Simply the best and biggest

"O, call back yesterday, bid time return." So says a character in Shakespeare's Richard II, implying it is a vain impossibility. But Shakespeare, sadly, did not have access to Wisden. And what is great and glorious about this year's Almanack is that it enables one to call back yesterday and relive every moment of last year's golden Ashes summer. Shedding all equivocations, editor Matthew Engel says: "This was The Greatest. The 2005 Ashes series surpassed every previous series in cricket history on just about any indicator you choose." And who would argue with that?

While fulfilling its obligations to world cricket, the euphoric 143rd Wisden is inevitably dominated by the Ashes. Andrew Flintoff beats Shane Wane by a close-shaven head to the annual title of Leading Cricketer in the World. And the excellent essays on the Five Cricketers of the Year - Matthew Hoggard, Simon Jones, Brett Lee, Kevin Pietersen and Ricky Ponting - all shed retrospective light on the Ashes series. David Hopps reminds us that Hoggard by the end of summer had the best strike-rate of all of the world's top Test bowlers in 2005: one wicket every 38 balls. Paul Hayward, having dubbed Pietersen "cricket's first rock-star", also implies that the natural, freeflowing talent that produced 473 runs in five Tests finally matters far more than the skunk hairdo and the celebrity dating.

But what makes this a Wisden to treasure is that England's Ashes triumph is viewed from so many varied perspectives. Simon Hughes, freed from the Danteesque gloom of the Channel 4 van, offers 10 cogent reasons why England won. Intriguingly, he gives most space to Vaughan's proactive, as against Ricky Ponting's inactive, captaincy: as one of the lucky ones present on that Trent Bridge Sunday, I was astonished at the way it was Warne rather than Ponting who dictated the tempo, geed up fellow-players and even seemed to take responsibility for field placings.

Every single writer, however, sheds light on the Ashes series whether from a cricketing, social or economic viewpoint. Scyld Berry rightly points to the fearlessness of the England side, arguing that, "if they had not been so young, fresh and unscathed, England would not have crossed Niagara without looking down". Quentin Letts wittily records the British media's overnight cricketing frenzy while Malcolm Knox poignantly reminds us that Kerry Packer's Nine Network opted out of showing the series and that it took until September 10 for the Oz press to work out the intricacies of reverse swing; and that was some time before the players.

But perhaps the mostsignificant article is Roland Watson's on the economic impact of the series: cricket equipment sales went through the roof with Woodworm alone selling 20,000 bats in the post-September ecstasy. Out of the Ashes cricket-fever rose like a phoenix - which reminds me that Lawrence Booth has a very funny piece on the pervasiveness of cricketing clichés.

Of course, there is more to any Wisden than a single series. And Engel has done a superb job in reflecting cricket's multiple facets. Gideon Haigh - who wins the Wisden Book of the Year Award for his Ashes 2005 - has a fascinating piece on the rise of the coach from Bob Simpson to Duncan Fletcher, suggesting it has been driven by a mixture of team failure and TV analysis. Osman Samiuddin illuminatingly shows how a shared Muslim faith, even more than the presence of Bob Woolmer, has helped to unite a habitually fractious Pakistan side. And the inter-penetration of cricket and religion is explored in a particularly fine obituary of David Sheppard (why cannot the longer obits be signed?) which records how in 1954 the then Archbishop of Canterbury urged him to defer ordination to bring "moral decisiveness" back into English cricket.

Any niggles? Only one actually. In his characteristically incisive Editor's Notes (full of exhilarating ICC-bashing), Engel continues his assault on the divided aims of county cricket which last year he dubbed "increasingly unwatchable and pointless". Much may be wrong with the structure of county cricket where, as Stephen Fay points out, power is gradually passing from members and elected committees to executive managers. But the Almanack's own county reports highlight people like Alastair Cook, Owais Shah and Monty Panesar who this winter all graduated smoothly, even brilliantly, to the national side. And Robin Martin-Jenkins has a thoughtful, back-of-the-book piece knocking on the head Steve Rixon's warped vision of much county cricket as a "cesspool of mediocrity". As England's recent results show, it is more talent pool than cesspool.

But one last hurrah. Wisden this year appears in both its traditional, chunky, door-stopper size and a new large-format, special edition. The former remains portable, indispensable and ideal for stuffing in the brief-case. But, for reading at home, the large-format edition is a godsend. I found I could balance it on my knees and my desk without breaking either and I pray that a one-off experiment becomes a permanent feature. The new Wisden is not only, for its celebratory analysis of the Ashes series, one of the best ever. It is also, in its alternative format, revolutionary in its easy readability.