Gray Nicolls, one of the oldest and most renowned bat-makers from England, is all set to make a comeback to India after a gap of nearly 40 years. Lately, the bat-manufactures have shown their interest to sponsor themselves in this part of the cricketing world.
After sponsoring majority of the countries including England, Australia, New Zealand and even Sri Lanka, the British based company is now eyeing to set their base in India too. During 1970s, legendary batsman Sunil Gavaskar was the last Indian who held the bat with the company’s name on it.
H.J. Gray and Sons, who were the racket-manufactures in Cambridge 1855, joined hands with L.J. Nicolls in the early 1940s to form Gray-Nicolls, the brand who found lot of success by making cricket bats in coming years.
Likes of Alastair Cook, Kane Williamson and David Warner are among the 37 International players who promote the brand on global level.
As quoted by Times of India, Nick Wilton, the brand manager of Gray-Nicolls, admitted the current crop of Indian cricketers have been on their tracker from a while now.
“We wanted an Indian ambassador over the last few years but it’s proven tricky. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to have any conversation with Sachin Tendulkar or Virat Kohli or any other Indian star.”
Looking to increase the popularity of their brand, Gray-Nicolls have already signed two Indian players Karun Nair and Vijay Shankar.
“It was Games Unlimited (Sports Management Enterprise) which helped us get in touch with these two young Indian players. We sponsor Vijay and Karun and they endorse our products.
We have a lot of international players who use our brand in Indian Premier League and promote it. Now we have our products in the dressing room of an Indian team. We will keenly follow the India-England Test series,” he concluded.