Her novel tells the story of Todd Harrow, from the Under 15s at the Landsborough oval on the Sunshine Coast, all the way to wearing the baggy green cap for Australia. So Simpson became interested in the stories of success and failure of top cricketers, some of whom were not able to fulfil their potential for varied reasons. A precocious talent, from whom Australian cricket expected big things, he died after being struck by a bouncer ball a week before his 26th birthday. When she first started thinking about writing this novel, Simpson had been inspired by the career of Phillip Hughes. When telling the stories of Allan Reader the batmaker (aka podshaver, to use the traditional term), the cricketer Todd Harrow, and his cricket-playing sister Olivia Harrow, Simpson claims she almost needed another 400 pages even when she had finished the book. ‘Then when I did further research, there were lots of parallels between shaping a cricket bat and shaping reeds for wind instruments.’ It seemed to me that oboe playing is based in nature, with both the instrument and the reed coming from timber. ‘I’m not musical at all, but I was talking to an oboist friend who was explaining how to shape the reed used when playing. That happened by accident, according to Simpson, as although she wanted the character to be a musician, she had not decided what instrument to utilise. Her batmaker character, Allan Reader, grandson of a highly respected UK batmaker, also has a back story in the novel as a talented oboist.

‘That was quite arduous as the timber is quite hard to work with.’īut Simpson has never played cricket, and with no siblings growing up, there was not even a backyard game.įittingly, the local launch of Willowman near her home on the South Coast of NSW featured a game of social cricket, with Simpson and two others as commentators. ‘This novel took about two or three years of research, reading cricket books and spending time with a batmaker, even making my own bat. ‘I love watching cricket, listening to it, reading books about cricket, as well as reading and listening to commentary,’ she said. She was researching the properties of willow, always with a strong interest in the game of cricket. Simpson had the idea for this book more than 10 years ago. Her new novel, Willowman, is centred on cricket, telling the story of a traditional batmaker, as well as the rise through the ranks of a young promising cricketer, for whom the batmaker crafts a wonderful bat.

‘It’s a lot like life, really,’ she claims. She’s aware that a lot of female writers love it too, and she wanted to explain why it is so interesting. She confesses to loving cricket ever since she was a child. It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows Inga Simpson that the topic of her latest book is cricket. The joy of handcrafting a cricket bat, and the equal pleasure from using it, are central themes of INGA SIMPSON‘s new novel, Willowman, as she tells JENNIFER SOMERVILLE

Mr wigg by inga simpson