The Shorter Wisden 2013

by John Wisden

  In another game at Castle Hedingham, with his wife Tirzah (a talented artist herself) “in charge of the strawberries and cream”, Ravilious talked of hitting three sixes. “It is, you might say, one of the pleasures of life, hitting a six.”

  A shy man, but amusing and invariably cheerful, Ravilious enjoyed the Bohemian company of his artistic friends, who talked of his “Pan-like charm” and the sense that he was always “slightly somewhere else” – no doubt sketching in his head at fine leg, whistling “Better than a Nightingale” below his boater, oblivious to the ball heading his way. Yet it seems no other cricket theme danced on his easel or wood block. Instead, there is a rich and varied output of beautifully observed landscapes, street scenes, ceramic designs for Wedgwood – including a mug to commemorate the coronation of King George VI – and, in his last years, images of war. The Daily Telegraph called his death “the greatest artistic loss Britain suffered in the Second World War”. And in 2011, the art critic of The Observer, Laura Cumming, called him “the lost genius of British art”.

  Ravilious saw only five of the Almanacks to carry his engraving. Yet his work – in many ways a distillation of Englishness – lives on.

  Rupert Bates, a sports and property writer, is Eric Ravilious’s great-nephew.

  COLLECTING WISDEN

  Volume control

  PATRICK KIDD

  Like kisses and cars, everyone remembers their first Wisden – and few people stick at just one. Who does not feel the thrill of dipping into an ancient volume and reading of tales, famous or obscure? I still recall the delight when I bought the 1977 Almanack, looked up what Essex were doing on the day I was born, and saw that, not only did a young G. A. Gooch, my boyhood hero, make a century, but their opener, who made 40, was my future form tutor, M. S. A. McEvoy.

  As a Wisden collector, though, I am a rank amateur, with a set going back no further than 1950. I look with envy at those who own eight yards’ worth of Almanacks, from the fragile early softbacks, through the chocolate hardbacks, the salmon-pink cloth covers and, since 1965, the familiar yellow and brown dust jackets, whose colouring always makes me think of streaks of yeast extract over the lid of a Marmite jar.

  To build a full collection now, especially in good condition, is costly. Tim Knight, of Knight’s Sporting Auctions in Norwich, estimates a complete set would cost £300,000, but could fluctuate wildly, depending on quality. “Condition is everything,” he says. “I’ve seen 1900 hardbacks differ by a couple of thousand pounds.” Knight says the type of book also matters: “In 2008 we sold an 1896, the first year Wisden was in hardback, for £22,000. Exactly the same book with soft covers can be bought for a few hundred.”

  Sir Tim Rice, the lyricist, bought a complete set from Surrey cricket bookseller John McKenzie in the early 1970s for £750, using what he calls “my ill-gotten gains” from the musical Jesus Christ Superstar. “I was fairly relaxed about such a serious investment,” he says now; the Sunday Times described the purchase as “little short of insanity”.

  Few in those days cared about collecting a shelf-load of reference books. McKenzie had bought his own full set at Sotheby’s a year or two earlier for £420. “I keep them out of sentimentality,” he says. “They’re the only ones I won’t sell.” He was aware of one set around that time, not complete but with every Wisden from 1879, going for just £66.

  “People just didn’t want to know about cricket,” McKenzie says. “Booksellers would store them in warehouses.” In 1981, after the Wisden market started to boom, he optimistically tried to sell an entire set for £10,000. “I couldn’t get a bid. Now you can get that for one edition.” His 2012 catalogue featured a rebacked 1869 for £18,000, an 1866 with original soiled wrapper for £12,000, and a 1916, which contains the obituaries of W. G. Grace, Victor Trumper and the poet Rupert Brooke, for £8,000.

  The first Wisden cost one shilling. The same book would now set you back at least £20,000 – or almost £180 a page. The 1875, which had a shorter print run than previous years, is also highly cherished. Wartime Almanacks are at a premium, especially 1941, when only 800 hardback copies were printed. Of the post-war years, 1971 can sell for up to £100 because fewer copies were printed: a paper shortage didn’t help, but it was also thought England’s series the previous summer against a Rest of the World XI, who stepped in for the ostracised South Africans, would entice fewer readers.

