SAMPLE EDITION AUTUMN31 2020 THE NightwatchmanTHE WISDEN CRICKET QUARTERLY SAMPLER THE NIGHTWATCHMAN THE NightwatchmanTHE WISDEN CRICKET QUARTERLY ISSUE 31 – AUTUMN 2020 introduces issue 31 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 Matt Cleary hero-worships Dennis Lillee is available in print and e-book formats. Rod Edmond remembers a legend of the scorebook 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 Harry Pearson on a debate that divided his family 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 Francis Neate reflects on a game that glued generations together of cramming heart and soul into a few paragraphs. Simon Barnes sees agony in village cricket’s comedies 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. Tom Jeffreys reveals cricket’s place in modern art If you don’t have enough room on your book case, you can always take out a digital-only tunes in to Desert Island Discs subscription. Or if you’d just like to buy a single issue – in print, digital or both – you can Peter Hoare do that too. Take a look at the options below and decide which is best for you. Garry White on Percy Chapman, a man out of time Julian Baggini doesn’t think cricket’s virtues are quite so obvious AUTUMN31 2020 SPRING5 2014 SPRING5 2014SPRING5 2014 Snehal Pradhan charts the rise of female officials in India 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 Pandemic pictures – cricket in the time of Covid subscription (with subscription free e-book versions) £15 David Owen transports us to the Windy City in the 1980s £29.95 (+P&P) Click to Buy Click to Buy Mike Phillips wonders about the place of fast-bowling-induced fear Luke Alfred takes us back to the County Championship of 40 years ago Santokie Nagulendran tells the story of India’s indentured labourers in the Caribbean Richard Hobson re-opens a family heirloom AUTUMN31 2020 AUTUMN27 2019 Mike Jakeman chats to Rob Moody about his staggering library of cricket footage Digital single copy THE Single copy THE WISDEN CRICKET QUARTERLY NightwatchmanTHE WISDEN CRICKET QUARTERLY Kevin Owens relates how he fell in love with cricket all over again Single issue Single issue (with (e-book only) free with free Brian Carpenter has been holding the radio close to his ear throughout his life £4 e-book version) £10 (+P&P) Click to Buy Stephen Gregory reminisces about cricket in Brunei Click to Buy Liam Herringshaw tells the surprising story of Shiv, the limbless amphibian THENIGHTWATCHMAN.NET 2 SAMPLER THE NIGHTWATCHMAN A PHIB CALLED SHIV Liam Herringshaw on limbless amphibians, jumping spiders and David Gower What do you need to do to achieve The Swedish city of Uppsala has a cricketing immortality? Run out the cricket team but they’re yet to make Australian captain as a substitute their mark on the world stage. For fielder at Trent Bridge? Win Player of that, you’d better turn to Uppsalan the Tournament at a victorious home natives Ingmar Bergman, who peered World Cup? Score 6,996 Test runs at through a glass darkly, or Anders an average of 99.94? Celsius, who did it more warmly. Or to Carl Linnaeus, founder of the binomial It’s not really a question of immortality, system of biological classification; the of course, but longevity. Even the most man who gave two-part Latin names famous players of their era will last to natural things. only so long in the public memory. Ask a person on the street to name a 19th- Linnaeus was an exceptional botanist, century cricketer other than WG Grace medic and zoologist who scrutinised and they’ll be stumped. You might an astonishing number of organisms to as well request their favourite South group them into species, genera, families, American amphibian. orders and kingdoms. He distilled an unwieldy and confusing 18th-century There is another route to securing your system of Latin descriptions into a pithy place in the annals of remembrance, taxonomy: a one-word Latin species though, and it’s one that very few attached to a one-word Latin genus. cricketers have pursued – or been offered the chance to pursue. And His status as the type specimen of being biological, internationally Homo sapiens is contentious, not standardised, and officially recorded, it least because he classified “varieties” is certainly long-term. of humans according to their skin colour, geography and perceived • • • characteristics. Nonetheless, Linnaeus’s THENIGHTWATCHMAN.NET THENIGHTWATCHMAN.NET 4 5 SAMPLER THE NIGHTWATCHMAN Systema Naturae still pervades our “Quite a lot of my overseas research highest-scoring batsman. We knew footwork, Marengo sachintendulkar approach