The Nightwatchman
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SAMPLE EDITION THE NightwatchmanTHE WISDEN CRICKET QUARTERLY – LORD’S BICENTENARY EDITION SAMPLER THE THE WISDEN CRICKET QUARTERLY Nightwatchman Issue 6, out in early June, will feature the following: Cricket’s past has been enriched by great writing and Wisden is making sure its future Anjali Doshi reflecting on India’s conflicted relationship with Lord’s will be too. The Nightwatchman is a quarterly collection of essays and long-form articles and James Holland reassessing the life and times of Keith Miller is available in print and e-book formats. Tanya Aldred spending a day with cricket’s grandest dame 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 Ivo Tennant digging around to unearth the ground’s underbelly at length about the game and its myriad offshoots. Contributors are given free rein over Jonathan Liew admiring the symbiosis of St John’s Wood and its cricket club subject matter and length, escaping the pressures of next-day deadlines and the despair of cramming heart and soul into a few paragraphs. Richard Evans revisiting the most controversial selection meeting in sporting history There are several different ways to get hold of and enjoy The Nightwatchman. You can Steve Neal on Albert Trott: the only man known to have cleared the Lord’s Pavilion 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 Lawrence Booth on the umbilical cord that connects Australia to England subscription. Or if you’d just like to buy a single issue – in print, digital or both – you can John Crace explaining why Lord’s and MCC bring out the worst in him do that too. Take a look at the options below and decide which is best for you. Jon Hotten going in search of the unexpexcted Pat Gibson on the John Barnes Outswingers – and all that jazz Full subscription Steven Lynch reliving his days as an MCC insider Annual print Digital subscription Tom Jeffreys on his home away from home subscription (with Annual e-book only free e-book versions) subscription Neil Manthorp describing how South Africa turned awe to their advantage £27 (+P&P) £10 Adam Chadwick curating a behind-the-scenes look at 150 years of history Click to Buy Click to Buy In the Frame … the pick of the Wisden–MCC Photo of the Year competition Stephen McDowell on MCC’s connection to the First World War Tony Cozier getting nostalgic about 50 years of watching cricket at Lord’s Single copy Michael Holding, Mohsin Khan, Angus Fraser and Kumar Sangakkara Single issue (with on why they like Lord’s (or why they don’t) Digital single copy free with free Single issue e-book version) (e-book only) £9 (+P&P) On the following pages you’ll find an article by Tom Holland and extracts from several £4 Click to Buy other pieces Click to Buy TOM HOLLAND THE NIGHTWATCHMAN though, it had been a much sorrier story. bat” was definitively debunked. Only in Britain’s two traditional rivals, France and England’s Ashes-winning summer of 1953 Germany, had long left British scientists was it at last demonstrated to everyone’s scratching around haplessly in their wake. satisfaction that the discoveries made at The Abri de Cro-Magnon, a large cave in Piltdown had indeed all been plants. To the Dordogne, had given its name to the this day, the identity of the forger remains oldest known modern humans ever to be a much-contested mystery – with Charles found in Europe, while the Neander Thal, Dawson, the man who had originally begun a valley just east of Düsseldorf, could prospecting in the gravel pit, the odds-on boast the find of an entire species of favourite. The “cricket bat”, though, as the extinct prehistoric humans. No wonder, most extraordinary and improbable find then, that Dawson’s finds were greeted of all, has long been regarded as a special by British palaeontologists with such case. Some have suggested that Sir Arthur relief. Eoanthropus dawsoni, it was Conan Doyle, who had a house nearby, and officially announced, dated back almost was as keen a cricketer as he was supreme a million years. This made it the oldest a crafter of mysteries, might have planted OF MYTHS AND ORIGINS human ever found in Europe. Dawson, it it. Others have nominated Martin Hinton, a seemed, had racked up a truly significant volunteer at the Natural History Museum Tom Holland unites Lord’s, Piltdown Man and Pope Gregory the Great, score for England. who would go on to become its Keeper contending we’re happier believing what we want to believe of Zoology, as a possible candidate. Chris Or had he? Not everyone was convinced. Stringer, who is currently the Museum’s It was noted by