The Nightwatchman
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SAMPLE EDITION WINTER28 2019 THE NightwatchmanTHE WISDEN CRICKET QUARTERLY SAMPLER THE NIGHTWATCHMAN THE NightwatchmanTHE WISDEN CRICKET QUARTERLY ISSUE 28 – WINTER 2019 introduces issue 28 of the Nightwatchman Cricket’s past has been enriched by great writing and Wisden is making sure its future Matt Thacker will be too. The Nightwatchman is a quarterly collection of essays and long-form articles and Will Fiennes on the art and craft of being a wicket-keeper is available in print and e-book formats. Rod Edmond has a dispiriting Windrush tale to tell Co-edited by Anjali Doshi and Tanya Aldred, with Matt Thacker as managing editor, The Nightwatchman features an array of authors from around the world, writing beautifully and Tasneem-Summer Khan discusses the wider implications of the Alex Hepburn case at length about the game and its myriad offshoots. Contributors are given free rein over subject matter and length, escaping the pressures of next-day deadlines and the despair Anthony McGowan wonders whether to walk of cramming heart and soul into a few paragraphs. Marcus Berkmann conducts a freeloading experiment There are several different ways to get hold of and enjoy The Nightwatchman. You can subscribe to the print version and get a free digital copy for when you’re travelling light. Nicholas Brookes discovers how Sri Lanka found its cricketing feet If you don’t have enough room on your book case, you can always take out a digital-only is disturbed at how Hansie Cronje is still greatly admired subscription. Or if you’d just like to buy a single issue – in print, digital or both – you can David Wilson do that too. Take a look at the options below and decide which is best for you. Megan Ponsford uncovers details of a 1930s Australia tour to India James Wallace has measured his life in bats WINTER28 2019 SPRING5 2014 SPRING5 2014SPRING5 2014 Justin Paul laments the passing of Lancaster Park, Christchurch Full subscription Digital subscription NightwatchmanNightwatchmanNightwatchman THE WISDENTHE WISDEN CRICKET CRICKET QUARTERLY QUARTERLY Annual e-book only THE WISDEN CRICKETTHE QUARTERLY WISDEN CRICKET QUARTERLY Annual print Nightwatchman Dan Gallan spent his formative years at the Wanderers subscription (with subscription free e-book versions) £15 Jon Harvey is beguiled all over again by Brian Lara Cricket £29.95 (+P&P) Click to Buy Click to Buy Tim Wigmore and Freddie Wilde are in awe of Chris Gayle’s T20 career Emaad Akhtar reports on how two New York youngsters became cricket converts Oscar Ratcliffe on the two Headingley miracles, 38 years apart Steve Tancock laments another nearly year for his beloved Somerset AUTUMN27 2019 SM Hussain interviewed Abdul Qadir before the great spinner’s untimely death Digital single copy Single copy NightwatchmanTHE WISDEN CRICKET QUARTERLY Tatenda Taibu tells us what cricket in Zimbabwe is really like Single issue Single issue (with (e-book only) free with free Zaffar Kunial was poet-in-residence at the Oval Test £4 e-book version) £10 (+P&P) Click to Buy Click to Buy THENIGHTWATCHMAN.NET SAMPLER THE NIGHTWATCHMAN KEEPING William Fiennes recalls some dreamy bye-less afternoons My father had been a wicket-keeper, the plastic finger guards like burly widely admired, playing at Lord’s aged thimbles, the pimpled catching surface 18 in the summer of 1939, maybe good worn smooth and shiny. The chamois enough for a county trial if war hadn’t inner gloves were hard and creased barged in, and it was still in his bone when you first put them on but would and muscle memory in his eighties melt and soften with sweat from your and nineties, throwing an apple up and hands so that after a short sequence of catching it and nudging the bails off, or catches the paraphernalia of inner and just miming a take to one side of the outer gloves seemed to meld with your body, his fingers and palms opening own body and be forgotten. I don’t into a bowl or cradle, a little give with remember any coaching, it was more the elbows as the ball invisibly landed, a matter of imitation, mimicking the not “caught” so much as greeted and squats and nimble sidestep dances of received, the evidence there when he Bob Taylor and Jeff Dujon, relishing not held his hands up and you could see just their diving one-handed catches the fingers all crooked where balls had but the lovely soundless grace of the crocked the joints, corroborated too task done right, understanding from when old friends of his encountered Dad that the point was to go beneath with Rover tickets in the Warner or notice, taking each catch so cleanly Allen stands would look down at me the ball made no sound in the