Plenty of funky and lovely things happened as Aotearoa's Blackcaps defeated West Indies in the first Test, although the absence of a few lads spiced things up in a variety of different ways. This yarn starts back in the summer of 2018 when the Blackcaps rolled out three players who had all made the move from Kookaburra to SS and while this isn't quite the SS curse just yet as BJ Watling may slot straight back into his Blackcaps Test spot, Watling, Colin de Grandhomme and Jeet Raval were all missing with their SS blades.

Of course, Raval slipped out of the frame last summer and lost his spot at the top to Tom Blundell rocking his Kookaburra willow. Kookaburra lost a hefty dose of Blackcaps exposure when Raval, Watling and de Grandhomme all signed with SS and this has came back around to reap rewards as Blundell and Kyle Jamieson are both fresh Blackcaps Test players who are under the Kookaburra umbrella.

In the first Test, Kookaburra had Tom Latham scoring big runs along with Blundell and Jamieson. Jamieson appeared to be using the 'Ridgeback' bat which has a retro vibe, perhaps the most swag of all the Blackcaps bats used and when deep in these bat mangroves, Kookaburra are likely to get a whole lot more juice from their sponsorship of Jamieson. Remember that Kookaburra sponsor the likes of Matt Henry, Lockie Ferguson, Jimmy Neesham and Martin Guptill; Jamieson's the bloke in the Test team on the rise.

Latham appears to use the 'Kahuna' to play his leaves, while Blundell sticks to the all white profile of the 'Ghost' range. Latham's opening partner in this Test was Will Young, who has been with Gunn & Moore for a long time and as Young finally made his Test debut, he joined Ross Taylor as the GM troopers of the Blackcaps Test group. Young appears to be using the GM 'Icon' that is as clean and crisp as any cricket bat will get - Young doesn't get the honour of being listed as part of Team GM though.

Ross Taylor is one of six batsmen who have a GM Players Edition package and Taylor is joined by South Africa's Aiden Markram as the only non-England players with that honour. There does seem to be a slight shift here as Taylor had recently been using the black style of the 'Noir' bat and now Taylor's using the blue scheme of the Players Edition DXM.

For Gray Nicholls, well Kane Williamson just cracked a double hundy using his own Gray Nicolls 'Delta'. No matter how many bat things I type, it's always cool to note that Aotearoa has two batsmen who have long relationships and their own players edition ranges with two traditional, legacy brands. Williamson was previously using a Gray Nicolls 'Maxx', while Henry Nicholls and Daryl Mitchell are also in the Gray Nicolls stable.

I'm not sure exactly what bat Mitchell used in this Test, with Nicholls also having players edition status with Gray Nicolls via his 'Ultra' range. All of which provides a nice spread across the brands we have grown up enjoying in Aotearoa as Kookaburra has Latham, Blundell and Jamieson, GM has Young and Taylor, Gray Nicolls has Williamson, Nicholls and Mitchell. This leaves us the the two Adidas lads in Tim Southee and Neil Wagner, plus New Balance's Trent Boult.

New Balance offers the full range of equipment for Boult and as I've touched in previous yarns, it's no surprise that these three lads probably focus more on the footwear element. For context, most of the other players (batsmen) wear Asics shoes while Boult's steaming in rocking the New Balances and then Southee and Wagner wear Adidas shoes. Other players who aren't wearing Asics shoes, will probably opt for Adidas footwear.

This is where some low key funk sits as Adidas and New Balance are bigger brands around the world of sport, compared to the cricket-specific brands. Even within this little bucket, there is the matter of New Balance making a genuine push into the cricket market in the past five-10 years and while NB won't be known for their bats compared to the other brands, they do at least have some of the world's best cricketers on their roster; Steve Smith, Meg Lanning, Mitchell Santner, Ish Sodhi and Glenn Phillips whacked those T20I runs with NB.

Adidas on the other hand don't appear to have cricket too high on their list of priorities and you're unlikely to find a top order batsman in Test cricket using an Adidas bat. Southee and Wagner do though so big up to them.

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Peace and love.