The Nightwatchman
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SAMPLE EDITION AUTUMN11 2015 THE NightwatchmanTHE WISDEN CRICKET QUARTERLY SAMPLER THE NIGHTWATCHMAN THE THE WISDEN CRICKET QUARTERLY Nightwatchman Issue 11, out now, features the following: Cricket’s past has been enriched by great writing and Wisden is making sure its future Matt Thacker introduces the 11th issue of The Nightwatchman will be too. The Nightwatchman is a quarterly collection of essays and long-form articles and Charlie Connelly on a close encounter with WG is available in print and e-book formats. Gideon Haigh wonders what to write 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 Alan Tyers on cricket’s odd mismatch with the silver screen at length about the game and its myriad offshoots. Contributors are given free rein over Benjamin Brill’s ode to Northwood and Norlands CC subject matter and length, escaping the pressures of next-day deadlines and the despair of cramming heart and soul into a few paragraphs. John Crace reveals the mysterious letters of Clyde Walcott There are several different ways to get hold of and enjoy The Nightwatchman. You can Paul Edwards remembers Francis Thompson, long ago subscribe to the print version and get a free digital copy for when you’re travelling light. If you don’t have enough room on your book case, you can always take out a digital-only Simon Barnes on the magnificent seven subscription. Or if you’d just like to buy a single issue – in print, digital or both – you can Alex Massie welcomes a new Golden Age do that too. Take a look at the options below and decide which is best for you. Robert Kitson on 42 years behind the sticks Mike Jakeman mixes with the stars Full subscription Hugh Chevallier finds a local echo to Phillip Hughes’s death Annual print Digital subscription Ashes Snaps our favourites from the vaults subscription (with Annual e-book only free e-book versions) subscription Andrew Ramsey bemoans Australian boorishness £27 (+P&P) £10 Kamran Abbasi on why leading Pakistan is the hardest job in sport Click to Buy Click to Buy James Coyne asks the ICC to do more for blind cricket Crispin Andrews on Bradford’s Brian Clough Tim Beard turns to verse Single copy Will Macpherson admires Kennington’s concrete cricket homage Single issue (with digs over Charles Powlett, the gambling priest Digital single copy free with free Jonathan Rice Single issue e-book version) Mark Whitaker on the only Test cricketer executed for murder (e-book only) £9 (+P&P) £4 Click to Buy Sam Collins on his beloved mother and Death of a Gentleman Click to Buy THENIGHTWATCHMAN.NET SAMPLER THE NIGHTWATCHMAN CHRONICLE OF A Death FORGotten Hugh Chevallier remembers Phillip Hughes in the sad tale of Ben Stroud On the face of it, there’s little to Stroud’s case the blow was witnessed link a game of village cricket with by a handful and, though there was a Sheffield Shield match. Still less if widespread grief in a small community you compare the venues: Upton Grey that keenly felt the loss of a dear son, were hosting Crookham on a pitch his death has left barely a trace. grazed by sheep, while New South Wales were playing South Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground. And • • • the connection recedes even further if you look at the dates: the village The field at the back of my north game happened in August 1933, the Hampshire garden has grown many Shield match in November 2014. crops over the years. Just now it’s potatoes. In the spring, a squadron of Yet there is a fearful symmetry to these tractors builds up wave upon wave of two encounters, a symmetry that ridge and furrow, ridge and furrow. The gives irrefutable proof of the enduring evening sun transforms the ridges into danger of cricket. Both matches were miniature mountain ranges that stretch abruptly abandoned when a player to the far distant hedge. As the days was fatally injured doing something lengthen, young plants burst from the he loved. There were differences. ridgetop and the earth turns green. By After Phillip Hughes was struck – in midsummer, the sea of leaves is white- a fixture being live-streamed on the flecked with potato flowers. The scene internet – bulletins flew around the has a beauty, and a sadness. For more globe, the cricket community could than a century, the whites would have talk of nothing else, and a nation been worn by cricketers; the flowers was consumed by sorrow. In Ben would have been daisies in the short- THENIGHTWATCHMAN.NET THENIGHTWATCHMAN.NET 5 SAMPLER THE NIGHTWATCHMAN cropped turf. And the farmworkers