by John Wisden
JOHN WISDEN & CO
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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WISDEN CRICKETERS’ ALMANACK
Editor Lawrence Booth
Co-editor Hugh Chevallier
Deputy editors Steven Lynch and Harriet Monkhouse
Assistant editor James Coyne
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Chief statistician Philip Bailey
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Database and typesetting Stephen Cubitt
Publisher Charlotte Atyeo
Consultant publisher Christopher Lane
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This electronic edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
© John Wisden & Co 2013
Published by John Wisden & Co, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2013
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CONTENTS
Preface
Part One – Wisden’s 150th
Ten Moments in Time
Five Cricketers of 1864-88 by Simon Wilde
What editing Wisden meant to me
The Cricket Reporting Agency by Murray Hedgcock
A production in five acts by Robert Winder
Wisden – a timeline
Engraved in the memory by Rupert Bates
Collecting Wisden by Patrick Kidd
1864 and all that by Hugh Chevallier
Part Two – Comment
Wisden Honours
Notes by the Editor
The KP summer
It’s tough being Kevin by Patrick Collins
KP and Twitter by Jarrod Kimber
Excommunication and reintegration by James Coyne
Tendulkar’s 100 hundreds by Simon Barnes
The fastest spell of all? by Christian Ryan
The hardest decision of my life by Steve Davies
150 years of Yorkshire CCC
No laughing matter by Duncan Hamilton
An old saw cuts no ice by Chris Waters
The Leading Cricketer in the World, 2012
Michael Clarke by Greg Baum
50 years of touring England (and Five Wisden Trophy moments) by Tony Cozier
Christopher Martin-Jenkins 1945–2013
Flowing conversation by Mike Selvey
A bank of happy memories by James Martin-Jenkins
Tom Maynard 1989–2012
United in grief by Steve James
Cricket and corruption: For the better – or worse? by Ed Hawkins
Wisden’s writing competition 2012
Five Cricketers of the Year
Hashim Amla by Neil Manthorp
Nick Compton by Richard Latham
Jacques Kallis by Christopher Martin-Jenkins
Marlon Samuels by Tony Cozier
Dale Steyn by Telford Vice
Farewells
Dravid and Laxman by Rahul Bhattacharya
Andrew Strauss by Scyld Berry
Ricky Ponting by Gideon Haigh
Mark Ramprakash by Barney Ronay
The one-day game: Five decades of hits and giggles by Tanya Aldred
A question of talent by Mike Atherton
Part Three – The Wisden Review
Cricket books, 2012 by John Crace
Cricket in the media, 2012 by Jonathan Liew
Cricket on Eurosport by James Coyne
Cricket and blogs, 2012 by S. A. Rennie
Retirements by Steve James
Cricketana by David Rayvern Allen
Cricket and the weather, 2012 by Philip Eden
Cricket people by Ali Martin
Cricket in the courts in 2012
Cricket and the Laws in 2012 by Fraser Stewart
Chronicle of 2012
One hundred years ago
Fifty years ago
Obituaries
Part Four – English International Cricket
England in 2012 by Stephen Brenkley
England players in 2012 by Lawrence Booth
Pakistan v England in the UAE, 2011-12
Review by John Etheridge
First Test by Derek Pringle
Second Test by George Dobell
Third Test by Paul Newman
Sri Lanka v England, 2011-12
Review by Dean Wilson
First Test by Lawrence Booth
Second Test by Vic Marks
England v West Indies, 2012
Review by Mike Selvey
First Test by Andrew Miller
Second Test by James Coyne
Third Test by Julian Guyer
Oh yeah, Tino by Alan Tyers
England v Australia, 2012
Review by Richard Hobson
England v South Africa, 2012
Review by Simon Wilde
The tough guy toppled by Telford Vice
First Test by Hugh Chevallier
Second Test by Lawrence Booth
Third Test by Steven Lynch
India v England, 2012-13
Review by George Dobell
The repeat performance by Vic Marks
Revenge – and a reality check by Anjali Doshi
First Test by Dean Wilson
Second Test by Gideon Brooks
Third Test by Suresh Menon
Fourth Test by Richard Hobson
Part Five – English Domestic Cricket
LV= County Championship, 2012
Review by Neville Scott
Friends Life T20, 2012
Review by Alan Gardner
The Final by Hugh Chevallier
Clydesdale Bank 40, 2012
Review by Jon Culley
The Final by James Coyne
Women’s cricket in 2012
European cricket in 2012
Cricket in Ireland by Ian Callender
Cricket in Scotland by William Dick
Cricket in the Netherlands by David Hardy
Part Six – Overseas Cricket
World cricket in 2012 by Simon Wilde
ICC World Twenty20, 2012-13
Review by David Hopps
The Final by Vic Marks
Women’s World Twenty20, 2012-13 by Alison Mitchell
Australia in 2012 by Daniel Brettig
Bangladesh in 2012 by Utpal Shuvro
India in 2012 by Anand Vasu
New Zealand in 2011 by Andrew Alderson
Pakistan in 2012 by Osman Samiuddin
South Africa in 2012 by Colin Bryden
Sri Lanka in 2012 by Sa’adi Thawfeeq
West Indies in 2012 by Tony Cozier
Zimbabwe in 2012 by Mehluli Sibanda
Afghanistan in 2012 by Shahid Hashmi
Women’s cricket in Afghanistan by Tim Wigmore
Canada in 2012 by Faraz Sarwat
Kenya in 2012 by Martin Williamson
Kenya’s Maasai cricketers by Barney Douglas
Cricket Round the World
PREFACE
The American satirist Ambrose Bierce once wrote a review consisting of a single line: “The covers of this book are too far apart.” As far as we know, Wisden escaped his censure, although it may have helped that he appears to have vanished on Boxing Day 1913 in Chihuahua, Mexico – where sales of the Almanack have always been disappointing. I trust Ambrose would have appreciated that the 150th edition was never going to be one of the slimmer volumes. A special Part One marks the milestone, and the Comment section – including Notes by the Editor – now makes up Part Two.
