What better gift for a cricketer than some new gear, presented by a famous name? Gujarat Giants’ women’s cricketer Kashvee Gautam experienced that ‘high’ a few days ago, when India’s T20 star Hardik Pandya presented the medium pacer his bat. Gautam, who was her franchise’s highest wicket-taker with 11 scalps in the last edition of the Women’s Premier League, must have been delighted when Pandya not only lived up to a promise of giving his huge fan his bat, but also shaved the willow to her preferred weight of 1100 grams.

The game of cricket is replete with examples of cricketers being gifted pieces of willow by their more accomplished counterparts. One of the more famous ones – involving Sachin Tendulkar—came to light in his brother Ajit’s 1996 book, The Making of a Cricketer. A 14-year-old Sachin was batting in the Mumbai nets in 1987-88, a season before his first-class debut, when the India captain Dilip Vengsarkar presented the future star a new Gunn & Moore bat; a brand that Vengsarkar endorsed in the 1980s. Ajit described it as a “memorable gift.”