A player messaged us on WhatsApp three months into last season. He'd bought a ₹16,000 Grade 1 English willow bat, played about twelve games, and the face had cracked down to the toe. He wanted to know if we'd sold him a bad bat. I asked him one question: had he oiled it? There was a long pause. Then: "No — I thought it came ready."
It hadn't. No bat does. That conversation is the reason I'm writing this guide. Not because gear care is complicated — it genuinely isn't — but because nobody explains it item by item, with honest numbers. So here it is: everything in your kit bag, and exactly what each piece needs to last three or four seasons instead of one.
The bat
Oiling — the one thing people skip
A new cricket bat arrives with maybe one thin coat of linseed oil from the factory. That is not enough. Before the first net session, apply two thin coats of raw linseed oil to the face, edges, and toe — not the back, not the splice, never the label. Let each coat dry face-up for at least twelve hours. Then knock it in.
During the season, oil again every three to four innings. One drop spread thin with a cloth. Let it absorb overnight. If you play in very dry conditions — hard maidan, cement pitch, low humidity — oil more frequently. The wood will tell you: dull, chalky willow is asking for oil. Shiny, responsive willow has enough.
Cover and storage
Keep the bat in a canvas or cloth cover — not a sealed plastic sleeve, which traps moisture and causes mould on the face. Store it lying flat or standing toe-up in a cool, dry spot. A car boot in June in Delhi is not storage. Three hours in that heat will do more damage than twenty innings.
Edge tape and toe guards
Anti-scuff sheet is worth applying before a bat's first innings — it protects the face from abrasion without affecting performance. Edge tape is your call; some players like the insurance on a new bat, others prefer the clean feel. A toe guard (stuck on with contact adhesive) is genuinely useful if you play on matting or concrete, where the ball skids low and hits the toe frequently. Both are cheap — ₹80 to ₹200 — and they can save a ₹12,000 bat.
Repairs
Surface cracks along the grain are normal and not a retirement signal. Push wood glue in, clamp overnight, sand flush. A crack that runs across the grain, or a deep split from the edge inward, means the bat is done. Don't tape it and hope.
When to retire a bat
Retire when: the sweet spot feels dead (no pickup off the middle), a cross-grain crack appears, or the splice starts separating. A good bat looked after properly should give you three to five solid seasons. The ₹9,000 Grade 2 I've been playing with since 2021 is still my match bat.
Pads and gloves
Cleaning and drying
Pads and gloves are the most neglected items in any kit bag, and also the ones that suffer most from neglect. After every session: take them out of the bag, hang them open in a ventilated spot, and let them dry completely before packing them away again. Damp foam inside a sealed bag grows mould inside forty-eight hours in Mumbai or Kolkata in August.
Wipe leather surfaces with a barely-damp cloth to remove grass stains and mud. Do not machine wash either item — the foam will collapse inside the first cycle and never recover. Mild soap with a soft cloth is fine for exterior canvas strapping.
Checking foam and protection
Press along every foam section of your pads once a month. A knee roll that feels noticeably softer than the ones either side of it has lost its protective rating. It will feel comfortable — pads always do once they're worn in — but comfort isn't protection. If a foam section has flattened, the pad needs replacing.
Glove sausages: squeeze each finger from tip to base. A split or torn seam is not a cosmetic issue. In one delivery, a split sausage can mean a broken or badly bruised finger. Retire gloves with damaged sausages immediately, not at the end of the season.
When to retire pads and gloves
Pads: when knee-roll foam has compressed, strap elastic has gone, or velcro no longer holds. Gloves: split sausages, torn palm, or padding that's hard and unyielding rather than resilient. Budget replacement every two to three seasons for regular club play.
Helmet
Cleaning the grille and shell
After each match, wipe the inside padding with a dry cloth. Sweat degrades foam faster than almost anything else, and foam degradation is invisible until the padding is flat. The grille can be removed on most helmets — do this once a month and wash it with soap and water to remove dust and debris that accumulates in the bars.
The outer shell: wipe down with a damp cloth. Don't use solvents or polish — they can micro-crack some helmet shell materials and compromise the structure in ways you can't see.
Padding and impact rules
Replace the interior padding when it has compressed noticeably — most helmet brands sell replacement foam kits for ₹300 to ₹600. This is worth doing every season for regular players.
The non-negotiable rule: after any ball-to-helmet impact — however minor it looked — replace the helmet. Not "inspect it and see." Replace it. Helmet materials absorb impact energy by deforming internally. You cannot see that deformation from the outside. A helmet that has taken a hit is not a helmet. This is not advice; it's physics.
Expiry
Check the manufacturing date inside your helmet. Most manufacturers and safety standards recommend replacing helmets after five years regardless of visible condition. The shell materials degrade with UV exposure and thermal cycling. I know ₹3,500 to ₹6,000 feels like a lot for something that "still looks fine." It is still worth it.
