or more than 100 years they have been making cricket bats from Kashmir’s willow trees. Along the highway leading to the town of Sangam in the Indian-administered region, dozens of little workshops display neat stacks of the roughly hewn pale wood outside. Inside, the willow is painstakingly fashioned into cricket bats, which are then shipped across India and to other cricketing countries around the world.
If the government does not start afforestation of willows, over 400 bat manufacturing units will suffer huge losses However, Mehmood Shah, regional director of industries and commerce, denies there is a timber shortage and claims that the government is stepping in to plant willows.