corridors and yell through the door. It’s enough to, well, drive you batty.

They won’t get out of the nets either. They bat and bat and bat and bat. Bowling machines blow engines. Coaches wear out rotator cuffs, and still they’re there, wanting more, like that irritating dog that’s always dropping the ball at your feet and demanding you throw it another time. And then another.

Pleading eyes.

Steve Smith’s got it bad, but now another has joined the team. Marnus Labuschagne is on the spectrum too.

During the ODIs, Ricky Ponting, who was pretty bad himself, sniffed out Smith’s obsession. He’d hear the donk in the night and front him at breakfast.

“Was that you batting in the room at 11pm?” Shamed, Smith’s eyes would dart around trying to avoid contact.

“Yeah. I guess, it might have been.”

Ponting would shake his head. He knows the disease and what it can do because he had it. Now he’s moved on to golf. He has more gear at home than you would find at a golf shop. Gloves and clubs and balls and shoes and what have you. And now it’s Labuschagne too. He’s got it bad, not quite as bad as Smith who, according to Labuschagne, is currently carrying around “at least” 15 bats and a ­guitar (these people always say someone else is worse). Marnus only has 10, he says, but who needs 10 bats? Especially when you find out he has only been using one to make all his runs this year.

One that broke last week, but that’s another story. A tragic one for the emerging star, who probably wept on the inside when it happened.

He’s a quirky kid. Doesn’t have much of a filter. Always chatting, chipping blokes, a little indiscreet. Very likeable. “I love bats, I love the gear, I love talking bats, fine details, changes, handle shapes, how the bat taps, the length of the blade,” he admits.

Kookaburra jokes that he is its most annoying client. The company calls him The Hurricane because when he visits the factory it’s mayhem. Boxes are everywhere, every bat in the factory has to be tried out. He’s Imelda Marcos in a shoe emporium. Kid in a lolly shop. Glutton at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

“When I go in, all the bats come out, boxes are everywhere, I am feeling every bat, tapping it up. I love it,” he says. “I love talking about bats. Just before I was in the changerooms and I went in to Tim Paine’s bag and grabbed two bats and was like ‘Are these in the trade window?’ ”

He is not above acquiring a bat even if he can’t use it. He’s like the collector who has things piled away in cupboards just because he wants to have them, but he claims every one could come in handy at some stage.

“There’s no looking-at bats,” he says.

He has a device at home so he can restring the handles himself. He is obsessive about their weight, but he is not the first. Michael Hussey used to carry around a set of scales to ensure his bat was perfect to within a gram. Class A drugs are measured with less precision.

Obsession, of course, is a short stop from insanity. Smith sometimes gets in a place where he can’t remember how to hold the bat. He loses the feel and it can take hours, sometimes hundreds of hours, to find it again. New Zealand captain John Wright once glued his gloves to the handle.

The obsessives leave themselves open to heartache. Like an emotionally damaged person, they run from one relationship to another, never satisfied for long, often destroying the thing they love.

“I’ve literally used one bat the whole summer here. It’s a beautiful bat, and it broke last game,” Labus­chagne admits. “Now I’m looking for that new bat.”

His sadness for the loss passes quickly and his eyes light up. He’s got a couple in his bag from “Kooka” that are “beautiful”. One or two that are “ready to go”. He’s already put on the back of it the eagle sticker he’s had made up with his favourite Bible reference.

A few minutes after he finishes talking in the team room at the hotel, there is a noise outside. Up on the mezzanine level, it’s Labuschagne. Tonk. Tonk. He’s grabbed a bat from someone who was having their photo done. He’s feeling its weight in his stance.

His teammates walk by, rolling their eyes. One was bad enough. Now there’s two of them.

Some nights it sounds like every frog in the suburb is at it.