Rod Grey, founder
Cricket has always been in the blood.
I played the game my whole life, coached my son's teams, and drove up and down the east coast for rep cricket. I was a signwriter by trade, but the work had stopped feeding the creative side. Making cricket bats was the way to build something of my own, in the sport I loved. This is the long version of how it happened.
The timeline
Six shops, one dream
Every business tells you it was a journey. Ours has the receipts.
The start
Cooper Cricket is founded in Townsville. A signwriter with cricket in his blood decides to build something of his own.
The son we never had
We were hoping for a third child. If we had a boy, he would have been Cooper. We did not fall pregnant, but the name stuck, and Cooper Cricket had its identity.
The wake-up call
Our three-year-old daughter was diagnosed with a brain tumour the size of a tennis ball. It was successfully removed, and she leads a bright, funny, full life. We are the lucky ones. It reminded us how short life is. When my wife asked what I really wanted to do, the answer was simple: make cricket bats.
Nobody would sell us willow
The world's biggest willow supplier flatly refused to supply a newcomer, and suggested importing ready-made bats and sticking a logo on them. That felt completely backwards. We got ripped off by overseas suppliers more than once before finding the real thing. The lesson stuck: do it properly or not at all.
Shop one
Out of the garage and into our first commercial workshop in Townsville. Scorching hot, but ours. The first CNC work began here, and we passed 100 bats a year.
The big move
Three months to relocate the family to Brisbane, for our son's cricket and our daughter's specialists. The business went into storage and everything stopped. Scary, but it was the right call.
Storage sheds and midnight repairs
A shop in Pinkenba that could not pay its way. A full-time job, with bat repairs late at night and on weekends out of a tiny storage shed, and stump wraps printed at home. People kept finding us, so we kept going.
Josh walks in
We needed two weeks of labouring help. Norths sent us a young club cricketer named Josh Brown. He was a quick learner, a hard worker and a natural on the tools, so we kept him. Soon he was running the Cooper workshop, printing stickers and repairing bats.
First Cooper in the Big Bash
Steve McGiffin debuts for the Brisbane Heat using Cooper gear. The first time our work stepped onto the big stage.
That night
Josh walks out at the Gabba in just his second Big Bash match, holding a bat he made himself in our workshop, and smashes 62. Fox Sports starts talking about the bat. Our phones melt. Orders pour in from all over Australia while the game is still going. Everything changed that night.
The team grows
Malakai joins in January and becomes a gun repairer, then an apprentice bat maker. Luke follows in October. We make more bats this year than ever before.
The record and the title
Josh hits 140 in the Challenger, with the most sixes ever struck in a Big Bash innings, then makes a fifty against the Sixers in the final as the Heat take the BBL title. The workshop has never been busier.
Northgate, Brisbane
More bats than ever, built to order for every player: the 8-year-old starting out, the 16-year-old chasing it, the club cricketer juggling work and training. Best bats, best support, best gear. That is the whole plan.
We love what we do here.
Thanks for taking an interest in the journey. If you are ever near Northgate, come and see the workshop where it all happens.