Bats don’t deserve all this bad publicity
‘You’d like me to write about bats? I’ve not held one in earnest for years,’ I said, although I did break what I reckoned was about 24 years of cricket abstinence by opening the innings for the Lord’s Taverners in Cape Town shortly before lockdown. For the record, I was just getting the hang of it again when I dragged one back on to my stumps for 5, confirming that it is indeed a cruel game and that giving up had been the right thing. Anyway, it transpires that the topic was actually the other bats: little flying things, sometimes big flying things (I’m always amazed at the sight and size of the fruit bats, or ‘flying foxes’, in Sydney).