Managing editor Matt Thacker introduces issue 47 of the Nightwatchman…
January gave us Yorkshire’s Doug Padgett and Surrey scorer Keith Booth (who wrote in these pages), in February it was Mike Procter, March Duncan Fearnley and Robin Hobbs, April Raman Subba Row and Derek Underwood, May Worcestershire’s 20-year-old Josh Baker, June Frank Duckworth of DLS fame, July Ken Palmer and Billy Ibadulla. And then, at the start of August, news of Graham Thorpe’s suicide.
People die. And the average life expectancy of 80 or so means we usually get the chance to trot out the “good innings” platitude, to remember with a smile those who gave us such pleasure on the field. To guess that life was pretty good for these folk, blessed as they were with the ability to play the game we love with skills well beyond our ken.
But we probably don’t think too much beyond their cricket. Don’t wonder about the rest of their lives – their parents, schooling and siblings, their relationships and mortgages, their mental health, illnesses, worries and disappointments. After all, they have been given a gift so many of us crave. How could they not be permanently happy?
But Thorpe’s death, and his family’s decision to make public the fact that he committed suicide, has highlighted that a cricketer’s lot is not necessarily a happy one. They struggle, they have problems like ours, they don’t always cope.
We pin our hopes and dreams on our heroes; we identify with them, hold them up to higher standards than we would others. And they are as human as us, as prone to mistakes, to suffering, to death.
In this issue of the Nightwatchman, as the English season draws to a close in its usual elegiac fashion, we have a pictorial tribute to Thorpe, a man who made so many days infinitely better with his skill, his character, his courage. There are not too many you can say that about.
Elsewhere, we hope this issue can lift the end-of-summer gloom with a line-up that is truly international – we have the West Indies covered with Walcott, Worrell and Lara; we’ve got a club player’s return to cricket after a quarter of a century; a play put on in Vadodara; unregulated betting; indoor nets; middle-aged men finding a safe space to talk; two world records broken in India; the plight of Afghanistan’s women; the search for a borderline boundary; sixes becoming unsexy; and the mismatch between English touring fans and Pakistan.
We also go back to the 1926 Ashes, 1930s Sussex, 1960 in Brisbane, ‘68 at The Oval, 1984 with the Sri Lankans at Lord’s, and early 21st century South Africa. Because the past was, indeed, another country.
As ever, if you would like to write for us – poetry and prose accepted! – or just let us know what you think about the Nightwatchman, good or bad, please get in touch at editor@ thenightwatchman.net. We read every submission (but promise nothing) that fulfils our criteria: that articles should touch on cricket (however tangentially) and are original, well-written and thought-provoking.
Matt Thacker, September 2024