The rain is lashing down on a cold January day in Robertsbridge. Flood defences man the banks of the tributaries of the River Rother as they weave through the village, a legacy of the burstings of 2000 that bedevilled this quiet corner of East Sussex and many others like it. Strolling along Station Road down from the railway line, huddled beneath a frankly inadequate umbrella and splashed by the morning traffic, a faint whiff of wood draws me into the cricketing cornucopia I have come to find.
It is the cricket bat, in many ways, that is Robertsbridge’s claim to fame. For 150 years, master craftsmen have been whittling away on pieces of willow in the village, a long lineage stretching back to LJ Nicolls in the late 19th century. “Dear Sir,” WG Grace once wrote to the bat-maker in a letter dated 1894. “I used one of your bats at Hastings in 1894 and scored 131. I may mention that it was perfectly new. I kept it until this year and have scored 2,000 runs with it. I used it when I made my 100th century and scored 1,000 runs in May with it. So I think I may call it my record bat.” Well, if it was good enough for WG…
