Harry's Rant Page

I think a page devoted to absurdity which now envelopes cricket's language is now long over due.

26/05

It dawned on me yesterday that the nightwatch-man/er is a superfluous emasculation of the language of cricket as women domestically don't, and women internationally rarely play multi-day format cricket anymore. 

There have been just 40 Women's Test Matches worldwide this century.

Only men's cricket has the need for a nightwatchman on occasions, so why instruct a change (which is almost certainly the case for the poor commentators that continually forget to be wokey)?

24/05

A return to reality yesterday with the Yorkshire commentary only spoilt by Bracegidle going all new age woke at the end using the nightwatcher terminology. He's already said "nightwatchman territory"

Third man was back as were batsmen.

22/05

T20 cricket takes centre stage in the fixtures next week and along with it some idiotic inconsistencies with the team labelling.

Unlike with The Blaze, Hampshire Women don't appear to have an academy, but the Vipers Academy does still appear to be a thing as does Thunder Academy.

However next week also sees Hampshire Hawks Women and Lancashire 2nd XI Women (v Blaze 2nd XI) having T20 games.

Hampshire 2nd XI Women also play games of T20 next week as do Lancashire Thunder.

Warwickshire appear to fallen out with Birmingham, so now in T20 we just have Bears Men and Bears Women, but also Warwickshire Men 2nd XI but also we have:

Neither Hawks or Bears Women...

.. .I'm not even trying to be obtuse, I'm just running through the fixture list. That's before we get to the unspecified gender u16s fixtures, do we presume that they're lads' fixtures or are we not allowed to presume anymore?

For the record England Lions play India Men A next week and our team remains Notts Outlaws for the Blast competition (for now at least).

20/05

The Durham commentators continued the emasculation of a nightwatchman yesterday with nightwatch...

Sounds like something the stalker nightwatcher might wear to tell the time, maybe

19/05

John on Facebook has just pointed out a new one on Pravda, but I'm sure some of the new wave of cricket commentators (which are appearing on the live streams away from the BBC output) will already use it, instead of Nightwatchman, the latest Pravda report has Rob Lord as a "nightwatcher".

Third man dropped the man a couple of years back, about the same time as batsman became batter, which still sound lame and out of context (to me).

The woke agenda appears to wish to eliminate man/men, wherever it appears in cricket,which is a little bit of a contridiction as men and women do not play along side each other at the elite level but the County name + Men or Women nevertheless do now appear on the online scorecards, not that Nottinghamshire Women play Rothesay County Championship or much else. The Blaze, an exclusively women's franchise, appears to have escaped so far.

Nightwatcher, sounds like a euphemism for a stalker or Peeping Tom.

A nightwatchman in contrast, by definition looks after something over night 

Dictionary

Definitions from Oxford Languages 

nightwatchman

/ˌnʌɪtˈwɒtʃmən/

noun

1. 1.

   a person whose job is to guard a building at night.
2. 2.

   Cricket

   an inferior batter sent in to bat when a wicket falls just before the end of a day's play, to avoid the dismissal of a better one in adverse conditions.