SAMPLE EDITION AUTUMN23 2018 THE NightwatchmanTHE WISDEN CRICKET QUARTERLY SAMPLER THE NIGHTWATCHMAN THE NightwatchmanTHE WISDEN CRICKET QUARTERLY ISSUE 23 – SUMMER 2018 Matt Thacker introduces issue 23 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 Neville Cardus on the “apotheosis of Yorkshire cricket and Yorkshire character” is available in print and e-book formats. Colin Shindler riffs on a post-war Whit Monday Co-edited by Anjali Doshi and Tanya Aldred, with Matt Thacker as managing editor, The Alan Tyers steps into the post-apocalyptic abyss 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 Clive Lloyd remembers happy days at Old Trafford subject matter and length, escaping the pressures of next-day deadlines and the despair Jim Kilburn compares and contrasts Trueman and Statham in 1962 of cramming heart and soul into a few paragraphs. Colin Evans sees his hero through the fog of Calcutta 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. Benj Moorehead talks to David Byas about painting over the white rose 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 Daniel Norcross is nearly saved from the dullness of the 1970s do that too. Take a look at the options below and decide which is best for you. Katherine Brunt on her tough Yorkshire upbringing David Warner meditates on Roses rivalries then and now Andy Wilson asks where Lancashire stops and starts Full subscription Digital subscription Annual print Annual e-book only Ian McMillan listens in to both sides of the Roses subscription (with subscription free e-book versions) £10 Facts and figures – who did what, where and when £27 (+P&P) Click to Buy David Lloyd steps back in time Click to Buy Harry Pearson on Yorkshire’s native-only selection woes Paul Edwards examines Roses cricket between the wars Roses-tinted spectacle – shots of Roses cricket through the ages Richard Hutton dips into his memory bank for games good and bad AUTUMN22 2018 Scott Oliver visits Todmorden CC, a place both red and white Digital single copy Single copy NightwatchmanTHE WISDEN CRICKET QUARTERLY Single issue Single issue (with Graham Hardcastle scrutinises some bad-tempered 21st century clashes (e-book only) free with free David Hopps has a good moan £4 e-book version) £10 (+P&P) Click to Buy Kamran Abbasi on an immigrant’s experience of Roses cricket Click to Buy Alex Bowden asks what the rivalry means in the Twenty20 age THENIGHTWATCHMAN.NET SAMPLER THE NIGHTWATCHMAN a tad frustrating to see Walsden – versa. The club’s crest reflects this easily the smallest community of the dual identity, bearing both a white league’s 24 clubs – storm the first half and red rose – sometimes Lancashire of the campaign, winning 13 out of 13, first, sometimes Yorkshire, although it and become odds-on favourite for the isn’t entirely clear whether this is an title in their debut campaign. The two attempt to be diplomatic, an oversight, clubs played their first league match or the work of mischievous sign- against each other for 120 years on 12 painters that was never corrected. August in Walsden. Two days before my visit to Todmorden, the clubs had Perhaps a fraction small to serve as played a first competitive match since a first-class outground, Todmorden the 19th century, Walsden winning have nevertheless hosted numerous a Friday-night T20 game on the last county second XI matches. Indeed, BREAK ON THROUGH ball, with £742 taken on the gate and both Lancashire and Yorkshire have £4,000 at the bar. used it as a home venue, sometimes TO T’OTHER SIDE to play against each other in the same Prior to the redrawing of county season, the teams taking turns to use Scott Oliver plunges into the Pennine valley where east meets west boundaries in the Local Government the home dressing-room. There have Act of 1888, the Lancashire-Yorkshire been a total of six “rosebuds” matches border ran straight through Todmorden, played at Centre Vale and Yorkshire You’re either one or the other, and ambulance services are provided passing under the imposing arches of are yet to win any of them. aren’t you? by West Yorkshire. The Anglican St the railway viaduct overlooking the Mary’s church in the centre of town market in the centre of town and on Brian Heywood was a long-time Red or blue, in or out, Brexiteer or belongs to the diocese of Leeds, while south through the grand neo-classical Todmorden opening batsman and Remainer, uppers or downers, Blur the Roman Catholic St Joseph’s is in town hall, built in the Victorian era at is now a keen local historian who or Oasis, dead or alive, Gerrard or the diocese of Salford. the