Off the bat

We get back on the road for another edition of the Magnificent India series with Hyundai to head to a city that is the source of high quality cricket bats for the sport’s biggest athletes globally

From narrow gullies to the biggest stadiums, cricket is quite literally everywhere in India. Undoubtedly the country’s most popular sport, cricket is one of those very rare things that have the ability to unite a billion people. But India’s contribution to the sport goes well beyond the excitement on the pitch and some of the biggest stars the sport has ever seen. For the latest instalment of the Magnificent India series, we drove down to Meerut in Uttar Pradesh for a sneak peek into the world of bats and how they’re made. And what better car to do it with than the sporty and athletic new Hyundai i20 N Line.

Around 80km to the north east of Delhi, Meerut is at the forefront of production of not just bats, but sports goods in general. The newly constructed DelhiMeerut Expressway has brought down travel time to just over an hour and half and while we did our best to start early in a bid to avoid traffic, there were still plenty of vehicles crowding the road. That, however, brought the i20 N Line’s strengths to the fore as we managed to easily snake our way through thanks to those 120 horses under the hood, the slick shifting 7-speed DCT and a brilliant handling package. Following conversations with shop owners in Meerut’s Suraj Kund market, which is the place to go if you’re looking to shop for sports goods and more so if you’ve cricket equipment in your shopping list, we were directed to an area referred to as Sports Complex. Aside from being chock-a-block with factories manufacturing everything from tennis balls, to footballs to plenty of other sports equipment, this place is also home to some of the biggest names in the world of cricket equipment including BDM.