A FORMER MELBOURNE ACCOUNTANT IS CARVING OUT A NICHE CRAFTING QUALITY, HAND MADE CRICKET BATS IN SOUTH GIPPSLAND.
BAT MAN RISES Words: Chris West
During the Christmas period in 2015, Andrew O’Hoy sat down to watch a lifestyle program on television. As he settled in to viewing the show, his interest was stirred by a story on the Cricket Willow establishment in Shepherds Flat near Daylesford in Central Victoria, a venue which includes a workshop, gallery, museum and other facilities devoted to the traditional art of cricket bat making. The program sent Andrew’s mind on a trip down memory lane all the way back to his youth, as he recalled how he took to making miniature cricket bats in the garage of his family’s home in the bayside Melbourne suburb of Highett.
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“This was back in the late 70s and early 80s and I would try to replicate the popular bat styles of the time like the SS Jumbo and Gray Nicholls Scoop,” he remembers.
for Moorabbin Park Cricket Club in his early twenties. He got involved with indoor cricket for several years and also played basketball and golf regularly for a period while studying at university.
“Dad only had the basic tools in the garage and I would use a flat piece of timber which I would file and shape. I also made tiny bats out of solder to wear as jewellery. It was something that interested me as a kid and, looking back now, if I hadn’t chosen to go down the accounting path I would have done some sort of trade as a career.”
“But work became the priority as my accounting career took off. During the 90s I got to travel to Asia quite a lot on business,” he says.
Andrew was sports mad in his younger years, but his life changed as work gradually took over. He gave up football and also stopped playing cricket
Along the way, Andrew married his wife Sally and worked hard to secure their future financially. But towards the end of 2015, he felt it was time for a new challenge. “At the age of fifty one I thought maybe I needed a change but didn’t know what I wanted to do.