to classifying life on Earth has been in India and Sri Lanka,” his nickname and liked the sound of is an Indian jumping spider found in more than 260 years after the crucial says David Gower, merit researcher Rhinatrema shiv. We suggested the Gujarat, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. It was tenth edition was published. in herpetology at London’s Natural name to our other colleagues and discovered in 2015 by arachnologist History Museum, “and my name causes they agreed.” Dhruv Prajapati of the Gujarat Today, if you think you’ve discovered more of a stir there than in the UK. I Ecological Education and Research a new species – be it of plant, fossil, play friendly cricket for Strongroom Thus a cricketing amphibian entered Foundation in Gandhinagar. gryllid (true crickets) or nyctophilid CC in London and I have managed to the (Linnean) world in 2010, in (a genus of Australian cricket-eating tag on some science during our tours the journal Zootaxa. Its diagnostic “My research interest is in jumping bats) – you can name it, Linnaeus- to Sri Lanka and Nepal. characteristics are: a longer tail than spiders,” Prajapati says, “so in the field style, but there are rules you have to other species of Rhinatrema, a shorter I am actively searching for them. In the obey. The tentacles of the ICC hold “I have an Indian colleague, Indraneil, head, a different colour pattern and case of M. sachintendulkar, two of my no sway here. The ICs you need to who is also a cricket nut. We had distinctive teeth. When his cricket- colleagues got the same species from concern yourself with are the ICN spoken before about naming species loving brother found an email address two other states.” and ICZN: the International Code of after cricketers and I hoped that for Chanderpaul’s agent, Gower Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and naming this species would prompt sent him a copy of the paper. They Their discoveries came two years plants, and the International Code of him to respond, but he hasn’t yet met received a reply saying that Shiv was after Prajapati’s, and together they Zoological Nomenclature. that challenge.” “delighted and honoured and had confirmed the spider to be a new always liked nature”. species in need of a new name. To pass their scrutiny you must provide The species Gower is referring to a full description of your candidate’s is a Guyanese caecilian: a limbless, That might have been sufficient, but in “I am a big fan of Tendulkar,” adds distinguishing features (diagnosis); burrowing, tropical amphibian. 2018 Gower was contacted by Christine Prajapati, “so I always wanted to name define a typifying specimen against Just over a decade ago Gower was Carrington, orator of the University of a species after him. It doesn’t really which all others can be compared working on some specimens of the the West Indies at St Augustine, Trinidad have any similar characteristics to (holotype); ensure your description genus Rhinatrema (“nose without and Tobago. “They were about to award Sachin Tendulkar, but as a jumping and data are accessible, peer-reviewed holes”), collected in Guyana by some Chanderpaul an honorary degree spider perhaps it shares the behaviour and archived (publication); and give colleagues who realised they were and wanted to know whether there of Jonty Rhodes!” it a binomial that is “appropriate, so distinctive that they probably was anything about the animal that compact, euphonious, memorable, and represented a species previously reflected his abilities. All I could come • • • do[es] not cause offence”. unknown to science. up with was that, because Rhinatrema shiv is a burrowing amphibian, it was They may be the only living cricketer- No matter how inoffensive you may “I generally prefer names that say probably good at digging in. Christine species, but Rhinatrema shiv and be, you mustn’t name a species after something about the appearance of seemed to like that, so I hope they used Marengo sachintendulkar do have fossil yourself. People have done, but it’s the species or where it comes from,” it in the speech!” company. In early 2011 Dan Mantle and just not cricket. You can, however, says Gower. “However, I was not Jim Riding were working in Canberra, honour someone else, and Canadian familiar with this animal in life, or its Gower himself has a species of snake describing some new Jurassic marine biologist Stephen B Heard’s recent exact habitat, so this allowed my mind named in his honour – Rhinophis plankton from rocks beneath the North book Charles Darwin’s Barnacle and to wander more than usual.