B3 was started by a man who had sold other people’s bats for two decades.

B3 Cricket says it “was launched in October 2012.” Its founder, Russell Evans, had played for Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire, and, the company’s tribute to him records, spent “over 20 years with Gunn & Moore as Commercial Manager before founding B3 Cricket in 2012.” He became a first-class umpire the following year, keeping a foot in the professional game while building his own brand. He died suddenly, aged 52, in 2017; England’s players wore black armbands on the first day of the Adelaide Ashes Test in his memory.

The company records show the shape of the business. The first company, B3 Cricket Limited, was incorporated in April 2012 with three directors — David Bacon, Michael Blatherwick and Russell Evans — and dissolved in 2022. The trading company today, B3 Cricket (International) Limited, was incorporated in May 2014 in Nottingham, and lists Michael Blatherwick and Gavin Corns as directors; Companies House shows Blatherwick as its one current person with significant control, holding between a quarter and a half of the shares.

B3 describes its ownership in its own terms. In a 2026 post its managing director wrote: “We have no borrowings, no external investors… the business is wholly owned by the people who work in it every day,” adding that he did not rely on B3 for his income: “My career in the IT industry provides that.” We report both the register and the company’s description.

“Right here in Nottingham.”

B3’s origin claim is its brand. It says it remains “committed to making B3 Cricket bats, right here in Nottingham,” at a factory showroom in Hucknall, and in a 2026 post announcing a southern workshop in Hailsham, East Sussex, it wrote under the heading “Made in England”: “we remain firmly committed to investing in UK bat making, using genuine English willow.” The new branch is run by Alex Hohenkerk, a master bat-maker with, the company says, “nearly 20 years of experience,” who also makes a new handmade line; the southern workshop, on an industrial park, sees customers by appointment. In Nottingham, Gavin Corns is named as production director.

Its willow has a named source. “We’re proud to be long-term customers of JS Wrights, the world’s most reputable supplier of English willow,” B3 says. It also describes its own method: “We pioneered the use of CAD and CNC technology in bat making” — its claim, and a reminder that “made in England” and “made by hand” are different statements. The core range is shaped with machine help; the new handmade line is pressed, shaped and finished by Hohenkerk.

B3 has also been unusually direct about competitors. In a 2025 post it wrote that “Many brands don’t actually make their own bats… rely on large Asian manufacturers to send them blanks” — a criticism of what the trade calls sticker brands, and a theme this series has covered from the other side, in the Indian and Pakistani factories that make bats for famous names. Its own site warns: “Beware of poor quality, inferior or imported willow.”

The game regulates the helmet more closely than the bat.

Cricket’s safety rules sit mostly on the other side of the contest — on what protects the batter rather than what the batter swings. Since 1 February 2017, the International Cricket Council has required that any helmet worn in international cricket comply with the British Standard BS 7928:2013; helmets are not compulsory, but “when a batsman elects to wear a helmet it must be compliant.” The standard’s facial-contact test fires a men’s ball at 28 metres per second, and a junior ball at 23, speeds it calls “theoretically equivalent to realistic cricket ball speeds faced by cricketers.” In England, the ECB told professionals in January 2016 that “Any player who does not wear compliant protective headgear will not be permitted to play,” and its guidance explains that the standard “now includes a facial contact projectile test that assesses for penetration of the ball through the faceguard, and contact of the faceguard onto the face, using realistic ball impact speeds and conditions.” The bowler delivers the ball at those speeds; the bat is the batter’s answer to it, and the helmet the batter’s insurance against missing.

Bats face rules about wood and size rather than a safety certificate. That leaves a maker’s own claims — about willow, grading and where the bat is made — to carry the weight in the bat market, and B3 spends much of its copy on them. The helmet side of the game, by contrast, is policed by penalties: the ICC’s 2017 rule gives a player an official warning for each of the first two matches in a non-compliant helmet, and a one-match suspension for a third breach.

The brand’s website also features a factory visit by the commentator David Lloyd. Its best-known player is Will Rhodes, whom it describes as a “B3 Pro Ambassador.” By December 2024 he had been with the brand for three seasons; he captained Warwickshire to the County Championship in 2021 and joined Durham from 2025.

Taglines in capitals, and a money-back promise about sound.

B3’s homepage speaks in capitals: “THE FINEST ENGLISH WILLOW,” “MADE BY CRICKETERS, FOR CRICKETERS,” “UNIQUE IN THE WORLD OF CRICKET BAT MAKERS,” and, most unusually, “OUR PING MONEY BACK GUARANTEE” — a promise about the sound a good bat makes when it meets the ball. It closes with a lighter line: “We Don’t Like Cricket … We Love It!” We could not find what “B3” stands for, and we do not guess.

The website’s accent colour is a burnt orange, set against a near-black text. For a design guide, B3 shows how a small maker builds a brand on place and process: a named town, a named willow supplier, named bat-makers and a guarantee about sound. Each is a specific, checkable claim, and specific claims are the strongest defence a small maker has against larger brands with bigger stickers.

For this guide we use that orange and a pale willow tone with a heavy grotesque. These are an unofficial interpretation of the site’s colours, and nothing of B3’s logo is reproduced.

Keep B3 Cricket’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.