Virginia gets some TLC

For those of you who don't know, I should say that Virginia is the name of my bat, and yesterday evening I had a close look at her and decided to do a few things to prepare her for the season ahead.

Firstly some of the stickers seemed to be a bit cracked, which surprised me since she's only done half a dozen net sessions. I thought rather than let them get progressively more tatty I'd just take them off altogether. Walking in to bat with tatty, untidy-looking bat just gives off the wrong vibe, in my view. The front and sides are now bare, giving a pleasingly old-skool look, but I left the back stickers on.

Again, surprising that she's only seen so little action and suffered so much damage, but she has developed a couple of cracks, one on the toe right at the edge, and another on the edge about half-way up. That's Kashmir willow for you. She's now been sanded down and oiled but taping up the cracks is tricky because the contours of the bat are rather unhelpful. I have put a couple of strips on but they're bound to fall off before too long.

I'm not sure if I'm going to buy a better bat just now, but if I do it's quite clear that Virginia's a bit on the chunky side, and I'm not into that sort of thing. If I do get a new one it'll be a hand-made English willow bat of probably 2 lb 7oz. After all, even that's pretty heavy by historic standards, and you only have to look at me to see I'm not likely to be a powerful batsman in the Flintoff mould.

In the meantime, Virginia's looking a little naked now and it's getting me all excited...