Mahesh Ranasube-An Artisan behind Cricket weapons

India is said to be land of cricket even though it’s not our national game. Crazy devotees of cricket who treat cricket as a religion are found in every corner of the country. Indian’s love for the sports is manifested in their love for cricket. Many people are involved with the game, some play, some by cover the matches,some stick to their TVs,some to stadiums.Then there are few people who serve the game with unique skills and never ending passion towards the game.

The young lad from Pune, Mahesh Ranasube, now shaping the weapons of various famous top level cricketers. Mahesh has now become a go-to man for revamping cricket bats. The bat-smith who now recently gave a finishing touches to the bats of run machine Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni, Manish Pandey, Shikhar Dhawan apart from Ben Stokes and Joe Root among others.

Ranasube, a club-level medium pacer and still practices at PYC Hindu Gymkhana, has tried his hand on bats ever since childhood. “I used to tape damaged bats, which later helped me repair my own bats when I started playing with leather ball,’ shared Ranasubhe. His childhood passion now emerged him as the only one professional bat repair in the city now!

Mending a bat needs some cricketing knowledge and experience to understand stroke, balance and weight. Revamping a bat changes based on these and preferences of individual. Mahesh didn’t get any professional training for this. He expertise himself from learning and doing this passionately. He perfected the art starting with plain wood to later mastering into professional bats after he started playing with the leather ball.

Started his work station at the garage of small residential building in Shukravar Peth, now has had the place on rent at FC road. What made him to get called by international players? He responded in saying “I used to work on Kedar Jadhav’s bat and he was quite happy with my work. He recommended my name to Dhoni and that’s how most of the players gave me their assignment. I’m grateful to Kedar dada”. Current Maharashtra state player Rahul Tripathi have been widely recommending Ranasube’s work to most of national and international players which helps him get more assignments. Now he’s well known to team players and they call when they need.

Before the match that was happened last time in Pune, Ranasube got an opportunity to mend 12 bats from both team India and England. His work was very much appreciated by former skipper Dhoni and at such level that he gave his four bats to mend. It includes the chiseling of handle and curved the bottoms since they had become flat. “Dhoni’s bat need a bit of extra work, while those of other players required minor touch ups here and there” said Ranasube. Virat Kohli got two bats repaired.

Bat repairing requires so much of procedure including pressing, oiling, knocking, taping and bottom shaping etc. The players were aware of that and when they asked him for charges, Mahesh was too shy to charge the Team India players and others too. But Root and Stokes couldn’t stop themselves from rewarding the fella. Root gave him his batting gloves while Stokes insisted that he accept Rs. 2000 in cash for return of his service. “I was not doing this for money, since more bat belongs to Indian players and serving them made me feel patriotic. Apart from Dhoni, Kohli and Jadhav, I also worked on Manish Pandey, Jadeja’s bat,” said Ranasube.

Since the bat making and refurbishing was his passion, he took it as full time. “We faced a huge loss and family had a massive loan to pay. It came upon me to support my family and now passion helping me get that fulfilled,” he said. A commerce graduate, now looking to take his passion to bigger level. He want make a professional bat manufacturing company. “It looks tough, but not impossible. Right now, I’ve a lot of work and I’m finding myself difficult to manage alone. I want to do this on all-India level and then eventually start manufacturing the best bats”, said Ranasube.