  The Wisden market peaked from 2004 to 2009. “That was very buoyant,” Knight says. “It has maybe dropped a little, but the market is holding up well. If anything is recession-proof, it may be Wisdens.”

  The collectors are a curious fraternity: obsessive, pernickety and knowledgable but also, in the main, supportive of each other. Many seasoned collectors mentor newer members of the tribe, helping them to understand what to pay and where to find rare editions.

  Chris Ridler started collecting in earnest in 2005, when a family member gave him a 1950 hardback to supplement a collection he had built back to 1976. Early on, he sold some shares and went to an auction with £60,000 to spend. “I was outbid on everything but an 1891,” he recalls. After that, he made it his business to study the market properly. “The most important part about collecting is knowing which books are rare,” he says. He also advises never to buy a hardback after 1965 without a dust jacket: “You’ll only end up buying the original one day, and then have a spare that no one wants.”

  Ridler completed his full set in September 2010 with the purchase of his second 1875 copy. He had sold the first, when there were still a few gaps in his collection, for a record eBay price of £15,000 to fund a website, www.wisdenauction.com, where collectors can seek and trade copies. He upgrades his copies when he finds better-quality ones. “I went from paperbacks to hardbacks, then to those in top-notch condition,” he says. A lot of the early ones were rebound, and Ridler is ten original covers short. “They were really fragile,” he says. “The books were only 1cm wide and they fell apart.”

  He envies those who started earlier and could get bargains. Ridler, who has studied dealers’ catalogues going back 35 years, says that in the early 1980s one dealer sold a softback 1896 for £65 and a hardback of the same year for £90. “Today a paperback would be worth £400 and the hardback £25,000,” he says. “You wouldn’t want to be the person who chose to save £25.”

  One of his favourite copies is from 1941. He had been bidding on this rarity on eBay but, as the auction neared its end, he had to attend an antenatal class. Asking his mentor to help out, Ridler instructed him to go up to £650 and was delighted to win the auction for £620. The book was then lost in the post.

  Devastated, Ridler did at least get his money back, but for his next birthday his wife, Catherine, found another copy as a surprise present. The record fetched at auction for a 1941 was £2,300 in 2007, but Ridler will not sell the copy his wife bought, even though he has since acquired a better-condition one for £1,200. Ridler needed a friend again to complete his set: he was umpiring in a club match as the 1875 edition was auctioned. At tea, he switched on his phone to discover he had paid £12,000. An 1875, rebound without covers, sold in December 2012 for £22,500.

  Sometimes people pay a premium for sets with special provenance. Sir Pelham Warner’s bound set, given to him by Wisden – the company – as a wedding present, sold for £7,800 at auction in 1980, while W. G. Grace’s set of the first 38 Wisdens fetched £94,000 in 1996. The set in the MCC library was acquired in 1944 from the estate of Sir Julien Cahn, the eccentric philanthropist, who had been given the books up to 1931 by cricket historian F. S. Ashley-Cooper.

  Occasionally you come across individual Almanacks that once had an important owner. The most famous is E. W. Swanton’s 1939 edition, stamped “not subversive”, that sustained him for three and a half years in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, and is now in the Lord’s museum.

  Ridler’s collection includes editions owned by John Arlott (1864) and George Duckworth (1933), a 1936 signed from Wilfrid Brookes to Norman Preston
(the seventh and tenth editors), and a 1941 signed from Hubert Preston (the ninth) to a young Reg Hayter, the cricket journalist.

  There are Wisden collectors all around the world. Darren Harold from New Zealand says the internet has made it possible for him to build a collection, although the postal costs are immense. “Being overseas, I can’t just pop into a second-hand bookshop to browse, and there are very few Wisden collectors in New Zealand, so most of my buying is from the UK,” he says. Like Ridler, he uses a mentor.

  Harold admits that, when he was young and devouring biographies of his favourite cricketers, he had no interest in the Almanacks: “I figured Wisdens were bed-time reading for British anoraks. But one day I flicked through a copy at a book sale. I was hooked – the words brought contests to life.”

