Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack
edited by Lawrence Booth (John Wisden & Co, £57 hardback, £36 paperback)
ENGLAND cricket is in a mess on and off the field. As a chronicle of the past year in English cricket, Wisden has ample targets for a broadside and Lawrence Booth takes aim in his Editor’s Notes. He surveys a scene in which few people are left at the top of English cricket, sackings having left various roles temporarily empty.
One who remained, due to lack of alternatives, was test captain Joe Root, a good chap, but a poor tactician—his predecessor, Alastair Cook, was from the same template. However, after a losing tour of West Indies (which took place after Wisden went to press), Root, with only one win in his most recent 17 matches as captain, resigned. Of his captaincy, Mr Booth writes witheringly: ‘No tactic was too ill-conceived, no plan too half baked.’ Root is named Wisden’s Leading Cricketer in the World; South African Lizelle Lee is the Leading Woman Cricketer.
There is also this on the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), which fixates on the accumulation of power and profits. The chief executive and other senior staff awarded themselves £2.1 million in bonuses—this after 62 junior staff had been laid off as money was tight—and ‘the attempt to justify the bonus as a fact of corporate life was the soulless logic of the suiterati, who regard cricket as a business not a sport’.
Cricket is facing racism charges, following allegations by former Yorkshire cricketer Azeem Rafiq, a deft media operator. He contributes an article on the matter, as does David Hopps. The ECB’S belated response seems more focused on reputational management. Yorkshire’s new chairman, Lord Patel of Bradford—described by Rafiq as ‘the kind of leader English cricket badly needs’— was called to give evidence on whether Yorkshire cricket was institutionally racist to the House of Commons’ all-white Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee.
Times reporter Mike Atherton writes a thoughtful piece on former Wisden editor John Woodcock, who died last year, aged 94: ‘When Woodcock operated, cricket writers mattered to the game’s authorities more than today, when they are perceived as a nuisance to be tolerated.’ There are selections of Woodcock’s notes, including this from 1981: ‘There are men in cricketing administration today, marketing men whose desire to bring money into the game causes them to trifle with its origins and gamble with its charm.’ Some things do not change. Roderick Easdale