Simon Hughes
Despite being England's resident no.9, Andy Caddick has a good orthodox batting technique – principally a resilient defence – making him the favoured choice as England's nightwatchman. This is an expendable player sent in late in the day, as the name suggests, to protect the specialist batsmen from fading light and prowling bowlers. If, for instance, there are ten overs left in the day and England, batting second, are 30-1, the next man in (the no.4) will probably request a nightwatchman be sent in if a wicket falls.
It is not the best job in the world. The nightwatchman is expected to 'farm the strike' (face as much of the bowling as possible) for the remainder of the day and is usually treated to a liberal diet of fast short-pitched deliveries that he is obliged to fend off his chest. Often the ball is still relatively new and hard and the bowlers fresh and revved up, so it's an uncomfortable experience, and the physio is on red alert with the cold spray.
 Taking the knocks
This (left) is a typical experience for the nightwatchman. He will receive a lot of short deliveries if he hangs around for long and a few bruises for his trouble.
The nightwatchman has no licence to play any attacking shots and enjoy himself, as this is risky. Instead, he has got to defend stoically and grin and bear it. The only plus is that if he survives the night, he has got scope to enjoy himself with the bat the following morning, and there have been a few cases when they really did. Alex Tudor's unbeaten
99 against New Zealand in 1999, won the match for England.
Old habits
Getting a nightwatchman padded up in the last half-hour of the day is common practice for Test teams. However, the Australian captain Steve Waugh has cast doubt on the practice recently, arguing that a
specialist batsman avoiding going out to bat late in the day is almost
a dereliction of duty, and not in the best interests of the team.
He does have a point. Few nightwatchman are technically equipped to deal with the hostility directed at them, and often the ploy backfires, obliging the top order player to come in anyway, and another wicket has gone down. But old habits die hard and again, it can have a psychological impact. If the nightwatchman can manage to hang on well into the next
morning, the fielding side can get very demoralised.
Copyright material reproduced under license from Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London, England
Copyright © Simon Hughes 2001
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