PARADOX OF THE NIGHTWATCHMAN
Why send a bowler out to protect a batsman?
Nobody is quite sure when cricket’s first nightwatchman put in an appearance, but whoever dreamt up the wheeze set in motion one of the most controversial talking points in the game.
Broadly, a nightwatchman is employed to protect recognised batsmen from being exposed to the opposition’s bowlers as the day’s play nears its close. To that end it is both a paradox and a punt – sending in a player of lesser ability to protect someone of greater ability from being dismissed before the close of play. Fingers crossed then.
The irony does not stop there. Studies, and you wonder who does actually study these things, have shown that nightwatchmen are more likely to be employed when batting conditions are worse, a situation that surely increases the likelihood that the player with less batting ability will be dismissed.
It is a conundrum that would puzzle Aristotle, arguably the greatest logician of them all.
The absence of logic suggests the whole business is a charade, pandering to the insecurities and egos of top order batsmen the nightwatchman is tasked with protecting.
Anything else, under the laws of nature or sport, does not really make sense.
Further studies have shown that sides who use nightwatchmen rarely benefit from their deployment in any meaningful way, apart from keeping top-order prima donnas happy, and that the ploy fails almost twice as often as it succeeds. There are no stats whether nightwatchmen are used more often if a batsman is captain, or a bowler, though I suspect it is the former.
When I played for Essex it was left to the incoming batsman to decide – when 20 minutes play, or fewer, remained – whether or not he wanted a nightwatchman.
I cannot recall a situation when one was not required, though I suspect by then defensive-thinking by county pros was well entrenched.
It isn’t clear when the practice became standard but you cannot see the amateurs and muscular Christians of the Victorian era requiring one. Back then, batting was the game’s greatest pleasure and players would want to get to the crease as soon as possible.
Recently, Chris Woakes came in as nightwatchman against Pakistan at Old Trafford. He survived and went on to make 58 the next day. But the current England team bat so deep that the concept of a nightwatchman, as one who protects recognised batsmen, does not really hold unless No.11 does it.
Although quaint, the practice is perpetuated by the top order who encourage would-be nightwatchmen, nearly always bowlers who think they can bat a bit, that this is their big opportunity to have the time and scope to score a career best, providing they survive to see the morning light.
Most buy it though in the 2,210 Tests played to date, only six nightwatchmen have made 100 or better, the doyen being Jason Gillespie, who scored an unbeaten 201 against Bangladesh in 2005/06, a record, one suspects, that will remain for some time. Spare a thought though for Alex Tudor, who made an unbeaten 99 in a winning cause against New Zealand in 1999.
Sixty years ago, when amateurs still trod the swards, the breed had few pretensions about making a big score. Close of play was the sole goal, something Sussex’s Robin Marlar took to extremes in a county match when, with two balls remaining, he was out, stumped, for six, his mission accomplished.
Marlar took the old-fashioned view that the public had come to watch batsmen bat and bowlers bowl (he was an off-spinner), and didn’t want to clutter the view the following morning. These days, the mindset is to see it as an opportunity to make a career best and nightwatchmen try to bat as long as they can.
England have always deployed a nightwatchman though Australia, at least under Steve Waugh, refused to countenance them, saying that batsmen were there to bat and not to be molly-coddled. There is a certain irony, then, that an Australian, Gillespie, in the immediate aftermath of the Waugh era, holds the record he does. Gillespie was a fine Test bowler and will be remembered as such. And yet more studies have shown, his double hundred aside, that he was also the best nightwatchman the world has ever seen, having soaked up the most balls and having failed only once on the nine occasions he was asked to do the job.
I tend to side with Waugh on this, though there are occasions when nightwatchmen can flummox bowlers, as Eddie Hemmings did in Sydney during the 1982/83 Ashes. Hemmings had bagged a pair in his previous Test in that series but promoted to three in England’s second innings, he made hay the following day with some novel shots both in attack and defence, including clubbing the Aussie fast bowlers back over their heads.
Hemmings only ever made one firstclass hundred though a second, against the old foe, beckoned here. But having seen off Geoff Lawson, Jeff Thomson and Rodney Hogg, he nicked off against offspinner Bruce Yardley for 95. England drew the match but while Hemmings’ innings went some way to ensuring that, it was worth much more in Aussie humility.
Despite kudos like that ,‘ night watching’ remains a strange role; part sacrificial lamb, part medieval vassal, but one only deemed successful if you survive until the day’s end.
As the Duckworth/Lewis method have it in their brilliant song about the genre: “I’m the nightwatchman I take the fall I’ll always be around when you call ’Coz all that I have is yours I’d give it all and more To be by your side in the morning light.”
Further studies have shown that sides who use nightwatchmen rarely benefit from their deployment, apart from keeping top-order prima donnas happy