Shoes
After every match
Clean the studs and sole with a stiff brush before the mud dries. Dry mud on rubber studs is much harder to remove and accelerates stud wear. Loosen the laces fully and stuff newspaper inside — it absorbs sweat and keeps the shoe's shape while it dries.
Air-dry in a ventilated spot. Never dry in direct sun (the glue holding studs softens and fails) and never next to a heater or in a car boot (leather upper cracks and the sole delaminates). This is the most common way cricket shoes die young.
Stud maintenance
On replaceable-stud shoes, check each stud monthly. Once the head has worn down by half its original height, replace it. A flat stud gives you less grip and puts more lateral stress on the sole at the edges. Replacement studs are ₹150 to ₹400 for a full set — a fraction of a new shoe.
Fixed-rubber-stud shoes: when the studs wear flush with the sole, the shoe is retired. There's no repair here.
Sole life
A quality pair of cricket shoes played twice a week through a season, cared for as above, should last two to three seasons. The upper usually outlasts the sole. When the sole starts separating at the edges or the midsole feels hard and unresponsive under your heel — even if the upper looks fine — the shoe has lost its impact protection and it is time for a new pair.
The cricket ball
Leather balls are expensive — a decent match ball runs ₹900 to ₹2,200 — and they're often treated as disposable. They aren't. Keep the ball dry between use: a damp leather ball left in a bag grows mould in the seam and on the lacquer within days. Wipe the ball with a dry cloth after each session. Store in a ball pouch or small cloth bag, never loose in the main compartment where it rolls around against sweaty gear.
During play, the traditional method of maintaining one side applies: saliva on the lacquered side, light sweat-polishing with the palm. Don't use anything else on a match ball — Vaseline, oils, artificial substances — that's both illegal in most formats and genuinely damages the leather over time.
For practice balls that get wet: dry them slowly at room temperature. Forcing a wet leather ball to dry fast with heat causes the seam to lift and the leather to crack. Our cricket ball guide covers the full range of ball types for different practice and match situations.
The kit bag
The bag holds everything else, so if the bag is wrong, everything suffers. Three rules:
- Empty it every week. Completely. Everything out. Shake out the debris. Wipe the interior lining with a damp cloth. Let it air open for at least a day.
- Never seal it damp. After a rainy match or a humid session, leave the bag unzipped and open in a ventilated room until everything inside has dried. A sealed damp kit bag is a bioreactor.
- Desiccant packets. If you're in Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, or any coastal or monsoon-heavy city — put two silica gel packets in the main compartment permanently. They cost ₹50 for a pack of ten and they quietly absorb the ambient moisture that would otherwise be doing slow damage to every piece of foam and leather in the bag.
The bag itself: if the frame has buckled or the base has gone soft and wet gear sits in standing moisture at the bottom, it is time for a new bag. A good bag is ₹1,500 to ₹3,500 and protects ₹30,000 worth of kit. Don't compromise on it.
Between seasons — the annual reset
Once a year, before the new season starts, do this full audit:
- Bat: sand the face lightly with 400-grit sandpaper to remove any built-up oil residue, then apply two fresh thin coats of linseed oil. Check the splice joint for any movement.
- Pads: press every foam section. Retire anything that has flattened. Check all strap elastic — it degrades whether used or not.
- Gloves: retire any pair with split sausages, torn palm, or hardened foam. Don't try to nurse damaged gloves through a season.
- Helmet: check the manufactured date. Replace if over five years old. Replace padding if compressed.
- Shoes: re-stud if replaceable, re-lace with fresh laces, condition the leather upper with saddle soap, inspect the sole bond at the edges.
- Bag: clean, air, and repair any broken zips or buckles while there's no urgency.
This takes about ninety minutes once a year. It directly determines whether your kit goes into the new season performing at its best or at the worst point of its life.
How Royal Cricket Shop actually helps
When a customer buys a bat from us, we ask three things by WhatsApp: their height, their pitch surface, and how often they play per week. We use those answers to match them to a bat that fits — not just today but for three seasons. Then we knock it in ourselves, for free, before it leaves.
If something goes wrong mid-season — a surface crack, a pad strap gone, a helmet that took a hit — message us. We don't just sell kit; we help you figure out what to repair, what to replace, and what can wait. We've had customers send us photos of a cracked bat edge via WhatsApp asking whether it's repairable. Often it is, and we tell them exactly how. Sometimes it isn't, and we tell them that too.
Cricket is our flagship — bats, pads, gloves, helmets, shoes, balls. Football is our newer offering. Either way, the shop runs on the same principle: fewer items on the shelf, more honesty in the chat, and real people on the other end who have used this gear themselves.