For a few years, Spartan’s sticker was on some of the most famous bats in the world.

Spartan was, in Reuters’ description, a “Sydney-based” bat company, founded and run by Kunal Sharma. Its approach, as reported, was this round’s theme in its plainest form: sign the biggest names, put the sticker on their bats, and sell the brand on their faces. A 2018 report in the Illawarra Mercury listed its ambassadors — Mitchell Johnson from 2011, Michael Clarke from 2012, and MS Dhoni, Sachin Tendulkar and Kevin Pietersen. In 2016 it agreed a deal for a signature line, “Sachin by Spartan.”

Few brands of any age assembled a roster like that so quickly. It was, in effect, a sticker empire: a business whose most visible asset was the face of the world’s best-known batsmen. Our earlier guides to MRF and CEAT describe the same model run by vast tyre companies, for whom a sticker is marketing. For Spartan, the sticker was a far larger share of what the public saw of the business.

The International Cricket Council’s regulations explain why players accept such deals: bat advertising is allowed, they say, “to allow an opportunity for players to obtain some revenue from controlled bat advertising.” The rules limit where that sponsor may appear: a single “Player’s Bat Logo” on the back of the bat, no larger than ten square inches, while the face is reserved for the manufacturer’s marks in the top nine inches. A player’s side of the bargain is simple: the sticker goes on, and the money comes in.

In 2018 one Spartan company went into liquidation. Its liquidators examined payments to brand ambassadors.

The Illawarra Mercury reported in September 2018 that SSG Wholesale (Australia) Pty Ltd — formerly Spartan Sporting Goods, renamed two days earlier — had been placed into liquidation by its creditors on 23 May 2018. Its liquidators, from the firm BRI Ferrier, put its debts at about $8.5 million; Kunal Sharma’s own report to them gave $4.2 million. Creditors included the tax office and a major bank. The liquidators, the newspaper reported, were examining possible insolvent trading, uncommercial transactions and unfair preference payments to “brand ambassadors,” and had referred the matter to the corporate regulator.

Those were the liquidators’ lines of inquiry, not findings, and Sharma’s lawyer rejected them: “My client disputes many of the assertions in the liquidators report, in particular any suggestion of insolvent trading or withholding company records.” The same article said two other Spartan companies, Spartan Sports International and Spartan Sports Brands — the latter registered on 4 May 2018, nineteen days before the liquidation — were not in trouble, and that the latter had raised money towards a stock-market listing. It also reported that Mitchell Johnson had threatened legal action over unpaid fees before a payment plan was met, and that Michael Clarke, who had been behind on payments, had since been paid; the batsman Joe Burns was listed as a creditor owed $35,000. We found no published outcome of the liquidators’ inquiries, and we state none.

Tendulkar sued. In May 2020 judgment was entered for him, Spartan apologised, and his name came off its products.

In June 2019 Sachin Tendulkar sued Spartan in the Federal Court of Australia. According to Tendulkar’s claim as reported in legal commentary in 2020, Spartan had agreed in July 2016 to pay him at least US$1 million a year for the “Sachin by Spartan” line, had made no payment by September 2018, and he had terminated the agreement on 17 September 2018. His claim sought about US$2 million in unpaid royalties and the cancellation of trademarks Spartan had registered using a silhouette of his square cut.

The case ended in May 2020. As Conventus Law reported, “the parties settled the proceedings, with judgment for Mr Tendulkar being entered in the sum of $2 million.” A number of Spartan companies submitted to judgment; the silhouette trademarks were cancelled; Spartan was permanently restrained from using his name, image and likeness; and it acknowledged that he had had “no association with Spartan since 17 September 2018.” Its chief operating officer, Les Galbraith, delivered a public apology: “Spartan sincerely apologises to Tendulkar for its failure to honour his sponsorship agreement and is grateful for Tendulkar’s patience in resolving this dispute.” Reports at the time said Tendulkar was represented by the law firm Gilbert + Tobin.

Separately, Dhoni’s management was reported in September 2018 to be planning legal action over money it said was owed under a deal reportedly signed in December 2013; Sharma told SBS there was “no unrest.” We found no court filing for that dispute, and report only that it was reported.

A Jalandhar company of the same name says it does. The link is not on the record.

The bats themselves come from India. In 2019 the Bengaluru site Citizen Matters, reporting on Jalandhar’s sports-goods industry, quoted Jyoti Sharma, described as the owner of Spartan Sports in that city: “Our bats are also being used by Chris Gayle, Michael Clarke, deVilliers… Sachin Tendulkar too used our bats.” The same report gave, as the company’s own figures, Dhoni’s bat at 2.9 pounds of English cleft willow and Gayle’s at 3.6. The Spartan web store today gives an address in a Jalandhar leather complex. How that Jalandhar business relates to the Sydney companies is not established in anything we read, and we do not connect them beyond the shared name.

That gap is the identity lesson. So is the trademark Spartan lost. It had registered, as its own marks, a silhouette of Tendulkar playing his square cut alongside his name — a player’s likeness turned into a brand asset. When those marks were cancelled as part of the settlement, the brand lost the most personal part of its identity, because it had never really been the brand’s to own. A bat brand is three things — a maker, a marketer and a sticker — and they need not be the same company, or even in the same country. Spartan made its name on the third, while the first sat in Punjab and the second sat in Sydney. When the money behind the sticker did not arrive, it was Tendulkar’s name that the court’s orders removed.

For this guide we use a Spartan crimson and a pale bronze with a tall condensed sans. These are an unofficial interpretation, not Spartan’s own colour values, and nothing of its mark or the cancelled silhouette is reproduced.

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