Jason Gillespie Scores a Double Century as Nightwatchman

Jason Neil Gillespie — "Dizzy" to everyone in and around cricket — was one of Australia's finest fast bowlers in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He took 259 wickets in 71 Tests at an average of 26.13, regularly formed a devastating partnership with Glenn McGrath, and was a key component of the most dominant Test team in cricket history. What he was not, by any reasonable measure, was a batsman. His career batting average of 18.5 in Tests was respectable for a fast bowler but came largely from a handful of stubborn lower-order contributions rather than any systematic run-making ability.

The nightwatchman role in cricket is one of the sport's long-established tactical compromises. When a top-order batsman falls close to the end of a day's play, the captain sends in a lower-order player — the nightwatchman — to face the remaining overs and protect the better batsmen from having to come in under difficult conditions. The nightwatchman's job is explicit and simple: don't get out today, get out tomorrow. They are not expected to build innings or score heavily. They are expected to survive, disappear, and let the real batsmen take over.

Gillespie was sent in as nightwatchman against Bangladesh in Chittagong in April 2006. The Australians were winning comfortably — this was Bangladesh, who had not yet developed into the competitive Test side they later became. Nobody anticipated drama. Nobody anticipated anything, really. It was the nightwatchman situation in the most routine match imaginable. It was about to become one of cricket's most ridiculous days.

Australia were in a dominant position when Gillespie was asked to go in as nightwatchman with roughly 20 minutes remaining on the third day's play. The instruction was clear: survive until stumps. Do nothing heroic. Block, defend, leave anything wide, and hand the bat back to someone competent in the morning. Gillespie nodded, padded up, and walked out to the crease.

He survived to the close of play, which was exactly what was expected. The next morning, captain Ricky Ponting would have expected Gillespie to perish reasonably quickly — perhaps after 20 or 30 minutes of determined blocking — before the middle order came in to push Australia into an insurmountable lead. This is how nightwatchman situations resolve approximately 100% of the time. Nightwatchmen do not bat through sessions. They are not built for it. Their role in the ecosystem of Test cricket is as a temporary measure, like a relief pitcher who throws one inning and steps aside.

Gillespie had not read the script. By lunch on day four he was still batting, past fifty, past sixty, looking increasingly like a man who had forgotten that he was supposed to have gotten out hours earlier. The dressing room began to notice. The commentary team began to adjust their expectations. Bangladesh, who had been bowling with reasonable confidence at what they assumed was a tailender, began to realise they were playing against someone who had apparently decided that this was not, in fact, his time to get out.

In April 2006, Australian fast bowler Jason Gillespie was sent in as nightwatchman against Bangladesh in Chittagong. The nightwatchman's job is simple and universally understood: survive until close of play, protect the real batsmen from the new ball, and then get out the next morning so someone who can actually bat can have a turn. It is one of cricket's most clearly defined roles. Gillespie apparently didn't get the memo. Or got it, read it, and decided to use it as confetti.

Instead of blocking out a few overs and then getting out the next morning like a normal nightwatchman, Gillespie batted. And batted. And kept batting. He passed 50, and the Australian dressing room exchanged amused glances. He passed 100, and the amused glances turned into bewildered stares. By the time he reached 150, captain Ricky Ponting was reportedly trying to work out how to get his nightwatchman to actually declare so the real batsmen could have a go. Sending messages to a nightwatchman asking him to stop batting is not a situation covered in captaincy manuals.

Gillespie eventually finished on 201 not out — the only double century ever scored by a nightwatchman in Test cricket history. The irony was thick enough to spread on toast: Gillespie had a career batting average of about 18, and this was his one and only Test century (and double century). It was his final series for Australia, and he was dropped after the tour. So Gillespie's last significant act in Test cricket was scoring a double century that nobody expected, nobody asked for, and the captain probably didn't want.

The nightwatchman who was supposed to face 20 balls ended up facing over 400. It remains one of cricket's most gloriously absurd performances.

“I just kept batting. Nobody came out to tell me to stop. So I kept going.”

“At some point I thought I should probably get out, but the ball kept going to the gap.”

“As a captain you have plans for nightwatchmen. None of those plans involve a declaration conversation.”

“It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen in Test cricket, and I mean that as the highest possible compliment.”

Australia won the match by an innings, as expected. Gillespie's 201* was an extraordinary statistical aberration — a nightwatchman who batted not for 20 minutes but for most of two days, scoring the only double century by a nightwatchman in the 150-year history of Test cricket. The record was specific enough to be essentially unrepeatable: to equal it, you'd need a fast bowler sent in as nightwatchman to score 200 runs in an innings. The probability of this happening again is so low as to make "essentially impossible" the appropriate description.

Ricky Ponting later said he found the whole situation more amusing in retrospect than he did at the time. In the moment, there was a real captaincy dilemma: do you ask your nightwatchman to get himself out deliberately? Do you send out messages suggesting he might want to declare? The situation had no precedent in captaincy practice because no nightwatchman had ever previously needed to be talked out of a double century. The relevant chapter of the captaincy manual simply didn't exist.

Gillespie was dropped from the Australian side after the Bangladesh tour — a decision that had nothing to do with his batting and everything to do with his bowling, which had declined from its peak. The extraordinary irony is that his farewell act in Australian cricket was scoring a double century that no fast bowler before or since has managed.