By Paul Davey

Traduzido por Henrique Dolabella

In Brazil, a country famous for its forest and a timber trade that has held up the countries economy for many hundreds of years, a country that is even named after the famous Brasil wood that the early Portuguese settlers discovered, Poços de Caldas teenager, cricketer and resident Octavio Garcia is finally putting the local flora to the best possible use that Cricket Brasil knows, he is carving his own cricket bats!

The single piece bat, shown in the picture above was created in approximately 20 hours using only a knife and a was loosely based on a bat that was given to the Cricket Poços de Caldas development project by the Uk’s Salix Bats company who are a proud sponsor of the development program in Poços de Caldas that has introduced cricket to more than 1500 residents in the past 24 months.
Cricket Brasil’s Development Director and former Kent CCC cricketer Matthew Featherstone has been fortunate enough to use the model and said “Although the bat is very heavy the middle is ok”

The amount of time, energy and love that has gone in to the making of this bat is further reinforcement that the efforts and finances that have gone in to building the project in Poços is really paying off and to see that the development team in Poços working hard to not only explain the laws and demonstrate techniques to play the game, the enthusiasm and passion for the game is washing off on the players who have taken their new found love of the sport to levels more commonly seen in the establish test playing nations. Well done Octavio!