height of Todmorden’s weaving co-authored a 392-page history of Lampard, cats or dogs, tomayto or boom. Local couples getting married the club, In a League of Their Own, tomaahtah, ketchup or HP, Mac or PC, Despite its West Yorkshire location, there could dance from one county with his parents Freda and Malcolm, smooth or crunchy, still or sparkling, Todmorden Cricket Club have been a into the other on the ballroom floor, the latter a former president of the Marmite or “nah, mate”. member of the Lancashire League for while its ornate pediment depicts Lancashire League. Heywood insists all but six years of the competition’s classical figures in a friendly embrace: that “culturally and in sport, the town Lancashire or Yorkshire. history, switching from the nascent Yorkshire represented by the iron and identifies much more closely with Central Lancashire League (CLL) in wool trades; Lancashire by cotton. Lancashire than Yorkshire”. He adds: One or t’other. You can’t be both. 1897. For 120 of those 121 years they “Like Pudsey and Scarborough, it’s Unless you’re Todmorden, that is. were the only Yorkshire-based club in The border also used to run on a much more of a cricket town than the league although, with the recent shallow diagonal straight through the football or rugby. When those team Nestled at the confluence of three collapse of the CLL, they have this cricket club’s beautiful Centre Vale sports were developing in the late- narrow Pennine valleys, the former year been joined by Walsden, the ground, passing under the so-called 19th century, rugby was the dominant mill town officially sits within the neighbouring village barely a minute Boundary Tree. On certain pitches on sport down the valleys towards West Riding of Yorkshire, with down the train line toward Rochdale the square you would be batting in Halifax and Rochdale, and football residents paying their council tax and newly installed as Tod’s arch-rivals: one county and facing bowling from up the valley towards Burnley. in the Calderdale district, which is a Yorkshire derby in the famous old the other. When WG Grace played Todmorden didn’t develop a strong headquartered in Halifax. They have Lancashire League. Tod have won only there for the United South against identity in either sport, although an Oldham postcode and Rochdale five titles, the last in 1957, giving them the United North in 1874, the doctor in football it is, like Hebden Bridge telephone numbers, however. Both the longest drought of the traditional clumped a few boundaries from and Keighley [both in Yorkshire], a Red Rose towns. Their police, fire 14 members. So it would have been Lancashire into Yorkshire and vice Burnley FC town.” THENIGHTWATCHMAN.NET 5 SAMPLER THE NIGHTWATCHMAN Having signed up in September 1890 for the 1897 season, becoming its 14th Valley, club stalwart Ken Sutcliffe is from Greenmount – the club of Gary and for the inaugural Lancashire League – club (the league had an unchanged dyed-in-the-wool Yorkshire. I catch him Phil Neville – yet to declare his loyalties. or North East Lancashire League, as membership from 1897 to 2016, a in the Members’ Bar pointedly sliding He’s here because rules stipulate that it was originally known – Todmorden world record for longevity for any his freshly pulled but not-quite-full all teams must field a professional in resigned without bowling a ball. It league in any sport). Todmorden’s pint of bitter back toward the young every game – Tod have employed Fanie was the peak of the Challenge Match Lancastrianisation was sealed, or so barman: “Can you make that a Yorkshire de Villiers, Faf du Plessis, Mohsin Khan, era, and the club were keen to keep it seemed. pint, please?” Sutcliffe once lived on Vasbert Drakes and Frank Tyson down options open and their prestigious the west-facing slope overlooking the the years, as well as the brothers of fixture programme intact. Thus in • • • Burnley Road that runs the length of Hansie Cronje and the ex-Manchester 1891 they played Manchester at Old the ground and he vividly remembers United striker Dwight Yorke. This year’s Trafford, Leeds at Headingley and Lancashire-leaning this West Yorkshire instructing his pregnant wife that when regular paid man is the former England Bradford at Park Avenue, as well as a town may well be, but cut the club her waters broke she was to “tell the leg-spinner Chris Schofield, ruled out host of other leading clubs including with a knife and it would bleed both ambulance driver to turn left” (a phrase by injury, although his presence would Bingley, Keighley, Dewsbury Savile, red and white.