On Bats and Batting

Guests:  Gideon Haigh, Mark Ramprakash and B3 bat-maker Michael Blatherwick

The symbiotic relationship between batter and bat is perhaps not surprising – in a team game, the batter stands alone, and the bat is all they have to hold on to. We’ll investigate how its simple shape, unchanged for a hundred years, has become objectified, turned into epic pieces of wood that are designed, built and marketed to make you feel that you can hit the bowler onto the stadium roof – or in the case of us club players, into the nearby pub car park at least. 

Jon talks to Mark Ramprakash, one of only 25 players in the history of the game to make a hundred hundreds in first class cricket , about the secret to making a century... He also chats to master bat-maker Michael Blatherwick and to Gideon Haigh, the pre-eminent writer but also keen amateur player of the game.

The Nightwatchman Podcast

Written and hosted by Jon Hotten

Produced and edited by James Wallace

Sponsored by Rathbones