Paras only needs to feel the bat to tell the difference. No hammer needed. Just the bat in his hand and the eye that has been looking at willow for nearly three decades. Whether or not it will ping — the speed at which the leather ball flies after hitting the bat. A few kilometres away, Jatin Sareen says, “I catch it with my eye. Day and night, this is my job. I know which will ping and which will not.” Two men, two factories — SG and SS — and one city. Meerut has been making cricket bats for years before Twenty20 cricket existed. The willow with which Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli broke world records, Virender Sehwag scored a triple hundred, VVS Laxman hit an iconic 281 at Eden Gardens and Yuvraj Singh scored six sixes. And the bats that Rohit Sharma and Suryakumar Yadav carried to the ground when India won the World Cups. They are all Made in Meerut, shaped by hands that understand a batsman’s needs sometimes before the batsman does.…