Last Saturday he scored his latest signature, of England batting great Joe Root, when his team was playing a warm-up game in Queenstown — with 12,754 runs, Root’s the fifth-highest run-scorer.
When Jackson originally acquired the bat, it had already been signed by Aussie legend Sir Donald Bradman, highest-ever run-scorer, Indian Sachin Tendulkar (15,921 runs), and eighth-highest run-scorer, West Indian Brian Lara.
He then started his passion project in 2012 when he hooked Jacques Kallis (third-highest) when South Africa was playing in Dunedin.
After that he decided his bat needed one player from each Test-playing nation who’d scored at least 10,000 runs.
He added Sri Lanka’s Kumar Sangakkara (seventh-highest) in Queenstown in 2015 and Englishman Alastair Cook (sixth-highest) in Christchurch in 2018.
Then in 2019 he captured Aussie Ricky Ponting (second-highest) when he was playing a social cricket game at Arrowtown’s Millbrook before the New Zealand Open golf tournament.
Then, thanks to The Helicopter Line’s Brad Patterson, he snared the signature of Indian Virat Kohli when he was staying in Fiordland, after the bat was choppered to him.
Kohli’s still short of 10,000 runs "but I was figuring he was going to get there", Jackson says.
He then got a Pakistani entry, Younis Khan, in Christchurch in 2021.
Jackson says there’s no way he’d have got all these signatures without the help of fellow Queenstowner Ian Paterson, who’s New Zealand Cricket’s liaison for visiting teams.
The bat’s still missing a Black Cap, but Kane Williamson, with 8881 runs, is a good chance to get to 10,000 runs, Jackson admits.
But he’s stoked to secure Root — "the fact is, he could go past Tendulkar, which is why I just had to add him".
He notes the bats’ signatories have cumulatively scored 370 centuries — "has a cricket bat ever scored 370 centuries?"