For the sake of simplicity after a year in which England played bilateral series against five different opponents, we have included all their matches in one section, so there is no longer any need to jump around to piece together the chronology; since recent editions have included special Ashes sections, this seemed like the logical next step.
The cover has been tweaked too, with pride of place given to the Eric Ravilious wood engraving that first appeared on Wisden 75 years ago. The familiar photo jacket will return next year.
Wisden has adapted in other ways. The first Wisden India Almanack, edited by Suresh Menon, was published in December, and this year has already included the launch of The Nightwatchman, a new quarterly magazine. Along with our regular online publication, Wisden EXTRA, it means the long-form writing that is central to Wisden is now more available, all year round, than ever.
The compilation of Wisden 2013 required another frighteningly dedicated team effort. Hugh Chevallier, our co-editor, was a beacon of strength and sagacity; deputy editors Harriet Monkhouse and Steven Lynch were their tireless, eagle-eyed selves; assistant editor James Coyne was indispensable. Christopher Lane deserves special mention for his contributions to the 150th section.
At Bloomsbury, my thanks go to Charlotte Atyeo and Richard Charkin for trusting us to get on with the job. Peter Bather processed proofs with his customary good humour, and Stephen Cubitt and Mike Hatt typeset as diligently as ever. Thanks, too, to Philip Bailey for his painstaking statistical work, and to Lee Clayton and Les Snowdon on the Daily Mail sports desk for allowing me once more to sink so many hours into Wisden. Natasha Fletcher was a constant source of support.
Among this year’s pages are reflections of the future and the past. For the first time, Wisden is publishing the best article received from a reader – a competition we hope will become a tradition. We are confident the much-missed Christopher Martin-Jenkins would have approved, and are honoured to be able to run one of CMJ’s final pieces, his appreciation of Jacques Kallis, at last a Cricketer of the Year. One institution on another: it felt about right for the 150th.
LAWRENCE BOOTH
Earlsfield, March 2013
WISDEN’S TEN MOMENTS IN TIME
And the game changed for ever
Which of W. G. Grace’s feats was the most resounding? And which aspect of Twenty20’s gold rush best captured its impact on the modern game? These were the kinds of questions to which Wisden hoped to find a convincing answer when it chose the ten most seminal moments in the years spanning the Almanack’s 150 editions. The list that emerged contains some that will come as a surprise: among readers who entered our competition to guess the ten, no one managed more than six. But then consensus would have spoiled the fun.
We stipulated that a moment could not be an era – though an era could be sparked by a moment, which we interpreted loosely, to avoid the reduction of everything ad absurdum and so awarding pride of place to the Big Bang. So West Indies’ 15-year reign didn’t count, but the series which triggered it – their thrashing by Australia in 1975-76 – did. And we made a plea for “lasting resonance”. Don Bradman’s duck in his final Test innings in 1948 felt like a one-off shock; Bodyline, a tactic designed to tame him, reached beyond the skeleton of statistics and deep into cricket’s bone marrow. Few entrants were brave enough to omit it.
Otherwise, the Wisden team were guided by judgment and a little gut instinct. Who changed batting for ever: Grace in 1871 or Bradman in 1930? We went for Grace, who – as Ranjitsinhji explained – invented an entire methodology, of which Bradman would become the most ruthless exemplar. Was the first Gillette Cup in 1963 more significant for one-day cricket than India’s 1983 World Cup win? We thought so, but only just.