here commute made it harder to devote oblivion, gave a year’s notice of his in fact a previous occupant called would have been discussing tactics with time to a game of cricket, let alone intentions. Whatever the truth, as the Malcolm Hooker – apparently a slow the skipper or chatting by the rickety the preparation of a pitch. Though share bit into the turf, so a club quietly bowler of some talent – had been keen pavilion, not contractors brought in farming was not yet today’s agro- vanished, the ground destined to grow to leave his stamp on the village. The to blitz a field with as much heavy industrial monster, employment in wheat, barley, oats – and now potatoes. apostrophe, if ever one existed, had machinery as nearby RAF Odiham. the countryside was growing thinner, Bedford and Carter agree there wasn’t been mislaid before we arrived. The and the club struggled to raise a the outrage one might have expected. guilty party was unlikely to have been team from Upton Grey and the two There were other reasons the club was Hooker’s successor at Spinners. Like • • • nearest hamlets, Weston Patrick and floundering: a curmudgeonly landlord me, Jeremy Westwood was a cricket- Tunworth. More and more, numbers in The Hoddington Arms, where the lover and a publisher. Unlike me, one In 1964, the year Geoffrey Boycott were made up by friends, or friends of team repaired for tea and more, had imagines, his daughter would marry made his Test debut on a bigger stage, friends, from Fleet or Basingstoke. The made them feel unwelcome, the Robin Martin-Jenkins, the Sussex all- cricket left Upton Grey. It’s not clear heavy lifting, though, fell on an ageing pavilion-cum-shed was falling down, rounder and son of the inestimable when it arrived, though the village and diminishing band. and the sense of camaraderie wasn’t Christopher. Given that I was now on were playing Basingstoke in 1842 – and what it was. Yet if you find someone the staff at John Wisden & Co, the defeating them a year later. Odiham, By the early 1960s, the ground was who grew up in the village, there can various cricket connections suggested three miles away, trace their cricket leased to the club at the nominal still be a trace of anger. this was the right move. history to 1764, so perhaps Upton rent of a shilling a year by Jim Turner, Grey began in the 18th century too. from Manor Farm. Peter Bedford, the Over the next dozen years, a couple Like every rural club, they drew from last secretary of the UGCC, describes • • • of people, after hearing I worked those who worked on or with the land. Turner as “a straightforward man for Wisden, told me the field at the The captain might have lived in the big focused on his farming – in which Nearly 25 years ago, my wife and I back of my house had once been the house, but few of his team did. Their cricket had no role to play”. To others, moved into a tiny cottage in Tunworth, village cricket ground. No one knew days were spent in farm or forge, yard he was known as “Prairie Jim” or “Texas a mile or so from Upton Grey. I was anything of the chap who had died – or stable, garden or mill. Village cricket Turner” for his strong dislike of hedges. keen to play some village cricket, and or maybe they did and I never asked allowed landowner and landworker to asked around for a local team willing the right question. The club and the play together – and compete – on a The team’s fixtures were starting to to put up with my shortcomings. pitch had faded like a rainbow after proverbially level playing field. Except dwindle, recalls Peter Carter, another There had been a club, I was told, but a shower. Once or twice, as I gazed the downland of North Hampshire is member of the side in its last years, it had folded some while back. Before from the garden gate on a warm rarely flat, and the slope at Upton Grey and who first turned out for the club the subject took a different course, evening, the sounds peculiar to a beat Lord’s into a cocked hat. in 1947, aged 13, and later had a trial my neighbour recalled that someone game of village cricket would come for Hampshire. The start of the 1964 involved with the Upton Grey team to me. The thwack of a mistimed After the war, the influx of newcomers season was particularly slow: week had died during a game, but it was a drive; the call for another amble up picked up speed. (I would be one after week went by without any cricket, long time ago, memories were hazy the wicket; the “Ooh!” from fielders as many years later.) The new villagers though several matches – including and details hazier still.