  He began his collection with a boxful bought off an elderly man who was going into a rest home, and he now has a complete set back to 1921. He is less worried about quality, though. “It’s about the cricket for me, not the cover,” he says. The oddest volume he owns is a 1963 centenary edition bound in psychedelic pink.

  Everyone has their own motivations for building a collection, but perhaps the most important advice Ridler can give a collector is to actually read the books, which he does regularly, even taking them on flights. “After completing my set, I picked up my 1864 and started to read it,” he says. “It was quite nerve-racking to open a book that cost £11,000, but it seems a waste just to keep them on the shelves.”

  Patrick Kidd writes for The Times. He bought his first Wisden in 1995.

  1864 AND ALL THAT

  A foreign country

  HUGH CHEVALLIER

  The original Wisden was an eccentric little volume. Only 85 or so of the book’s 116 pages were devoted solely to cricket. In the main, these contained scorecards from remarkable matches played over the previous 50 or 60 years. The first card that readers encountered, on page 27, was of a match from 1855 – nine years earlier – in which the Earl of Winterton’s Shillinglee side dismissed the 2nd Royal Surrey Militia for nought. Also in Wisden’s first offering were the Laws of Cricket, dates of various players’ first games at Lord’s, and “long scores” (centuries) hit in “great matches” since 1850.

  But the volume’s principal eccentricity lay either side of that crickety core. The first 12 pages were taken up by a calendar of notable dates and phases of the moon, so justifying the term almanack (in which such information was traditionally found). Some of these calendar entries had a cricketing bent: February 15 recalled a match on ice in 1838, while modesty did not prevent July 15 celebrating the day “John Wisden bowled all the wickets in the 2d in. of the South, in the match at Lord’s, North v South” – though there was not enough room to mention it had happened in 1850. Some had little sporting connection: “Papal supremacy destroyed by Act of Parliament, 1559” declared April 8. Sometimes it was hard to tell: “Israel Haggis, of Cambridge, b. 1811”, read January 23.

  Meanwhile, several of the last 15 pages – despite a notice “to the Reader” that complained of “the confined nature of an Almanack” – were given over to wide-ranging trivia. These ran an unlikely course, from notable dates in the history of China (“the opium dispute commenced, 1834”) to the “brass bell weighing 17cwt… cleft by the hammer while ringing, from the effect of the severe frost on January 4, 1861”. And in the spirit of those trivia, Wisden 2013 here presents its own eclectic collection of abstruse facts, illustrating how the world has changed since the first editions were offered for sale.

  Also in 1864…

  Five pirates were publicly hanged at Newgate prison… an explosion at a gunpowder depot at Erith on the south bank of the Thames killed at least eight and was felt as far away as Cambridge and Guildford… and war finally resolved the Schleswig–Holstein question (that had famously perplexed so many).

  Wisden Honours

  THE LEADING CRICKETER IN THE WORLD

  Michael Clarke

  The Leading Cricketer in the World is chosen by the editor of Wisden in consultation with some of the world’s most experienced cricket writers and commentators. The selection is based on a player’s class and form shown in all cricket during the calendar year, and is merely guided by statistics rather than governed by them. There is no limit to how many times a player may be chosen.

  FIVE CRICKETERS OF THE YEAR

  Hashim Amla

  Nick Compton

  Jacques Kallis

  Marlon Samuels

  Dale Steyn

  The Five Cricketers of the Year are chosen by the editor of Wisden, and represent a tradition that dates back to 1889, making this the oldest individual award in cricket. Excellence in and/or influence on the previous English summer are the major criteria for inclusion as a Cricketer of the Year. No one can be chosen more than once.

  WISDEN SCHOOLS CRICKETER OF THE YEAR

  Thomas Abell

  The Schools Cricketer of the Year, based on first-team performances during the previous English summer, is chosen by Wisden’s schools correspondent in consultation with the editor of Wisden and other experienced observers of schools cricket. The winner’s school must be in the UK, play cricket to a standard approved by Wisden’s schools correspondent and provide reports to this Almanack.

