CHERISHED WILLOW

Taranaki Daily News, 7 March 1934, Page 12

CHERISHED WILLOW

— , —.- f BATMAKER’S LAMENT. TREE TO BE DEMOLISHED. London, Feb. 26. Used for 60 years as the home of famous batmakers, Killick’s shed, which adjoins Kennington Oval, will be demolished shortly to make way for a block of fiats. With it will go a greatly cherished bat-making willow tree. Albert Killick, the last of the family and one of the few remaining makers of bats by hand in England, helped his father Frank Killick, to make bats for the first Australian eleven and the bat with which Bonner, in 1880, hit the ball a record distance of 147 yards at Mitcham Oval, Surrey. The demolition frustrates Killick’s lifelong ambition to make a bat with his own hands from a willow planted in his own garden. It would have been ready in 1938. Killick says that cricket nowadays is too scientific. He says: “It is pat-ball, instead of hitting sixes.”