some specialists that leading specialist on human origins, has The summer of 1912 was one of the wettest quarries of Piltdown had done little to the skull of Piltdown Man appeared plausibly argued that Hinton had rumbled on record. Month after month, rain lashed dampen Dawson’s apparent aptitude for anachronistically large for a creature the Piltdown fraud, and was aiming to tip the cricket pitches of England. Sydney palaeontology. His discoveries, announced that – based on the evidence of Dawson’s off the culprit. Hence the cricket bat: he Barnes, whose 69 wickets came that to a packed session of the Geological finds, at any rate – had possessed had deliberately planted the most absurd season at a cost of just over 11 runs each, Society of London just before Christmas, an almost simian jaw. But the most object he could come up with. Hinton, may have enjoyed the damp conditions – appeared little short of sensational. Thick, polarising find of all was yet to come. though, had miscalculated. “To his horror, but no one else much did. The cricketers of brown-stained pieces of a hominid skull, Two years on, and the discovery was instead of terminating the whole Piltdown Australia and South Africa, who had been together with the fragment of a lower announced, not of human remains, but saga, this bizarre piece was heralded as invited over to participate in an innovative jaw closely resembling a chimpanzee’s, of something even more remarkable: a the world’s oldest bone implement.” The triangular tournament of Test matches, pointed to Piltdown having been the human implement. Carved from a large British public, it seemed, quite liked the had a particularly miserable time of it, home of the oldest known Englishman. piece of elephant bone, and uncovered idea of their prehistoric forebears wielding dodging torrential downpours whenever Eoanthropus dawsoni, the creature was by Dawson in the very sediment where cricket bats. they were not being skittled out by Barnes. christened: “Dawson’s Dawn Man”. Half- he had earlier found the fragments of The entire season, everyone mournfully monkey, half-human, it appeared to be Piltdown Man, it bore an unmistakable Play was being made at Piltdown with agreed, had been an utter wash-out. that Darwinian Holy Grail: a missing link. shape: that of a cricket bat. Here, for any two mysteries, not just the one. Whether patriotic Englishman, was a truly stirring the elephant bone had been planted by Meanwhile, in the Sussex village of The rejoicing in British palaeontological possibility: that the age of CB Fry and a fraudster or by a scientist looking to Piltdown, a solicitor and amateur fossil- circles was certainly immense. That Sydney Barnes was linked by a bond of warn the fraudster that his game was up, hunter by the name of Charles Dawson summer, despite all the hours of play lost fellowship to that of the earliest known its shape had clearly been no accident. had been enjoying an altogether more to the weather, the England cricket team human ever to have trodden English Eoanthropus dawsoni, unlike Neanderthal productive summer. Between June and had still managed to record a series of sward, almost a million years before. or Cro-Magnon Man, had been found not September, he had been busy making convincing victories, beating Australia Either that, or the find was a fake. far from the Sussex county ground at a series of remarkable finds in a local 1-0, and thrashing South Africa in all three Hove, and the discovery at Piltdown of gravel pit. Disastrous though the weather of the matches scheduled between them. Amazingly, it would take another 40 a cricket bat had served subliminally to had been for cricket, the puddles in the On the field of palaeontological play, years before the elephant bone “cricket brand him as all the more English. There THENIGHTWATCHMAN.NET 5 TOM HOLLAND was, however, a further twist. If hardly a historian of cricket’s early years – and Nevertheless, had the epithet appealed the running sore of betting scandals, there puzzle on the scale of human prehistory, knew perfectly well that the sport was not merely to MCC’s sense of self-worth, it is still to this day a certain metaphorical the origins of cricket were – and remain – remotely as ancient as some enthusiasts would never have achieved the undoubted value that attaches itself to a pair of cricket a theme fit to perplex even considerable liked to think. A decade after leaving resonance that it has done beyond the whites. Humbug or not, the distinctively scholars. The antiquity of the game office, he published a book on the topic, purlieus of St John’s Wood.