SAMPLE EDITION SPRING5 2014 THE NightwatchmanTHE WISDEN CRICKET QUARTERLY SAMPLER THE NIGHTWATCHMAN THE TERLY THE WISDEN CRICKET QUAR Nightwatchman Issue 5, out in early March, will feature the following: Cricket’s past has been enriched by great writing and Wisden is making sure its future will be too. The Nightwatchman is a quarterly collection of essays and long-form articles and Christian Ryan wondering what happens to a shot that nobody remembers is available in print and e-book formats. Justin Parkinson on Ian Salisbury’s role as second fiddle Co-edited by Anjali Doshi and Tanya Aldred, with Matt Thacker as managing editor, The Alec Swann reflecting on sibling rivalry, or the lack of it Nightwatchman features an array of authors from around the world, writing beautifully and at length about the game and its myriad offshoots. Contributors are given free rein over Richard Heller and Khan Shehram Eusufzye on the biggest defeat of all time subject matter and length, escaping the pressures of next-day deadlines and the despair Alison Mitchell meeting Nugget, the 13th man of the Australian team of cramming heart and soul into a few paragraphs. Daisy Christodoulou finding parallels between cricket and drama 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. David Foot saluting West Country legend Seymour Clark If you don’t have enough room on your book case, you can always take out a digital-only subscription. Or if you’d just like to buy a single issue – in print, digital or both – you can Howell Lovell bemoaning the loss of the ground where he learnt to play the game do that too. Take a look at the options below and decide which is best for you. 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Litherland imagining cricket in the desert subscription (with Annual e-book only free e-book versions) subscription Mark Rowe arguing that cricket’s Golden Age does not deserve its reputation £27 (+P&P) £10 Mark Whitaker taking us back to the swinging Sixties Click to Buy Click to Buy Phil Harrison measuring his life by the sportsmen he admires Nick Allbury on the frustrations of following the winter Ashes from England Hassan Cheema giving a Pakistani take on Sachin Rob Bagchi on the book that wouldn’t sell Single copy Single issue (with Rod Edmond finding similarities between Ashes 2013–14 and a series over 50 years ago Digital single copy free with free Single issue e-book version) Training day... a photo essay on pre-season drills from an era gone by (e-book only) £9 (+P&P) Scott Oliver on a magnificent Australian slip cordon £4 Click to Buy Click to Buy On the following pages you’ll find the article by Hassan Cheema, as well as extracts from several other pieces from the Spring edition. THENIGHTWATCHMAN.NET HASSAN CHEEMA THE NIGHTWATCHMAN army officer who said a Muslim soldier was overwhelmingly popular and could was equal to ten Hindu soldiers. He never be shunned by the majority; it was, worried about how much of East and still is, a guilty pleasure. Uncles and Pakistan (now Bangladesh) was under aunties may complain all day about India’s “Hindu culture and influence”. Pakistani soft power eroding Pakistani culture, and academic Aasim Sajjad Akhtar believes yet the same uncles and aunties watch the country’s ideology “is an anti-Indian every Shah Rukh Khan film that hits the ideology. It’s a negation, rather than theatres. And so the cricket team was something that stands up on its own.” how one became Pakistani. As the world Defined by what one is not, rather than changed, the opinions shifted but never what one is. the ideologies – until 2004, when India toured Pakistan for the Friendship Series THE TENDULKAR PRISM I grew up in the 1990s, when everyone, and we were struck by the realisation barring elite Pakistanis, had access to only that those two decades of fostering Hassan Cheema on how Pakistanis viewed themselves through the failures and one source of news (beyond the dailies): hostility may have been for naught. successes of India’s greatest batsman the 9pm TV bulletin Khabarnama. Every History seemed irrelevant during that day it began with the headlines, followed 40-day tour and India’s Lakshmipathy by the latest from around the country. Ten Balaji became an ironic icon. Sachin Tendulkar’s retirement from limited- team was how Pakistanis proved they minutes in, we had the Kashmir update overs cricket in December 2012 brought were Pakistani, as the post-Zia nation – this was our war, but