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Wisden Cricketers' Almanack #160
Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 2023
It is a book of three comment; record; and delightful minutiae, which always brings the most cheer. - Mike Atherton, The Times
The publication of Wisden is cricket's equivalent of the state opening of Parliament. It's another great edition. - Oborne and Heller on Cricket podcast
The pages are stacked full of information, quirks and great analysis of the game, as well as being a wonderful record. - Alison Mitchell, BBC World Service Stumped
*Standard hardback edition*
The 160th edition of the most famous sports book in the world – published every year since 1864 – contains some of the world's finest sports writing. It reflects on the extraordinary life of Shane Warne, who died far too early in 2022, and looks back at another legendary bowler, S. F. Barnes, on the 150th anniversary of his birth. Wisden also reports on England's triumph at the T20 World Cup, to go alongside their 2019 ODI success, and on their Test team's thrilling rejuvenation under Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes.
Writers include Lawrence Booth, Gideon Haigh, James Holland, Jonathan Liew, Emma John, David Frith, Simon Wilde, Jon Hotten, Robert Winder, Tanya Aldred and Neil Harvey, the last survivor from Australia's famous 1948 Ashes tour of England. As usual, Wisden includes the eagerly awaited Notes by the Editor, the Cricketers of the Year awards, and the obituaries. And, as ever, there are reports and scorecards for every Test, together with forthright opinion, compelling features and comprehensive records.
"There can't really be any doubt about the cricket book of the year, any it's obviously Wisden" Andrew Baker in The Daily Telegraph
@WisdenAlmanack
The publication of Wisden is cricket's equivalent of the state opening of Parliament. It's another great edition. - Oborne and Heller on Cricket podcast
The pages are stacked full of information, quirks and great analysis of the game, as well as being a wonderful record. - Alison Mitchell, BBC World Service Stumped
*Standard hardback edition*
The 160th edition of the most famous sports book in the world – published every year since 1864 – contains some of the world's finest sports writing. It reflects on the extraordinary life of Shane Warne, who died far too early in 2022, and looks back at another legendary bowler, S. F. Barnes, on the 150th anniversary of his birth. Wisden also reports on England's triumph at the T20 World Cup, to go alongside their 2019 ODI success, and on their Test team's thrilling rejuvenation under Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes.
Writers include Lawrence Booth, Gideon Haigh, James Holland, Jonathan Liew, Emma John, David Frith, Simon Wilde, Jon Hotten, Robert Winder, Tanya Aldred and Neil Harvey, the last survivor from Australia's famous 1948 Ashes tour of England. As usual, Wisden includes the eagerly awaited Notes by the Editor, the Cricketers of the Year awards, and the obituaries. And, as ever, there are reports and scorecards for every Test, together with forthright opinion, compelling features and comprehensive records.
"There can't really be any doubt about the cricket book of the year, any it's obviously Wisden" Andrew Baker in The Daily Telegraph
@WisdenAlmanack
1616 pages, Hardcover
Published June 20, 2023
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March 8, 2024
“From Manchester to Multan, Kennington to Karachi, England’s Test Cricketers rewrote the rules and reordered the imagination.” So begins Wisden 2023, in the words of its editor, Lawrence Booth. His ten pages of notes are always engaging as he casts a critical eye over all Wisden encapsulates.
What can be said about ‘Wisden’ that has not already been said many times? I know am stepping onto a well-worn pitch. The not-so-little yellow brick (now 1600 pages) has been the staple diet of cricket enthusiasts in the UK for 160 years and claims to be the most famous sports book in the world (‘The independent voice of cricket since 1864’). In those 160 years no pretender has come close to claiming its throne.