gloves, and remember not just my father’s the good wicket-keeper dissolving into batting but his keeping too: “A very each passage of play with Zen-like good wicket-keeper, your father...” self-effacement. That was my father’s ideal, increasingly remote in an era So when at school they asked for a when keepers were expected to lead volunteer, I raised my hand. The gloves the psychological attack, being right in the communal kitbags were huge, under the batsman’s nose and eyes, cumbersome gauntlets, sweat-soaked mouth in his ears, lips almost brushing leather hardened in the off-season, the stump mic, expected to chirp and THENIGHTWATCHMAN.NET SAMPLER THE NIGHTWATCHMAN heckle like Healy, Boucher, Prior, Nixon, you and the batsman waited together eyes – and dream of just one more without standing up to the stumps, Wade, even the ineffably dignified in squat and stance. before it’s over. at home midway between wicket and Kumar Sangakkara haranguing Shaun boundary while Marshall, Holding, Pollock with some entry-level psy- Baseball has a catcher, cricket has a Aged 12 I got Gordon’s Gin’s Garner and Croft took turns stretching ops in the 2003 World Cup: “Lots of keeper: you keep wicket, like a diary or Wicketkeepers of the World by him like a goalie to posts, top corners pressure for the skipper now, yeah? a secret, the verb rich with suggestions Godfrey Evans for Christmas, and and crossbar – and Farokh Engineer, Gonna let his whole country down if he of ownership and intimacy. The keeper the author’s Dickensian white who could go a whole day anchored fails! Oh man, the weight of all these standing up to slow or medium-paced muttonchops and ritual siesta in the to the stumps by the spin quartet of expectations, fellas! The weight of bowling is eye-level with the bails’ lunch interval seemed part of a strain of Bedi, Prasanna, Chandrasekhar and the country, chaps! Forty-two million rolled beads and spigots, breathes eccentricity running through English Venkataraghavan. Hard to imagine supporters right here!” woody stump varnish, knows each keepers, via Alan Knott who warmed a book like that now, in the post- agricultural miniscape of grooving his hands in hot water before taking Gilchrist era, when keepers earn their And not just the relentless dreary and abrasion made by bat toes and the field and reinforced his chamois place as much for their batting as their chiselling at the batsman’s sporting dragged studs across the batting inners with strips of plasticine, and glovework, and when keeping is more an and sexual self-esteem – now the crease – the guards, guidelines and Jack Russell who drove between interchangeable athletic discipline than keeper had to be chief of geeing- small August dust bowls. The idea games wearing a specially-adapted an art for which you might have natural up and morale-boosting too, as if was to stay low and rise with the ball, sleeping bag to keep his back and gift and style. Admirable sportsmen, of he were the afternoon’s host and weight in the balls of your feet, thigh legs warm, and reportedly used the course, but who’s talking about “art” compère, calling everyone “buddy” muscles driving out of the squat to same tea bag through all five days of or “style” in the keeping of Ramdin, and filling the pauses – “Good areas, spring to left or right. I liked the athletic an Oval Test against Australia, which Karthik, Pant, Watling, Bairstow, Wade, Frankie!” – like a radio DJ scared of possibilities of standing back to quick Derek Randall estimated amounted Paine? The speed of Dhoni’s hands in dead air. Of course no one’s better bowlers – at university I took one off to a hundred cups. Dad liked Russell a stumping off Harbhajan is objectively placed to jab the needle, but even the inside edge, a fast Neil Coulson especially for his “tidiness”, and I’d astonishing, but there’s a stiff, machine Paul Nixon must have felt something out-swinger that first had me moving absorbed the idea that this was the efficiency to the transaction that leaves more complicated than enmity for slipwards before a drive scrambled highest accolade available for keepers, me cold. Give me Sarah Taylor standing the batsman standing just across the the trajectories and I dived full-length whose mistakes – a drop, a bye, a up to Nat Sciver or Anya Shrubsole, line. You’re so close to the batsman’s down the leg side, the ball landing snug fumbled stumping chance – could moving to leg as Ellyse Perry or Trisha talents and shortcomings it’s hard not in my left glove, just off the ground. loom so unfairly over hours of quiet, Chetty or Suné Luus shape for a glance to feel solidarity as well as opposition, And how about that flier off the unnoticed competence.