Cricket

Cricket — Properly Made, Properly British, and Properly the Best Gift for Anyone Who Cares About It.

Right. So. Cricket is, even said by someone who does not necessarily commit four full days to watching a Test match in person, perhaps the most peculiarly English of all the major sporting institutions — a thing which survives largely on its insistence that the lunch break is sacrosanct, that the weather will do whatever it wishes, and that the only proper way to celebrate a hundred runs is to remove one's helmet and look ever so slightly embarrassed about it. The equipment that surrounds the game carries some of the same temperament: shaped by hand, made from particular trees grown in particular fields in particular corners of southern England, and treated with rather more reverence than is, strictly speaking, required of a piece of sporting kit. Which is, of course, the whole point.

Sostter's cricket selection is anchored by Newbery Cricket — a Sussex bat-making house with heritage going back to 1919, operating within the long Robertsbridge willow tradition, currently based in Lancing and supplying the England & Wales Cricket Board across the professional game. Their bats are hand-pressed from the top one per cent of Grade 1 English willow, shaped and balanced by hand and eye, and arrive knocked-in and ready to face an old ball in the nets (with, as the studio gently advises, more knocking-in always wise). Alongside the bats, expect cricket balls (transparently manufactured in India under ethical-standards agreements rather than greenwashed as British, which is properly rare in the trade), soft leather kit goods, teamwear, and the various bits one wants in a cricket bag. For the genuinely cricket-mad in your life, Newbery's bespoke service — designing one's own bat from scratch with the master batmaker — makes the sort of present that ends up in a framed photograph afterwards. Properly lovely thing to give.

For more pieces from independent makers, browse our British Makers selection and our Accessories collection. Find considered presents in our Gifts for Him edit, and discover values-led picks via Shop by Purpose.