it wasn’t being But I digress. The Indian cricket team them out in full force. By the time he said over the last three decades went from fought by us or in our cities (unlike the of the ’90s wasn’t even worthy of our goodbye to Test cricket, nearly a year isolation, and in search of recognition, wars in the 2000s, which aren’t our wars revulsion; condescension was more later, they were tired and outnumbered, to a place the world knows about – not – supposedly – but are being fought by apt. Ayub Khan may have been wrong but clung desperately to their self-created necessarily for the right reasons. It’s no us, in our streets). Popular Urdu literature about the inequality of soldiers but the bubble. Beyond the plethora of heartfelt coincidence that at the time the rest for children at the time focused on the inequality of the cricketers was obvious. eulogies was a world – mostly confined of the cricketing firmament prostrated constant state of war Pakistan found From Javed Miandad hitting the six at to the privacy of living rooms and online before Tendulkar, a major Pakistani news themselves in – Afghanistan in the ’80s, Sharjah in 1986 until the 2003 World message boards – where Tendulkar channel ran a segment about how Javed Kashmir in the ’90s, and the whole world Cup, Pakistan’s ODI record against India wasn’t the God worshipped by a billion. Miandad, Younis Khan and Mohammad in the 2000s, if you read author Ishtiaq read 44 wins and 21 losses – this is what Here, where contrarians and trolls live, he Yousuf were each his equal. Ahmed. The only thing the children of the we saw growing up. Pakistan were just was far from the match-winner he was ’90s, regardless of class and economics, better at cricket than India – and we made out to be. Inevitably, this universe The rejection of the Hindu – and, by could agree on was that Pakistan was in assumed this had always been so. It was consisted overwhelmingly of Pakistanis. definition, of India – was how you danger and India was the enemy. through this barometer that Tendulkar For a generation of them, Tendulkar’s became Pakistani. From Pakistan’s first was judged – he was the leader of a career wasn’t just the story of arguably tour in 1952–53, when Test captain It is in this context that one has to group of wannabes and never-will-bes the greatest batsman of his era, and Abdul Hafeez Kardar took his team consider Pakistan’s view of Tendulkar. and, therefore, not a match-winner. unarguably the biggest star in modern only to “monuments and museums Omar Kureishi, the late Pakistani cricket, but the story of the prism through that reflected Muslim glories in India, journalist, once said the only two things As if to lend credence to this hypothesis, which Pakistanis saw their place in the while ignoring the rest” – as described that could unite his country were war Tendulkar didn’t exactly prove us wrong world – though they’d be loathe to admit it. in Shashi Tharoor’s Shadows Across the and cricket – incidentally the only two when India played Pakistan. Until that Playing Fields – to their acceptance of areas in which Pakistan was directly 2003 World Cup, he had scored just two It seems odd to argue that a foreign Imran Khan’s opinion that Inzamam-ul- pitted against its neighbour. For all centuries in 41 ODI innings against Pakistan sportsman could have such a far- Haq was a better player of pace than the mistrust and animosity of India – both in the space of a fortnight in 1996, reaching influence on a country’s youth, Tendulkar, this view of India as the cultivated in us, there were no avenues hence lessening their impact, and one of but the view that Pakistanis had of India other is hardly restricted to cricket. to release it. The only interaction a them in a losing cause. He averaged in – and by extension of Tendulkar – is Ayub Khan (the President of Pakistan Pakistani had then with anything Indian the mid-30s. Even more significant for the unique. Their attitude towards the Indian 1958–1969) was a Sandhurst-trained was cricket or Bollywood. The latter casual Pakistani fan was that both those THENIGHTWATCHMAN.NET 5 HASSAN CHEEMA THE NIGHTWATCHMAN hundreds came in the first innings of day England (including that overhead kick) Lest we forget, Australia played only three saw the rise of cable television, providing games, a time when viewership is much in 2012 and the English begrudgingly series against India between 1981 and a whole host of Indian channels.