Newbery is named after a family of bat makers — and one of them changed what a bat could look like.

Newbery’s own history begins with Len Newbery, a bat maker in East Sussex in the early 1900s, who, the company says, “passed down” the craft “to his only son, John.” John Newbery, it says, “established John Newbery Ltd in 1981,” and he became known as “the Picasso of cricket bats.” The company credits him with the steel spring handle, an innovation inside the bat that no spectator would ever see; the bat that made his name was more radical still.

It was the Excalibur, a bat with its shoulders shaved away. Writing for cricket.com.au in 2022, Andrew Ramsey described how “the Newbery ‘Excalibur’ that New Zealand all-rounder Lance Cairns wielded with such devastating brutality in the early 1980s owed more to the club-like implements of the early 18th Century.” A bat designed in Sussex looked, to a historian’s eye, like something from before the Laws had fixed a bat’s width in 1774.

John Newbery died on 13 July 1989, aged only fifty. The company that trades today, John Newbery Limited, was incorporated on 4 July 1989 — nine days before his death. We could not find the 1981 company in the register, and we do not assign it a number; a separate “Newbery Bats Limited,” registered in 1986 and dissolved in 1991, appears in the records with no officers listed, and we do not connect it to him.

No Newbery has appeared among its officers. Its present directors took over in December 2008.

The register shows a company that has changed hands quietly. Among the nineteen officers it lists for John Newbery Limited since 1989, none is named Newbery. On 12 December 2008, Peter David Pyemont was appointed a director and four officers — among them officers named Hole and Keeley, surnames that appear in the register from the company’s first years — resigned the same day; Pyemont, recorded as resident in Malta, remains its person with significant control, and a second director, David John White, joined in October 2024. The company operates from the Sussex coast, and a sister company, Newbery Leisure, was registered in 2013. We describe the 2008 change as the register records it — appointments and resignations — not as a sale, because no filing describes one.

The name, in other words, has passed out of the hands of the family that gave it, like many in this round. What makes Newbery unusual is what the company now says about its products.

It describes itself as “A heritage brand woven into the fabric of the English game” and as “a proud supplier to the England & Wales Cricket Board across the professional game” — both its own claims. Its lines include the Master and Mjolnir series, and in 2024, it says, it launched a five-year “Brand Reset” business plan; it has since introduced what it calls “Our new 2026 simple numbered grading.” It also describes itself as “an emerging force in the global cricket ball market,” which explains why its ball-origin sentence matters so much. Its mission is stated in one line: “To produce premium handmade cricket equipment at an affordable price.”

“We don’t add minimal UK finishing to claim ‘Made in England.’”

The most striking sentence on Newbery’s site is about honesty of origin. Its top bats, it says, are made in Britain: “Our top-grade English willow bats are handmade in the UK by master bat makers.” Its balls are not, and it says so with unusual bluntness: “Our cricket balls are made in India… We don’t add minimal UK finishing to claim ‘Made in England’.”

That sentence names a practice it declines to follow — light finishing work done in Britain on goods made elsewhere, to justify a home-country label. We do not suggest any particular company does that; Newbery’s line is a statement of its own policy. But it is the clearest origin statement in this round, and it reads almost as a reply to the whole sticker economy. Where MRF and Spartan put a famous name on a bat made by someone else, Newbery tells the buyer which of its own products are made where.

It also says what it thinks makes its bats different: “It’s the Newbery processes, which set us apart… specifically the pressing of the willow.” Pressing compresses the soft face of a willow cleft so it can survive the ball; it is standard practice in bat making, and makers commonly describe their own pressing as what distinguishes them. The rules within which all of them work are the same: MCC’s Law 5 says the blade “shall consist solely of wood,” and the Laws allow commercial identifications on it no thicker than 0.02 centimetres, confined on the face to the top nine inches. In international cricket, the ICC adds its own limits: one sponsor’s logo on the back of no more than ten square inches, and a player’s initials no taller than two centimetres. A maker’s crest has to fit inside all of that — which is one reason bat brands tend towards short names and simple marks, and why a full heraldic crest is an unusual identity for a bat maker to choose, whatever version of it appears on the blade itself.

The logo is a coat of arms.

Newbery’s logo is heraldic: a crowned lion and a unicorn supporting a shield with six birds arranged three, two, one, above “NEWBERY” in serif capitals, all in a single navy. The six birds echo the six martlets of the Sussex county arms — our observation, not the company’s stated intent — and the whole crest gives a small brand the gravity of an institution.

It is an apt choice for a name built on a craftsman’s reputation and now run by people who are not his family. The crest says continuity; the origin sentence says candour. Together they are the best answer this round offers to the question every bat raises: whose name is on it, and who made it.

For this guide we use a crest navy and a pale crest tone with a bookish heraldic serif. These are an unofficial interpretation — the colours on its site are theme styling we could not confirm as brand values — and nothing of its crest is reproduced.

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