Or did this clash with the choice of the Indian Premier League’s first auction, in 2008, ahead of Twenty20’s appearance on the county scene in 2003? We deferred to impact: in 1963, part of an otherwise forgettable decade for cricket, the Gillette Cup stood out; but the gates to Twenty20 mega-wealth opened widest at the IPL auctions, rather than five years earlier around the shires.
After Bodyline, readers’ most common picks were Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket, the Oval Test of 1882 that spawned the sport’s greatest and oldest rivalry (though it seems Wisden did not refer to the “Ashes” until the late 1920s), the Basil D’Oliveira affair, and the exposure as a cheat of Hansie Cronje. Many others failed to make the cut, though no individual wore more hats than Sachin Tendulkar (Old Trafford 1990, the first double-century in one-day internationals, 100 hundreds, and so on). In fact, Tendulkar does feature – as the victim of the first TV run-out – but, for our purposes, individuals were secondary to moments, not vice versa.
The three readers who came closest to matching our choice in the competition trailed in Wisden 2012 were Annette Rabaiotti from London, Richard Kemp from Leeds, and Peter Handford from Western Australia. They each win a £100 voucher to spend on sports books published by Bloomsbury. Twenty-five runners-up each receive a copy of the Fire in Babylon DVD.
THE TEN MOMENTS
W. G. Grace (1871)
The Oval (1882)
Bodyline (1932-33)
The Gillette Cup (1963)
Basil D’Oliveira (1968)
Australia 5 West Indies 1 (1975-76)
World Series Cricket (1977-78)
Technology’s entrance (1992-93)
Hansie Cronje (2000)
The IPL auction (2008)
1871: W. G. Grace rewrites the record books
At first, bowlers held the upper hand in first-class cricket, helped by rough, almost unprepared pitches. Then came WG. He had hinted at exceptional talent, but in 1871, the year he turned 23, Grace reshaped the game. No one had previously made 2,000 runs in a season. Now he made 2,739, a record that stood for 25 years. The next-best was Harry Jupp’s 1,068, and of the 17 first-class centuries that year, WG made ten. Batting was never quite the same again.
Grace buried the quaint notion that scoring on the leg side was ungentlemanly. He batted in a way we would recognise today: usually a decisive movement forward or back, bat close to pad, although he was also a master of what Ranjitsinhji called a “half-cock stroke”, which we would probably term playing from the crease. In his Jubilee Book of Cricket, Ranji wrote: “He revolutionised cricket, turning it from an accomplishment into a science... He turned the old one-stringed instrument into a many-chorded lyre, a wand... Until his time, a man was either a back player like Carpenter or a forward player like Pilch, a hitter like E. H. Budd or a sticker like Harry Jupp. But W. G. Grace was each and all at once.” STEVEN LYNCH
From Wisden 1872: MCC and Ground v Surrey at Lord’s
In cold dry weather this match was played out in two days, MCC and G the winners by an innings and 23 runs. There was some superb batting by both Mr W. Grace and Jupp; in fact, it is the opinion of many that the 181 by Mr Grace and the 85 by Jupp in this match are their most skilful and perfect displays of batting on London grounds in 1871. Mr Grace was first man in at 12.10; when the score was 164 for four wickets Mr Grace had made exactly 100 runs; when he had made 123 he gave a hot – a very
hot – chance to short square leg, but he gave no other chance; he was much hurt by a ball bowled by Skinner when he had made 180, and at 181 Southerton bowled him, he being fifth man out with the score at 280. Mr Grace’s “timing” and “placing” the ball in this innings was truly wonderful cricket; he appeared to hit “all round” just where he chose to, and placing a field for his hit was as useless as were the bowler’s efforts to bowl to him. Mr Grace’s hits included a great on-drive past the pavilion for six, four fives (all big drives), and 11 fours.
1882: The Ashes are born
The history of England v Australia, the mother of all Test series, was first distilled into a minuscule urn-shaped vessel, then pressure-cooked to create a hyper-contest for the 21st century. But time and distance cannot diminish the role played in the creation myth by a single game. The Oval 1882 was a microcosm of the tension that has never left the Ashes.
Australia’s indomitability was summed up by their first-day recovery from 30 for six and Fred Spofforth’s demonic bowling – inspired, legend has it, by W. G. Grace’s caddish run-out of Sammy Jones. More than 2,000 Tests have taken place since, but Australia’s seven-run victory remains in the top ten tightest wins.
The paroxysms of the umbrella-gnawing spectator resonate with fans on all sides of all sporting divides, as does the Sporting Times’s mock obituary shortly afterwards, the first truly memorable example of English cricket’s gallows humour. England had lost to Australia before, but only ever while out of sight, out of mind, on the other side of the globe. This was an awakening in every sense. A rivalry that, according to the newspaper, was dead as soon as it began would attain a life of its own. ANDREW MILLER