Posted by Send your pictures of cricket bats and other cricket stuff in unusual places to king@kingcricket.co.uk. Please consider putting the cricket thing in the unusual place yourself.
Stalwart King Cricket contributor Ged Ladd writes…
Regular readers of this website will be familiar with “The Device,” a beer-carrying contraption that King Cricket and family have used at cricket matches for decades.
Such regular readers might also have seen contributions from people like me, who have spotted cricket bats adapted for device purposes – in my case adorning a bar in Sissinghurst.
In 2025 Sam made a gold standard spotting of this kind – an adapted cricket bat in use as a device at a cricket match.
Yet, there is another King Cricket theme – cricket bats in unusual places, which has been running since 2009.
I have made several contributions to that oeuvre, including, in 2024, spotting a cricket bat in a Pigbag video.
That discovery made me surprisingly happy, given my age and stage in life.
But I am now able to set a new gold standard. For I have spotted a device-adapted cricket bat, most incongruously, in a Mexican corrido music video: El Belicón by Peso Pluma.
If you are able to take your eyes and mind away from the offensive weaponry and glamour models that also adorn the video, you will see Peso Pluma wielding the device at around the 12 second mark, and the 40 second mark, and then again a few more times during the video.
I asked Google Gemini (other AI assistants are available) to explain the device with holes wielded by Peso Puma in that video. It replied, with conviction, that the device is a güiro, which is a percussion instrument much used in Central America. This plausible-sounding theory breaks down somewhat when you look at pictures of güiros, none of which look even faintly like the cricket-bat-like device being wielded by Peso Pluma.
Plausible ideas as to why Peso Pluma is wielding a cricket bat device in this music video would be much appreciated. The hive mind of King Cricket readers can surely do better than Gemini.
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This, like the also featured baseball-bat-with-nails-in, looks like it may have evolved from the macuahuitl rather than the cricket bat, or ‘device’ … or perhaps it is the other way round?
Our readers come for the sightings of Rob Key on Indian restaurant websites, but they stay for the education in Mesoamerican weaponry.
Lovely theory, Lizard. I must say that I have never seen a maccahuitl that looks like it might be turned into a device, but the Mexican rappas might have seen a device and been reminded of their Mesoamerican weaponry, as you suggest.
Daisy and I have visited Mesamerican ballcourts – here is an excellent example from Iximche in Guatemala: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ianlharris/8599724829/in/album-72157633114320841
Your comment made me imagine crowds of fans watching Mesoamerican games on those ball courts, the thirstier punters going back and forth with devices to get in several pints of pulque. I’ll carry that thought with me for all time now. Thanks – I rather like that thought.