Wisden would claim to be a record of all that was significant and memorable in cricket throughout the world during the preceding calendar year (in this case 2022), written from an English point of view and with most space given to the English cricket season. Part One (Comment) is replete with high quality contributions from cricket writers around the world, beginning with three that celebrate the life and cricket of Shane Warne and one remembering the cricketing connections of the late Queen Elizabeth II. As well as, the famous Five Cricketers of the Year (no longer exclusively male), there are citations for The Men’s & Women’s Leading Cricketer in the World (Beth Mooney and Ben Stokes). Other subjects include ‘Cricket and Jane Austen’ and the Mission Impossible-esque ‘Mystery of the Duke’s cricket ball’ that self-destructs after five overs.
Part Two (The Wisden Review) covers all conceivable media, not just print: broadcast, podcast, social, theatrical, etc. The section also contains obituaries for almost anyone who had the slightest connection with cricket, not merely first-class. Among the notable names with extensive cricket histories (Rodney Marsh, Jim Parks, Sonny Ramadhin, Shane Warne, etc.) there are broadcasters, school coaches, scorers, scoreboard operators, stewards, umpires, writers, even a collector of memorabilia—stalwarts of club and school cricket, as well as of the first-class game.
Many are fascinating and some are poignantly sad: a promising young cricketer taken by accident or illness, those who played only one or two tests or first-class matches, players who burst onto the scene with a high score or a clutch of wickets but who never repeated the feat, an umpire (aged 63) killed by robbers who took his shopping, a boy of 16 who collapsed and died during a children’s game, etc.
Part Three is a review of English International Cricket, with a report, statistics and scorecards from every tour and of every match played in the red and white ball game. The extended report on each Test Match is a welcome opportunity to relive the journey and drama of a five-day game. A better way of doing so is to reread the daily newspaper reports, written without knowledge of the final outcome. Newspapers that used to collect and publish these, however, do so no more, it seems. I confess to skipping past the reports and scorecards of the T20 internationals with little interest. Giving them this prominence serves, it seems to me, only to emphasise how unmemorable they are.
The longest section, Part Four, is devoted to English Domestic Cricket, providing reports on every county’s season with reports and scorecards for every first-class game, as well as an all-you-can-eat buffet of statistics. This is the point at which I begin to be more selective about what I read. Club leagues, village cricket, veterans’ cricket, disability cricket, youth and schools cricket—they are all there. Even The Men’s Hundred is given its review and table of statistics, along with a whole paragraph on each game, despite the assessment that it “felt like a new ingredient in grandma’s favourite fruitcake: a fundamental addition to something known and loved for decades, without obvious need”.
Part Five (Overseas Cricket) reports more briefly on the domestic seasons of all the test playing nations, with a final section on the leading associate nations. The anti-government demonstration that morphed into an unofficial crowd of spectators for Sri Lanka getting the better of Australia at Galle stands out. Reports of cricket in Corfu and Rwanda raise an eyebrow of surprise that it is done at all.
Part Six is given over to burgeoning Overseas Franchise Cricket. You can fast forward past this section without doing any harm to man or beast. There are now six different overseas leagues (plus the one in England) trying to cultivate the species of money tree first grown in India, one in a non-test playing country, UAE (no, mercifully I hadn’t heard of it either). The West Indian Cricket Board, not content with the Caribbean Premier League, has come up with “a further diet of snack-sized, junk-food cricket”: ‘The Sky Exch Men’s 6ixty’ (how do you say that?) A judge recently ruled, in a case brought by the crisp manufacturer, Walkers, that the contents are not poppadoms just because it says so on the packet. “Nominative determinism is not a characteristic of snack foods,” she added. She might have said the same about packeted, snack-form ‘cricket’.
Part Seven (Women’s Cricket) follows. Surely it already warrants a place higher up the batting order? Part Eight (Records and Registers) is a treasure trove of serendipities, with the added surprise that so many of those records have been recently set. The full list of all test cricketers and their career statistics comes here, under the heading ‘Births and Deaths’. Part Nine (The Almanack - was this were it all began?) lists personnel in official bodies and their meetings, details of those sanctioned for breaching ICC rules, honours and awards, 2023 fixtures, etc.
