The maiden Ranji Trophy triumph this month has propelled Jammu and Kashmir’s cricket team into national prominence but away from the spotlight and adulation, another battle has been quietly unfolding across the Valley’s orchards.
Kashmir’s iconic willow — long prized for crafting cricket bats — is facing stiff competition, not from the bowlers but the faster-growing poplars that promise quicker and more predictable returns to the farmers.
Congratulating the Jammu and Kashmir cricket team for the Ranji triumph, Sachin Tendulkar paid glowing tribute to the Kashmir willow.
“The Kashmir willows have been a part of many champions’ kits. To see Jammu & Kashmir’s journey from being an enabler of champions, to becoming champions themselves, is beautiful,” he said.
But the willow’s role as an “enabler of champions” is confronting the “poplar challenge”, which farmers are growing in larger numbers at the cost of the willow.
Fawzul Kabiir, the spokesman for the Kashmir Cricket Bat Manufacturers Association, said the production of bats had surged more than 10 times to three million a year over the past decade — definitive evidence of how Valley bats have carved a niche globally in grassroots and budget-friendly retail markets.
The better-performing English willow, however, is still preferred by players in elite international cricket.
Kabiir said several international players, too, are falling for the charm of the Kashmir willow, with 47 cricketers, mainly from seven countries such as Afghanistan, Oman, the UAE and Bangladesh, using bats made from it.
“The demand is massive and it keeps increasing every year. We have been doing very well in the last four-five years in every format of international cricket. That is why the number of bat manufacturing units has surged to 400 (all in south Kashmir). The industry employs 1.5 lakh people in the country, around 30 per cent of them in Kashmir alone,” Kabiir told The Telegraph.
But the elephant in the room, according to him, is the dwindling raw material supply. Nearly 70,000 willow trees, locally called veer, are cut annually in Kashmir to feed the bat industry in the Valley and at centres like Meerut, Jammu and Jalandhar, even as replantation efforts remain minimal. One willow tree produces 70 to 100 bats.
Valley bat makers said the farmers prefer the poplar — which takes 10 to 12 years to grow, offering quicker returns — whereas the willow takes 20 to 30 years to mature. The poplar is used for making plywood and pencils, and the roofing structure for houses in Kashmir.
“Poplars bring hard cash for farmers. One well-grown willow tree fetches a farmer ₹1 lakh to ₹1.5 lakh, but it takes a very long time to mature. A poplar tree sells for ₹40,000 to ₹50,000, but it takes fewer years to grow,” Kabiir, whose company in 2021 became the first in Kashmir to get International Cricket Council (ICC) certification, said.
“The problem is that there are hardly any willow trees in south Kashmir, the main hub, now. We are getting them from north Kashmir, going as far as to Gurez or in Ladakh. We fear the industry might well come to a halt in the next few years if the government does not intervene in a big way,” he said.
One remedy, Kabiir suggested, is to replant trees on 9,150 hectares of wetlands, which produce the best willow, and incentivise the farmers.
A welcome development is that the faculty of forestry at Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology in Kashmir has identified the best willow variety for plantation after years of research.
In 2021, the faculty identified the Caerulea as the best willow variety suited for making cricket bats and also pointed out the areas where it grows.
“We found that only 5 per cent of willows grown in Kashmir belong to this variety. It is a female species of the willow, the only female in a long list of Salix Alba (willow) varieties. It has tensile strength, elasticity and compression. There was a myth that ours is not a true cricket willow. We proved it wrong. We have only been making the wrong choices,” Prof. Parvez Ahmad Sofi, head of the faculty, told this newspaper.
But the longer gestation period still makes the poplar a better bet for farmers.
“The Caerulea’s gestation period is the same as that of the other varieties, but qualitatively it is on a par with the English willow. If it is planted extensively, it will be much better-rewarding for the farmers,” Sofi said.
Bat manufacturers rued the lack of awareness that was coming in the way of the Caerulea willow’s promotion.
They said bats made from the Kashmir willow sold for ₹2,200 apiece on average, while an English bat costs many times more.
Kabiir said the Kashmir willow had suffered another setback because of an overseas development — the announcement by the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) last month that rules would be amended to allow laminated bats for open-age recreational cricket.
These bats will have the English willow as a thin outer covering, while the rest of the mass will come from the Kashmir willow, among others.
The move by the MCC, the sole guardian and custodian of the laws of cricket since its formation in 1787, is aimed at making cricket affordable for amateur players amid the rising cost of the English willow.
“We will benefit monetarily in the short run but it will hit the image of the Kashmiri bats eventually. The Kashmiri bats can get better by planting better-quality willow trees. This will deal a blow to our identity,” Kabiir said.