The Government of Jammu and Kashmir’s recent engagement with the willow-based cricket-bat industry is a welcome and timely beginning. On 29th July 2026, the Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s interaction with manufacturers at Sangam, his assurance of a steady supply of quality willow, acknowledges a fundamental reality: the future of Kashmir’s cricket-bat industry cannot be separated from the future of the tree on which it depends. What is now required is a sustained, scientifically designed mission that treats willow cultivation, bat manufacturing, environmental stewardship, industrial infrastructure, research, employment and marketing as parts of a single economic ecosystem, rather than as separate problems to be handled department by department.

Willow was once inseparable from Kashmir’s landscape, lining roadsides, marking agricultural boundaries and flourishing near water bodies across the Valley. In my own village, Veeri, a popular belief connects the settlement’s name to the Kashmiri word for willow, “Veer” – an etymology open to scholarly scrutiny, but revealing of how deeply the tree was embedded in local memory and rural life. That presence has gradually diminished even as the industry built around it has grown into one of national and international standing, exporting a distinctly Kashmiri product to cricket-playing nations around the world.

Kashmir today has close to 400 cricket-bat manufacturing units, concentrated mainly in the Sangam-Awantipora belt. The sector produces an estimated 1.5 million bats a year, generates an annual turnover of nearly Rs 300 crore, and directly or indirectly sustains more than a lakh livelihoods. This is no small cottage enterprise; it is a substantial economic chain connecting farmers, willow growers, timber suppliers, artisans, manufacturers, traders and transporters. Any disruption in the availability of quality willow therefore ripples through this entire network, from the grower’s field to the export consignment.

The scale of this network means that raw-material shortages are never simply a manufacturing-floor problem. When quality willow becomes scarce or expensive, smaller units are the first to suffer, since they lack the reserves to stockpile timber or absorb rising costs, while larger manufacturers face pressure on margins that ultimately affects wages and expansion plans. A shortage today therefore shapes the industry’s competitiveness for years to come.

Why the willow is running outToday’s shortage of raw material has built up over years, driven mainly by two factors. First, many cultivators replaced willow with Russian poplar or converted their land to apple orchards, both of which offered quicker or more sustained financial returns. These were entirely rational choices for individual farmers weighing their own income, but their cumulative effect across the Valley was a steep decline in land under high-quality willow suitable for bat manufacturing.

Second, productive land, including willow-bearing land, has been steadily acquired for government institutions and industrial estates, particularly in Anantnag district after 2019. This trend must be weighed against the record of estates already established there: the Anantnag Industrial Area (1960),........

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