Almost last, but not least, is Chronicles of 2022, a selection of weird, wonderful and worrisome news items related to cricket, illustrated with cartoons by Nick Newman. It includes a baby girl being named after a cricket ground, several improbable scoring feats by schoolboys, an instance of a team being nought all out and the 60-year aftermath of a bouncer bowled by Charlie Griffith.
Is it cricket just because it says so on the packet? For all its authority and pride in being a comprehensive record, Wisden, it seems to me, will have to decide at some point, how much of what calls itself cricket is worthy of including in their increasingly unwieldy volume. Should the page size (roughly A6) be changed to something more like A5? Bookcases with their serried ranks of uniform yellow volumes would explode at the thought. Or should Wisden be more selective about what is included? Should every travelling circus that names itself after a 1970s instant potato be included?
Wisden remains a long but highly rewarding read for every serious follower of cricket. Having been given a lifetime subscription, I look forward to receiving it every year. I hope one day to complete reading it before the end of the following season!
What can be said about ‘Wisden’ that has not already been said many times? I know am stepping onto a well-worn pitch. The not-so-little yellow brick (now 1600 pages) has been the staple diet of cricket enthusiasts in the UK for 160 years and claims to be the most famous sports book in the world (‘The independent voice of cricket since 1864’). In those 160 years no pretender has come close to claiming its throne.
Wisden would claim to be a record of all that was significant and memorable in cricket throughout the world during the preceding calendar year (in this case 2022), written from an English point of view and with most space given to the English cricket season. Part One (Comment) is replete with high quality contributions from cricket writers around the world, beginning with three that celebrate the life and cricket of Shane Warne and one remembering the cricketing connections of the late Queen Elizabeth II. As well as, the famous Five Cricketers of the Year (no longer exclusively male), there are citations for The Men’s & Women’s Leading Cricketer in the World (Beth Mooney and Ben Stokes). Other subjects include ‘Cricket and Jane Austen’ and the Mission Impossible-esque ‘Mystery of the Duke’s cricket ball’ that self-destructs after five overs.
Part Two (The Wisden Review) covers all conceivable media, not just print: broadcast, podcast, social, theatrical, etc. The section also contains obituaries for almost anyone who had the slightest connection with cricket, not merely first-class. Among the notable names with extensive cricket histories (Rodney Marsh, Jim Parks, Sonny Ramadhin, Shane Warne, etc.) there are broadcasters, school coaches, scorers, scoreboard operators, stewards, umpires, writers, even a collector of memorabilia—stalwarts of club and school cricket, as well as of the first-class game.
Many are fascinating and some are poignantly sad: a promising young cricketer taken by accident or illness, those who played only one or two tests or first-class matches, players who burst onto the scene with a high score or a clutch of wickets but who never repeated the feat, an umpire (aged 63) killed by robbers who took his shopping, a boy of 16 who collapsed and died during a children’s game, etc.
Part Three is a review of English International Cricket, with a report, statistics and scorecards from every tour and of every match played in the red and white ball game. The extended report on each Test Match is a welcome opportunity to relive the journey and drama of a five-day game. A better way of doing so is to reread the daily newspaper reports, written without knowledge of the final outcome. Newspapers that used to collect and publish these, however, do so no more, it seems. I confess to skipping past the reports and scorecards of the T20 internationals with little interest. Giving them this prominence serves, it seems to me, only to emphasise how unmemorable they are.
The longest section, Part Four, is devoted to English Domestic Cricket, providing reports on every county’s season with reports and scorecards for every first-class game, as well as an all-you-can-eat buffet of statistics. This is the point at which I begin to be more selective about what I read. Club leagues, village cricket, veterans’ cricket, disability cricket, youth and schools cricket—they are all there. Even The Men’s Hundred is given its review and table of statistics, along with a whole paragraph on each game, despite the assessment that it “felt like a new ingredient in grandma’s favourite fruitcake: a fundamental addition to something known and loved for decades, without obvious need”.
