The Nightwatchman
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SAMPLE EDITION SUMMER14 2016 THE NightwatchmanTHE WISDEN CRICKET QUARTERLY SAMPLER THE NIGHTWATCHMAN THE THE WISDEN CRICKET QUARTERLY Nightwatchman Issue 14, out now, features the following: Matt Thacker introduces the 14th issue of The Nightwatchman 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 Lawrence Booth saves a place for the non-cricketing cricket writer is available in print and e-book formats. Simon Wilde discovers Ranjitsinhji’s secret family 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 Marcus Leroux remembers squandered lives in Portadown 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 Jonathan Rice chants a nocturnal ABC of cramming heart and soul into a few paragraphs. Dileep Premachandran on the cigarette cards that sparked a love affair 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. Daisy Christodoulou feels the romance of the dual internationals 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 Joe Wilson meets the formidable Enid Bakewell do that too. Take a look at the options below and decide which is best for you. Alan Tyers on his bedfellows – cricket and fear Ayelet Haimson Lushkov on the ancient Romans and Stuart Broad Full subscription Bob Cattell writes a thriller with a difference Annual print Digital subscription subscription (with Annual e-book only Damian Broomhead drinks pop with the World Series cricketers free e-book versions) subscription £27 (+P&P) £10 Eyes on the ball – the winners of the MCC photo contest Click to Buy Click to Buy James Holland fights for Archie Jackson – young, tragic, genius David Day writes in memory of a friend Raf Nicholson examines the female hand on the tiller Single copy Single issue (with Tim Brooks hopes for a more global game Digital single copy free with free Tim Cooke marks life through his willows Single issue e-book version) (e-book only) £9 (+P&P) Jonathan Lieu explains why 1996 was a watershed year for cricket £4 Click to Buy Click to Buy Simon Barnes on the universal thread of hopehire THENIGHTWATCHMAN.NET SAMPLER THE NIGHTWATCHMAN It used to be a tip. It was shielded on rattle of a distant Lambeg drum or one side from a dual carriageway by a the thrum of an army helicopter would narrow band of trees and shared much offer an off-beat accompaniment to of its outfield with a rugby pitch. The the periodic crack of leather on willow. single practice net was on the edge of For a few golden summers, this green where the cut grass ended and a rutted expanse was what summer was about. wasteland of long grass littered with lost balls began. It was best known as The club was a spectacular cross the home of the town’s moderately section. The captain of the first XI was successful rugby club and had been a barrister, a former head boy and built in the early 60s on ground rugby captain of the local grammar SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS reclaimed from landfill. To the east lay school. There was a reverend, a doctor. one of the town’s more affluent areas, There was also a barrel-chested loyalist Marcus Leroux on his cricketing education in Northern Ireland to the west an abandoned gasworks. whose torso bore a tattoo of a Nazi storm trooper and who had the face of Portadown generally was a town where a notorious paramilitary killer tattooed When I remember Mark Burcombe, more than intimidated. They were from a club founded few outsiders, save for journalists and on his calf. Gordie, I’ve changed his anything else, I remember a cut: the bowler by the shipbuilding family behind the Titanic. international observers, bothered to name, was considered a bit of a steaming in, first ball of the innings, unleashing They played their home games in one of venture. Around the same time, the harmless joker (though not so much a ball just outside off-stump. Burcombe, Northern Ireland’s most picturesque small Rough Guide summed it up rather of a harmless joker to prevent me from slightly shifting his hefty frame onto his back towns. bluntly: “There is little in this urban changing his name). Behind his back, it foot, sends the ball flying between frozen hinterland to attract you – and, indeed, was suggested he was a hanger-on or fielders with an almost disdainful dab of the We lost badly, despite Burcombe’s bruising Portadown’s reputation as the most wannabe among true loyalists. He was blade. innings. Two years earlier, we had beaten them vehemently bigoted Loyalist town in also terrible at cricket. On both counts, easily. They had spent the intervening period the North is in itself deterrent enough.” he was far removed from Burcombe. Have a taste of that, I remember thinking to playing better opponents, we had spent It probably felt odd to some that myself from the score hut. I was twelfth man, two years languishing in the lowest rung of cricket could ever take root somewhere Burcombe was fat, not that anybody two years younger than most of the players Northern Irish cricket (which is to say a very apparently so barren as Chambers Park ever called him that. Not even behind and nowhere near as good. The opposition low rung). – and, as the older generation would his back. In his younger years he had had come from Comber, a more genteel part remind those of us that listened, it had had curly hair in curtains with an of Northern Ireland, to Portadown, our town In microcosm, ours was the problem of Irish indeed been transplanted there after undercut, as was the fashion. The sort in the centre of the province that at that time cricket: denied a place at the top table, we the cricket club was burnt out of the of haircut you needed to be hard to in the mid-90s had a reputation for little apart were starved of the intensity of competition public park when it found itself on get away with. Later on he went for the from bigotry, violence and a decent football that metamorphoses raw talent into battle- the wrong side of a shifting sectarian skinhead-and-earring combination. His team. They had come for an under-17 20-over hardened skill. frontline in the early years of the bowling was fierce. He was too hefty game and had put on a vast total of 200-plus. Troubles. (A not uncommon fate on an for much of a run-up, but his powerful That one shot punctured the air of supercilious Their best player, Andrew White, went on to island where cricket is considered by shoulder made up for it. I remember superiority we had projected onto them, just play in the Ireland side that beat Pakistan many a garrison sport.) once I had irked him for some reason as abruptly as it punctured their infield. in the 2007 World Cup. Our best player, while batting in the nets. He put me Burcombe, went to prison and, after that, Yet to us Chambers Park was a sort of on my backside with an in-swinging That evening Burcombe, a renowned local witness protection. But that’s a story for later. oasis. We loved the place. In the long beamer that I evaded by flinging myself hardman, batted wearing a woollen hat with summer evenings, a gaggle of teenage on the ground, succeeding in keeping the insignia of the Young Citizen Volunteers, • • • boys would be clustered around the my teeth but not my dignity. But his the youth wing of the Ulster Volunteer Force, nets. Our shadows would lengthen, batting was the thing. He could pound the murderous paramilitary group. The visitors Our ground, Chambers Park, was not a swallows would swoop over the grass, the ball back over the bowler’s head, he were probably aghast and almost certainly favourite away venue for Ulster’s cricketers. midges would gather. Sometimes the could deftly run it down to third man. THENIGHTWATCHMAN.NET THENIGHTWATCHMAN.NET 5 SAMPLER THE NIGHTWATCHMAN When he played a forward defensive it It was a night out in February 2000 was the leader of this splinter group who control over him was George, the wily old looked like he had so much time that in a village near Portadown called had the honour of being tattooed on organiser of Portadown’s youth teams. he was mocking the bowler, which, in Tandragee. Portadown, though Gordie’s generously proportioned calf). George commanded loyalty by giving the nets at least, he occasionally was. far larger, had no nightlife to talk Robb said something ill-advised about Burcombe slack. He made him captain. A judge later would later describe of; Tandragee, inexplicably, had a the UVF guy. The atmosphere soured. Burcombe encouraged the weaker him, accurately, as a man of “limited couple of places that could pass for players instead of bullying them. Soon intellectual ability”, but he had a nightclubs.