These bats have outstripped inflation by thousands. What are you paying $2300 for and why is it so much?

"I get it genuinely within a millimetre for him," the Kookaburra bat maker said. "He is the most nuffy about his bats."

So, what would the average club cricketer - who spends his Saturdays in the summer heat playing fourth grade - be forking out for a bat which wouldn't look out of place in the Australian Test batter's kit bag?

How does $2275 sound? Because top-of-the-range cricket bats from a range of brands are now soaring beyond the $2000 mark with ease, with some brands commanding as much as $2299 for top-line willow.

But why are prices outstripping inflation? A top-end Kookaburra Ridgeback would cost $250 in 1990. Six years later, the Bubble was worth $399. By 2011, the Kahuna made famous by Ricky Ponting would command $700. Top-of-the-line bats were consistently clearing the four-figure mark in 2017.

So what's changed to send bat nuffies broke and having to fork out close to $2000 for the same bat that Travis Head used to destroy England in the opening Test of the Ashes?

"The biggest obvious change is Twenty20 cricket, and the growth of the middle class in the subcontinent. We buy a fair amount of product from India, and the Indian market has completely exploded," Dinger said.

"It's a simple supply and demand kind of relationship. You can't speed up the growth of trees. A lot more willow is in demand than what we're able to supply, and that's simply why the prices have gone up so significantly."

Just about everything is different these days. The cost is just one aspect, but the shape, the size, the weight, the feel and the look have transformed dramatically over decades.

Because in 2017, bat dimensions were restricted after the edges of the Gray-Nicolls "Kaboom" used by David Warner ballooned out to 55 millimetres with an 85mm spine. Bats are now limited to 40mm edges and 67mm depth. The width of the blade is limited to 108mm, and the length cannot exceed 965mm.

Head, the only batter to fire in the Ashes series opener last week, uses a Grey Nicolls Nova 3.0. It retails for $1999.99 and features a "mid profile with an even bow and a rounded face, as well as large edges and a light pickup." It weighs just under 1.2 kilograms.

Glenn Maxwell - Australia's ultimate clubber in the shorter formats - uses a Kookaburra Beast. It has a "full profile, low sweet spot and large edges." It comes in at $2149.99 and is just over 1.2 kilograms.

The modern-day bats dwarf those used in almost every era from Don Bradman to David Boon - they look and feel different because of the way they are made.

Vinesh Bennett is a builder by trade.

He initially started a side hustle to help mates repair bats. Before long, he was making them, shaping them, rebalancing them - and now he has his own workshop in Canberra's south.

Head to any ground in Canberra on a Saturday and you're bound to find a Southern Cross Cricket bat. Bennett figures his brand might be serving about 50 per cent of the city's cricketers.

Flick on the TV and you might see some more. Maddie Penna, Daniel Sams, Benji Floros, Blake Macdonald, Grace Lyons and Naomi Stalenberg are among the growing list of about 40 professionals on SCC's books.

Which means Bennett understands the demand for English willow as well as anyone.

"For every tree they mill, they put another 20 in the ground," Bennett said. "Out of that 20, maybe 10 will survive. Out of that 10, you might get six or seven grown in really good conditions."

And just how many bats are you getting out of those trees?

"It's funny, I have thought about this a few times. With someone like Marnus, say he gets 10 or 12 bats a year, that's maybe a third of a tree, and that tree has taken 15 years to grow and to mature until it can be cut down," Dinger said.

"In fairness, guys like Marnus, it's their job right? He hits balls every day, he wears his bats out, it's their career. There are guys playing cricket 12 months of the year in franchise cricket, they're just using more bats.

"You can't speed up the growth of a tree. I think that's a small part of where the imbalance is coming from as well. More bats are being used because there are more professional players across the world, and we can't speed up the speed at which the tree grows. It's a natural product.

"You asked the question earlier, 'how long does a cricket bat take to make?' I said 'about two to three hours.' In reality, it's about 15 years and three hours. There are so many parts to the process, relying on nature to grow the tree for 15 years without anything happening to it. There is a lot that goes into it."

But you can hear parents wondering what they're actually paying for when their kid wants to have the exact same bat as Steve Smith or Head. So what separates a high-end grade one bat from a cheaper grade four?

"Most of the time it's how it looks, but also the purity of the timber, the performance of the timber, and how it has grown," Bennett said.

"English willow is grown in the best conditions and that's the hardest timber to actually source. It's more about the rarity of it. That's the main thing, the purity of the timber and also the performance is probably what dictates and drives pricing, but also, marketing."

Cosmetics is the major differentiator between one grade and another. Generally speaking, the cleaner the piece of willow, the better the performance.

If you start at the low end of the English willow scale, you'll find bat faces covered by paint or a printed grain sheet. Beneath, you will find knots or discolouration, which can impact performance.

As you move up the grades, the willow is whiter and the number of imperfections decreases. Some might remain, but they won't be in an area which impacts performance.

"That's basically how the grading works for us. It's cosmetics. Weight and density have become part of it now because players want the biggest bat possible and at the lightest weight," Dinger said.

"In order to do that, we need to choose the lightest piece of willow. It's constantly pushing bat makers to evolve and find ways to shave weight and improve shape."

So, the higher the grade, the better I'll play, right? Not quite.

"How different are they in performance? That can vary. You can get really good performing cheap bats at times, it does happen," Dinger said.

"It's just about the consistency in that top end, you don't really get too many bad ones, whereas down the bottom end, there's probably a higher percentage of bats that don't perform at a higher level.

"Having said that, I do think, as an industry, it is a little bit too dictated by cosmetics. It would be good if there was a little bit of a change in mentality towards how a bat looks.

"At the end of the day, what really matters is getting the bat in the right spot at the right time. It doesn't matter if you've got 11 grains or five grains.

"That's a bit of a high horse I like to get on, because I think sometimes we're too dictated by grains. Grading is important ... but I don't think it's the be all and end all."

If English willow is so hard to come by, can't bat makers just use something else?

Research out of Cambridge University in 2021 suggested bamboo could be a cheaper, more sustainable answer. But lawmakers at the MCC turned to Law 5.3.2, which declares "the blade shall consist solely of wood." Bamboo is a grass.

Serbian willow has emerged as an option to produce bigger bats at lighter weights. The problem? They are softer, and more prone to breaking.

"A lot of us are cricketers - I still play - so I want people to be able to play the game as well," Dinger said.

"When we think about it here, we try to add some context as to why [prices] are the way they are now. Alternative woods are probably the future, but again, nature hasn't allowed us to find anything at this point in time that has the same performance, weight and durability as English willow, so that's why it's such a unique material."