Part Five (Overseas Cricket) reports more briefly on the domestic seasons of all the test playing nations, with a final section on the leading associate nations. The anti-government demonstration that morphed into an unofficial crowd of spectators for Sri Lanka getting the better of Australia at Galle stands out. Reports of cricket in Corfu and Rwanda raise an eyebrow of surprise that it is done at all.
Part Six is given over to burgeoning Overseas Franchise Cricket. You can fast forward past this section without doing any harm to man or beast. There are now six different overseas leagues (plus the one in England) trying to cultivate the species of money tree first grown in India, one in a non-test playing country, UAE (no, mercifully I hadn’t heard of it either). The West Indian Cricket Board, not content with the Caribbean Premier League, has come up with “a further diet of snack-sized, junk-food cricket”: ‘The Sky Exch Men’s 6ixty’ (how do you say that?) A judge recently ruled, in a case brought by the crisp manufacturer, Walkers, that the contents are not poppadoms just because it says so on the packet. “Nominative determinism is not a characteristic of snack foods,” she added. She might have said the same about packeted, snack-form ‘cricket’.
Part Seven (Women’s Cricket) follows. Surely it already warrants a place higher up the batting order? Part Eight (Records and Registers) is a treasure trove of serendipities, with the added surprise that so many of those records have been recently set. The full list of all test cricketers and their career statistics comes here, under the heading ‘Births and Deaths’. Part Nine (The Almanack - was this were it all began?) lists personnel in official bodies and their meetings, details of those sanctioned for breaching ICC rules, honours and awards, 2023 fixtures, etc.
Almost last, but not least, is Chronicles of 2022, a selection of weird, wonderful and worrisome news items related to cricket, illustrated with cartoons by Nick Newman. It includes a baby girl being named after a cricket ground, several improbable scoring feats by schoolboys, an instance of a team being nought all out and the 60-year aftermath of a bouncer bowled by Charlie Griffith.
Is it cricket just because it says so on the packet? For all its authority and pride in being a comprehensive record, Wisden, it seems to me, will have to decide at some point, how much of what calls itself cricket is worthy of including in their increasingly unwieldy volume. Should the page size (roughly A6) be changed to something more like A5? Bookcases with their serried ranks of uniform yellow volumes would explode at the thought. Or should Wisden be more selective about what is included? Should every travelling circus that names itself after a 1970s instant potato be included?
Wisden remains a long but highly rewarding read for every serious follower of cricket. Having been given a lifetime subscription, I look forward to receiving it every year. I hope one day to complete reading it before the end of the following season!
May 20, 2023
The 'Shorter Wisden' was the eminently sensible idea of the current Wisden Editor, Lawrence Booth and first published in 2011, effectively providing all of the articles and match reports that the print version does minus the records, laws of the game etc, which turn the hard copy into a delectable brick (and also object of desire, see Jon Hotten's article on collecting Wisdens in this 2023 edition). There is always a slightly shambolic air about the release of the eBook version though. It never seems to quite make it on official Wisden publication date but this year it hasn't been available until pretty much a month after that date. In fact the day it was available was also the day that one of its five cricketers of the year, Ben Foakes, lost his place in the England squad. But no matter that some of the new season anticipation and the excitement of the first championship games has been and gone, there is still much to enjoy. A tribute to Booth's choice of articles and writers and of course the writers themselves.
My favourites this year:
Gideon Haigh's beautifully written tribute to Shane Warne (Warne's death came after the publication deadline for the 2022 edition).
A touching, enlightening memoir from Neil Harvey, the last surviving 'invincible' from the 1948 Australian side. Amongst many wonderful details I loved the story of him and Sam Loxton being sent out to open the batting to get the 122 needed to beat Surrey, with the rest of the team departing for the Wimbledon Men's Final at the same time. Needless to say they got the runs.
Jonathan Liew's very astute piece on Eoin Morgan. He is really good on the aura of Morgan and (he doesn't quite use these words) how it became almost Svengaliesque towards the end.
