' Cricket Bats in the making '
R. WOODROOFFE
Perhaps even many enthusiastic cricketers do not know that it takes something like eighteen years from seedling to factory to make a bat; or that North-West Borneo and East Anglia equally contribute to a good one. It is a phrase of our language to wield the willow, but even Hobbs could not do it without handling the cane.
This evening R. Woodrooffe , who once played cricket for the Navy and gave two cricket talks last year, ' Cricket in the Seven Seas ' and ' The Navy at Play ', is to take listeners in imagination to the ground where the willow grows, and round the factory where the bat is made.
Listeners will hear of ' bat willow ' or ' close-barked willow of ' rolls of timber arriving in the yard. They will be able to visualise the whole process. The logs riven into clefts ; the chopped blades left to season for a couple of years. Then the benches and craftsmen with sharp knives. The bat shaping, the artist who is making it continually unclamping it to get a feel of the bat'.
A grey piece of wood came in from the drying shed, a white, gleaming blade is passed out to the presser. He receives it as soft as putty and passes it on as hard as old wood. Through every process listeners will be taken-the making of the handle, the wonderful artistry in the joinery. The glueing and final shaping and polishing until at last all is finished.
And they will hear what purpose is served by reindeer bone,. why only willow can be used for a blade, and the reason of that little hole at the bottom of every bat.