  WISDEN BOOK OF THE YEAR

  Bookie Gambler Fixer Spy by Ed Hawkins

  The Book of the Year is selected by Wisden’s guest reviewer; all cricket books published in the previous calendar year and submitted to Wisden for possible review are eligible.

  WISDEN–MCC CRICKET PHOTOGRAPH OF THE YEAR

  was won by Anthony Au-Yeung

  The Wisden–MCC Cricket Photograph of the Year is chosen by a panel of independent experts; all images on a cricket theme photographed in the previous calendar year are eligible.

  Full details of past winners of all these honours can be found at www.wisden.com

  NOTES BY THE EDITOR

  On an overcast, late August afternoon in the ECB’s clean-cut offices at Lord’s, English cricket tried to put a brave face on a miserable month. Andrew Strauss looked wistful but resolute as he resigned the captaincy following the loss of a Test series and the No. 1 ranking, both to South Africa. Beside him sat Alastair Cook, in the same sensible grey suit that spoke of a very British response to a crisis, of keeping calm and carrying on. Kevin Pietersen hovered in spirit, if not in person. And next up for the Test team was a tour of India, perhaps the last place to sort out a domestic. As the room filled with uncharitable thoughts of a hospital pass from a man who played fly-half at university, Cook did well not to drop the ball.

  Things were about to get worse. After flunking their World Twenty20 defence in Sri Lanka (though without Cook), England were thrashed in the First Test at Ahmedabad, leaving them one defeat away from matching the record eight they had suffered in 1984, 1986 and 1993, an era when English summers were nothing without a fiasco or three. Exasperatingly, they were being made to look fools by Asia’s spinners yet again. Would someone please change the record? Did anyone even know how?

  Even now, the answers seem implausible. In a heady fortnight, England won at Mumbai, then Kolkata. Soon, Christmas was coming early: on December 17, in a wood-panelled conference room at the Vidarbha Cricket Association Stadium in Nagpur, Cook could finally relax. A turgid draw had secured a 2–1 win, instantly established his authority and drawn some sort of line under the year’s traumas. Crisis management wasn’t supposed to be this straightforward.

  England have won Test series from unpromising positions before: the Ashes of 1954-55, 1981 and 2005; India in 1984-85 and Sri Lanka in 2000-01. But there may never have been a set of circumstances so loaded in the opposition’s favour. Others would have battened down the hatches and waited for spring. Cook came out fighting, bloody-minded but with a clarity of thought, taking on India’s slow bowlers with a more open stance, lighter footwork and straighter hitting. Only freak occurrences could stop him: a first-over stumping, a first-ever run-out, a pair of ump
iring gaffes.

  In the course of three hundreds, a trio to rank with any by an England cricketer, he grew into a leader of men – first equalling, then breaking, the national record of 22 centuries in Tests, which seemed to have stood since biblical times. Throw in the 2010-11 Ashes, and he had now scored 1,328 runs at an average of 102, with six hundreds, in England’s two most significant away wins of the modern era. For once, Bradmanesque felt not like a cliché, but the only adjective up to the job.

  As with all good captains, Cook coaxed and cajoled. Matt Prior fed off his defiance during the follow-on at Ahmedabad. At Mumbai, Pietersen – now cock of the walk, not elephant in the room – compiled his own third hall-of-fame innings of the year, after Colombo and Headingley. Monty Panesar, mistakenly omitted at first, settled into a mesmeric groove. James Anderson and Steven Finn found reverse swing in Kolkata. Graeme Swann chipped away, troubling not merely left-handers. By the time Jonathan Trott and Ian Bell were grinding out hundreds at Nagpur, England had rediscovered the joys of team spirit.

  Victory in India was as stirring as it was unexpected, for earlier in the year there had been a damning hint of the malaise that struck after 2005. By their own admission, England were complacent at the start of 2012 in the UAE against Pakistan. And in the First Test against Sri Lanka at Galle in March, they tested out Einstein’s definition of insanity, sweeping straight balls again and again while appearing to expect a different result. After brushing aside West Indies in the first part of the summer, they were then outclassed by South Africa, who spent the year establishing themselves as the world’s best Test team, and the start of 2013 confirming it.