Indian Kashmir Cricket Bat Industry Faces Raw Material Shortage

BIJBEHERA, INDIAN-ADMINISTERED KASHMIR - Mohammad Shafi Dar, 55, picks up a piece of willow, called a cleft, and places it on a vertical bandsaw to cut out a V-joint from the wooden block before passing it on to one of his colleagues, Mohammad Yousuf Bhat, 45, for further modification on a mechanical planer.

Both Dar and Bhat are pod-shavers, as the people who make cricket bats are known, for Model Sports Industr