Fawzul Kabeer owner of GR8 business was started by his late father started in 1974 says the demand for Kashmiri bats have increased in international markets as they have already sent consignment to around one dozen countries and many orders are also in queue and it will be a new beginning for us and we are hopeful very soon that famous international players will play with our bats.

Fawzul Kabeer is very hopeful and optimistic that Kashmiri bats will emerge as an alternative to English willow bats as it is the only one who can produce these bats at much less rate than what English willow costs.

He says that T20 world cup is very important platform to introduce our cricket brands to the world as he had already put in a lot of effort, travelled to several cricketing nations and informed them about the Kashmir-Willow bat which is a less expensive alternative to English willow and with the help of contemporary technology, we have taken this to a new level where we employ Computer Monitored Compression (CMC) to deliver precision, accuracy and compression to the bat, and this technology is only used by our company.

Jammu and Kashmir government is also keen towards promotion of cricket bat industry of Kashmir enabling the Kashmir willow cricket bat to become a world class product.

In order to revive Kashmir’s cricket bat manufacturing and other wood-based industry, a team of Union Ministry of Medium, Small and Micro Enterprises officials had also visited valley to find ways for extending support.

In this direction Common Facility Centre, Sethar was established at an estimated cost of Rs 4.61 crore with plant and machinery installed by PPDC, Meerut incurring an expenditure of Rs 2.46 crore.

The objective of CFC is to facilitate seasoning of willow clefts and provide all facilities to the Cricket Bat Unit holders under one roof. This will enable  unit holders to use modern techniques in production of world class cricket bats.

There are 7 villages – Bijbehara, Charsoo, Hallamullaha, Sangam, Pujteng, Mirzapor and Sethar  in South Kashmir where cricket bats are manufactured, providing bread  butter to hundreds of villagers.

To be conti