The lockdown cricket bat
Boredom, real boredom, struck my 10-year-old son on day four of the lockdown. By then, all books had lost their appeal, table tennis had worn thin and even screen-time was failing to keep his attention.
He needed a project. I got him to remove a couple of cupboard doors in the bathroom, sand them down and paint them. That lifted his spirits for a day.
It also put him in proximity of a pile of wood offcuts, one of which – a piece of pine 4x2 – was roughly the size of a cricket bat face.
Two summers ago, I forced my son, Arthur, to play cricket. He didn’t want to. I told him if he didn’t like it after one game, he could quit.
On the drive home after his first practice, he told me it was his new favourite sport. Better than football, better than hockey or rugby and better, even, than mountain-biking.
We’d spend hours in the nets or on a pitch bowling to each other. He bowls at a reasonable pace but soon became obsessed with legspin. Evenings spent bowling on our sloping driveway, with a makeshift net and a patch of artificial grass, saw him learn to
‘‘tweak’’ the ball sufficiently to regularly stymie his dad (who, admittedly, never was much of a cricketer).
The family iPad, once virtually a device used solely for Minecraft, was now being used to watch cricket videos. Any cricket video. I’ve found him watching matches between Zimbabwe and Afghanistan. He’ll watch decadesold footage of the Black Caps, or obscure country cricket matches.
We’d be hitting the ball around and he’ll start talking about ‘‘KP’’ (England batting great Kevin Peterson) and the little-known fact that he bowled off-spin and took three wickets in a test against South Africa, or he’ll recount Glenn Maxwell’s 74 off 33 against Pakistan in the 2012 Twenty20 World Cup. His thirst for cricket facts was boundless.
In Salvation Army shops, I found biographies on Richard Hadlee, Don Bradman, Martin Crowe and Shane Warne. I’m not sure he read any cover to cover but he’d pick away at them, and I’ve heard him quote passages deemed worthy of memorising.
Arthur’s idea of a perfect day is
Our method of construction involved Arthur giving me instructions while tossing a cricket ball in the air and regaling me with an endless stream of cricket anecdotes.
playing two games of club 20/20, followed by an hour or so in the nets with dad in the evening, then watching a live Black Caps match on telly at night.
He is not unusual. Parents of his cricket mates tell much the same stories of their sons and daughters. Cricket is one of those things. If this sport gets a hold on you, it’s very hard to shake.
Anyway, back to that piece of 4x2. He began hitting a cricket ball with it. Then he sanded it down. Then it was all he’d talk about.
‘‘When can we make a cricket bat, Dad?’’ he’d ask, or variations thereof, several times a day as I worked from home during the lockdown.
He drew lines on the bit of wood where he’d like it cut. Then he found a piece of an old rimu pole that would make a good handle.
The questions kept coming. The bits of wood were left at various places around the house. They were shown to his mum and sister, and the neighbours over the fence.
‘‘We’re making a cricket bat from these,’’ he’d say, knowing full well that they wouldn’t share his enthusiasm.
Knowing also that they’d seen his previous handmade cricket bats, cut roughly from an old weather board, and that they’d been thoroughly nonplussed.
He watched videos of cricket bats being made, the pieces of wood at his side.
I didn’t want him to get his hopes up. I told him we could have a crack but warned him we might not be able to make anything very good. ‘‘Yes we will,’’ he said. ‘‘We just need to cut it right.’’
So, between stints at my desk, we began work on the bat. Our method of construction involved Arthur giving me instructions while tossing a cricket ball in the air and regaling me with an endless stream of cricket anecdotes.
I used a handsaw to cut the rough shape of a bat, then a skilsaw to cut the ‘‘splice’’. This is the long triangular crevice in the top of the bat into which the handle is slotted. The handle I also cut with the skilsaw.
I wasn’t confident. But when the handle fitted into the bat relatively snuggly, I began to share some of Arthur’s excitement.
We found some epoxy-resin and glued the two together. We let it set for 48 hours. It will be remembered as the longest 48 hours of the lockdown.
The result was something that actually quite resembled a bat. I put screws through the handle, then we sanded the back of the bat to give it a ridge, and sanded the handle to make it thin enough to hold.
Then we set up the driveway net and wicket.
I feared it would crack into two pieces after a few shots. But it didn’t. Arthur began with a few gentle blocks, and within 10 minutes was smacking it into the fence for what, on a pitch, would likely have been boundaries.
We then turned to fine-sanding and oiling the wood.
Lo and behold, we had a halfdecent, workable cricket bat. It even makes that delightful ‘‘ping’’ sound when the ball hits its thickest part.
We’re both itching to take it down to the local pitch so we can see just how far it can hit a ball.
It will be one of the first things we do when things get back to normal. The lockdown will be remembered for many things. None are likely to outdo the making of our bat.