Any bats for sale in Malabo?

When you leave the airport in Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea, they x-ray your bags and then conduct a physical search. The woman in front of me, who was short, slight and, I think, French, was carrying what appeared to be a hard plastic guitar case. When she opened it, though, she revealed a set of about a dozen arrows, as well as a bow. The customs official was nonplussed.

"What are they?" he asked in Spanish.

"Arrows," she said, although that was perfectly obvious.

"What for?"

"For practising sport."

I've no idea why she'd come to Equatorial Guinea to practise archery, because at that moment another official opened my bag. I was a little worried, less because of the books he spent an eternity flicking through than because I had three cricket balls in there. Realistically a cricket ball, while obviously less threatening than an arrow, doesn't look much like something you'd play sport with.

I was reminded of two events, 128 years apart. In August 2014, West Indies batsman Lendl Simmons had his bat drilled by US customs officers apparently checking for hidden drugs. And in 1886, William Waters, who later became a successful importer-exporter of sporting goods, was stopped by customs officials in Buenos Aires and asked to explain his large bag of deflated footballs.

Waters was bringing them with him to take up a position as a sports teacher at the English High School, run by Alexander Watson Hutton, generally recognised as the father of Argentinian football (his son Arnoldo became a successful football international and also kept wicket for Argentina in their famous victory over the MCC tourists in 1912). The officials initially thought they were wineskins or leather caps; eventually they were noted down as "items for the crazy English".

As it turned out, in Malabo the official ignored the balls entirely but the momentary spasm of panic did make me consider the wisdom of bringing them at all. I was certainly glad I'd decided against bringing my bat, which, frankly, I couldn't afford to replace. The balls, though, were the logical next stage in a process that began during a game at Battersea Park last year when I felt so out of my depth I considered giving up cricket altogether. I resolved then that I'd spend the winter going to coaching and getting properly fit and see if that made any difference. (I also stopped wearing a cap while batting, something that sent my average soaring by a factor of seven.)

I've been going to coaching sessions once a week and I've started weight-training, rather than just running. Although I'll only really know how effective that has been when the season starts in April, I've dropped two holes on my belt and at least identified a couple of technical flaws in my batting. Everything seemed to be going perfectly until an occasional team-mate of mine decided to invite a load of us to his wedding in Mumbai. A tour was hastily arranged and so suddenly I'm flying off to India three days after I get back from four weeks in Equatorial Guinea covering the Cup of Nations.

Tournaments are never good for the waistline, and the Cup of Nations perhaps worse than most, thanks to the double headers that make it almost impossible to eat properly. Essentially you exist on whatever you can smuggle into the grounds (I'm writing this on the day of the opening games; checks were cursory and six journalists each brought in a separate component of lunch and the former Observer sports editor Brian Oliver ended up making sandwiches for half the press box). But worse, there's no way for me to train. I can run, obviously, and there's a swimming pool by the stadium, but what about technical practice? After working so hard, it's deeply frustrating that I'll end up going to India having not picked up a bat for six weeks.

So I decided at least to do some bowling. It's 22 yards from the top of the D to the goal-line, so if I go out before breakfast, I can probably use the AstroTurf pitch outside the stadium in Malabo to work on my bowling (and, if Indian pitches live up to stereotype, there may be a call for my slow right-arm filth). Does the AstroTurf in anyway replicate the pitches of Maharashtra? Perhaps not, but then, neither do the indoor nets at The Oval, and as I keep telling the young-adult novelist Tony McGowan when he doubts I really have a topspinner, it's all about the flight (and, yes, I do have a topspinner: if I didn't, explain the ball that bowled the Vatican's No. 7 last year, fizzing on and beating his attempted pull).

And I assume the heat, at least, will prepare me for India. But it really would be handy if I could find a bat somewhere: anybody know a shop in Malabo?