Simpson - Willowman

Mr Wigg

Nest

Where the Trees Were

Understory

The Last Woman in the World

For children

The Book of Australian Trees (with Alicia Rogerson)

For my grandfather,
J.A.F. Simpson

Willowman is a novel, a work of fiction. It is set around the time that T20 cricket emerged at the international level: 20062009. To serve the story, however, I have taken many liberties with recent cricket history, including the timing of the Sheffield Shield, international series, and the make-up of contemporary teams. Longer cricket history, and the spirit of the game, remain intact.

The elements are crickets presiding geniuses.

N EVILLE C ARDUS

For all its apparent artificiality,
cricket is a sport in nature.

J OSEPH ON EILL , N ETHERLAND

Whoever hoped like a cricketer?

R.C. R OBERTSON -G LASGOW

Cricket has a willow heart. Batmakers around the world have crafted bats from birch, maple, ash, bamboo, even poplars but nothing else measures up. Ive tried Australian timbers, too: huon pine, red cedar, bunya. You can shape a bat, sure, and it will hit the ball, but it doesnt have the right sound, the right qualities. Despite what administrators, sponsors, broadcasters, even the players would have us believe, without the tree, thered be no game. After two hundred years, cricket batmaking is still beholden to a single species: Salix alba caerulea or white willow.

Willow grown in Kashmir that long-contested high ground is the best alternative, but the bats are heavy and yellow, good enough for some. Those who dont believe in magic.

Its no coincidence that white willow and cricket come from the same place: the south-east of England. While ever white willow has water, it grows fast . For the best cricket bat willow, you need plenty of rain. A consistent water supply means consistent growth, which produces an even grain. And even grain is more likely to produce a good cricket bat.

Now, with the twenty-first century underway, Im growing white willow here. It began as a bit of an experiment, after my year working with the willowmen in Essex. Thanks to a government grant, back when I was still young, when people thought I was someone, going somewhere.

Australian farmers and environmentalists call willows the rabbits of the rivers, clogging up our waterways just another feral colonial fuck-up. But white willows do not weep. Their trunks are tall and straight, their leaves upward-facing. They prefer fertile river flats to stream banks. Their roots run deep, travelling far and wide to feed the network of tubes pumping water up to the trees crown.

Australia might beat England more often than not these days, but the Poms still have the wood on us. Every high-grade bat in the world is made from white willow, grown in England. The top players want English willow for their bats, and for good reason. Its the best. All that rain has to be good for something.

Its frustrating, to say the least, having to import willow from the old enemy. Theyre still making us pay for that first Ashes win in 1882, and every win since. Two big companies have the market stitched up. The best clefts go to local English makers and, these days, to big buyers in India. With its exponentially expanding population and cashed-up passion for the game especially this new twenty-over version India will soon be the superpower of cricket. Im lucky enough to have a contact, from my summer with the willowmen. If it wasnt for him, I wouldnt be able to get my hands on English willow, not in such small quantities.

Thats why I started growing my own little willow republic. My grandfather, one of the last traditional batmakers back in the old country as hallowed as Lords and the Ashes themselves said it couldnt be done. Plenty of others have said it, too. But here I am all the same, growing white willow and making bats. England may have given cricket to the world, but its a world game now.

The collective noun for willows is a prayer. And reverence is warranted. Walking these rows, surrounded by uniform trunks, morning sun filtering through the canopy, the leaves shimmering silvery-blue, its as picturesque as any landscape.

Frank and I surrounded our little Gippsland grove with blue gums. You wont see that back in England. Theyre good companions, protecting the willows from the wind and shading them while they grow. But the willows have already caught up. White willows like many of us who have been transported or transplanted grow quicker in the Antipodes, as if anxious to get somewhere, prove something, or make up for a dubious start.

Most people wouldnt recognise white willows from the road. If they notice them at all, they probably assume theyre poplars. Thats just as well, given what the timber is worth. Some mornings I wake up in a sweat from a dream that someone has come in overnight and cut them all down, carted them away. So far, it hasnt happened. Touch willow.

Every single one of my trees is female, not a rooster among them. Cricket bat willow only comes from female trees. And, at sixteen years, these are just reaching maturity. Thats why Ive come, hat in hand, to bring one down to see if the timber is any good for making bats.

As with any farming, growing willow is subject to the vagaries of weather and chance. Its a fools game, like cricket itself. But cricket is more than just a game. Its a lot like life, and it all begins here.

Franks battered hat appears from behind the hill, followed by a raised arm, as if to distinguish his lanky frame from the tree trunks. In my own plantation, we fell willows in February, when theres still enough heat to get the moisture out of the timber. But this is Franks first. Hes anxious to see what weve grown, and today is the only day we managed to align our schedules ahead of summer.

Morning, Allan. His cheeks are the colour of the cool-climate shiraz hes so fond of drinking.

Frank.

This is the one, then?

I manage a nod. My guts are churning worse than on Katies first day at school. Ive taken my time picking out the tree but well have to see inside first. Shell be a good indicator for the grove. Theres no use cutting a heap down if they cant make top-quality bats.

I put on the earmuffs and fire up the chainsaw. Frank stands back, gauging the height, second-guessing whether theres room to bring the tree down inside his fence, rather than on it. Farmers always seem to think that owning land means theyre the only ones who can operate machines or manage anything practical outdoors.

In the old days, they felled willows with big cross-cut saws, two men on each end. There was none of this cutting a notch first; that would waste precious timber. They just drove a wedge in behind the saw. Even back in Essex they use chainsaws now, felling twenty-five or thirty trees a day and trucking them back to the yard. The scale of production would have Grandfather turning in his grave.

I offer my thanks, for what Im taking. Its not quite a prayer, but I ask that the timber will allow me to create good cricket bats and, maybe, even one or two that are really special.

Those remarkable bits of willow are what I live for, making the work not work, more like delivering something into the world, peeling away the layers to reveal whats already there inside, waiting. On those days, I think its what I was put on this good earth to do.