WERE they marketeers or musketeers in the Riverside media centre on Tuesday? Chiefly the former, but with a dash of the latter as they were there for the launch of a new rapier blade.

The first appearance of the Mongoose bat could hardly have gone better for the marketing people. Despite using it in trials, Stuart Law could not have been expected to use it from the start of his innings, but having got his eye firmly in he was able to send for it with two of Derbyshire’s overs left and a good total already on the board.

After scoring three fairly unconvincing singles, Law was obligingly served a leg-stump full toss by Mitch Claydon and launched it via the stratosphere over the mid-wicket boundary.

The marketing men were rapturous, especially as Law claimed afterwards that the shot would not have carried for six with a conventional bat.

The bat has been designed especially for Twenty20. The blade is 33 per cent shorter and its handle 43 per cent longer than usual. The splice is incorporated into the handle so there is no dead spot in the hitting area.

Tests at Imperial College have shown that the bat offers 20 per cent more power and 15 per cent more bat speed.

The Mongoose company’s chief executive, Dan Bradshaw, said: “Having the splice in the handle gives it a lot more flex. It whips through like a golf driver. Stuart had used it in trials and said it does exactly what it says on the tin.”

The bat was the brainchild of Marcus Codrington Fernandez, an England Schools captain in the 1980s who has worked in marketing.

Bradshaw said: “It was while recovering from illness that he asked himself why Twenty20 cricket had taken the world by storm, but the bat design hadn’t changed in 200 years.

“We expected some opposition from the MCC, but they couldn’t have been more supportive. The bat comes completely within the laws in terms of dimensions and is made from grade one English willow.”

The claim that it is the most radical change to cricket bat design since 1771 barely holds water, given that there has been a bat with holes, and one made of aluminium. But the Mongoose probably has a greater chance of success.