David Frith's illuminating article on SF Barnes, based on a less than relaxed meeting with a slightly cantankerous old man, although Barnes of course always had a reputation for difficulty throughout his career. But what a bowler. Frith casually drops in some league bowling figures - 8 for 8 one week, 10 for 14 the next, but his test record in only 27 matches was almost as noteworthy.
James Wallace writes easily the most informative article I have ever read on cricket ball production where he interviews Dilip Jajodi, the owner of British Cricket Balls Ltd who make the Dukes ball. There is much human interest here too: the difficult season last year with sub-standard balls (a problem now seemingly solved) and the moving story of Walter, an Auschwitz survivor, who came up with the recipe for the polish that is used for the balls.
If you care at all about writing on the game, as always you can’t afford to miss this, although - and sorry to end on a carping note - I was left wondering if Dan Crowley’s rather colourless piece on the MCG and Aramco sponsorship, which won the Wisden writing award in 2022, was the best what the rest of the bunch must have been like.
My favourites this year:
Gideon Haigh's beautifully written tribute to Shane Warne (Warne's death came after the publication deadline for the 2022 edition).
A touching, enlightening memoir from Neil Harvey, the last surviving 'invincible' from the 1948 Australian side. Amongst many wonderful details I loved the story of him and Sam Loxton being sent out to open the batting to get the 122 needed to beat Surrey, with the rest of the team departing for the Wimbledon Men's Final at the same time. Needless to say they got the runs.
Jonathan Liew's very astute piece on Eoin Morgan. He is really good on the aura of Morgan and (he doesn't quite use these words) how it became almost Svengaliesque towards the end.
David Frith's illuminating article on SF Barnes, based on a less than relaxed meeting with a slightly cantankerous old man, although Barnes of course always had a reputation for difficulty throughout his career. But what a bowler. Frith casually drops in some league bowling figures - 8 for 8 one week, 10 for 14 the next, but his test record in only 27 matches was almost as noteworthy.
James Wallace writes easily the most informative article I have ever read on cricket ball production where he interviews Dilip Jajodi, the owner of British Cricket Balls Ltd who make the Dukes ball. There is much human interest here too: the difficult season last year with sub-standard balls (a problem now seemingly solved) and the moving story of Walter, an Auschwitz survivor, who came up with the recipe for the polish that is used for the balls.
If you care at all about writing on the game, as always you can’t afford to miss this, although - and sorry to end on a carping note - I was left wondering if Dan Crowley’s rather colourless piece on the MCG and Aramco sponsorship, which won the Wisden writing award in 2022, was the best what the rest of the bunch must have been like.
September 3, 2023
Under Booth it has largely shed its fusty, establishment biases and is significantly increasing its coverage of the women's and global game. It carries a range of range of engaging articles that often provoke the ire of the woke-hunters. Which suits me just fine. As usual, it normally takes the bulk of the season to read it.
April 22, 2023
The definitive annual of the cricket year.
May 25, 2023
I’m never terribly sure why anyone reviews the annual edition of this book. Everyone knows what it is, and how it’s laid out (notes from the author, articles from the great and good about certain cricketing topics, followed by page after page of statistics on the English and International cricket in the 2022-23 cricket year in this case). This year is no different.
You’re a certain type of collector/stats nerd if you buy and/or read this book. You’ll enjoy this as a stats nerd if you’re said stats nerd. If you’ve read previous editions before, and enjoyed them, you’ll enjoy this book. If you’re starting out on your cricketing journey, it’s expensive, perhaps have a skim through it first to see if it’s really for your cup of tea.
You’re a certain type of collector/stats nerd if you buy and/or read this book. You’ll enjoy this as a stats nerd if you’re said stats nerd. If you’ve read previous editions before, and enjoyed them, you’ll enjoy this book. If you’re starting out on your cricketing journey, it’s expensive, perhaps have a skim through it first to see if it’s really for your cup of tea.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews