Fun in a time of plethora

Wisden Anthology 1978-2006: Cricket's Age of Revolution Edited by Stephen Moss (Wisden, hb, 1309pp) £40

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In one of the chatty asides that enliven this ambitious anthology Stephen Moss remarks: "'From Norman Preston to Atomic Kitten' would I think, be quite an engaging - and evocative - title for this volume." Preston presided over the Almanack in a period when, as Moss notes, Wisden "could never quite understand why South Africa had been excluded from international competition" and "when the sport was deemed to have some godlike quality that should not be besmirched by controversy, self interest, or money". As for Atomic Kitten, m'lud, you will recall they were the pop group who performed at Trent Bridge during the inaugural Twenty20 Cup finals day.

Certainly this jeu d'esprit would have been preferable to the ponderous subtitle Cricket's Age of Revolution. My heart sank when the editor spelt out the publisher's brief in his preface: "to make this not just a compendium of facts and figures, a jumble of memories, but a coherent picture of a sport that has been transformed in the past 30 years. Like the game itself, the book must be fun - but fun with a purpose". In the event the fun and jumble of memories are plenty to be going on with. So many of the 'issues' have acquired an awful staleness.

Richie Benaud's foreword, a paean to Kerry Packer, is a case of history being written by the victors. I preferred his pithy tally of Tests he has witnessed and his appreciation of Keith Miller, "who managed to be a great cricketer and a star at the same time". Yet it would be churlish not to cheer Wisden coming off the fence upon which the craven ICC has placed itself over Zimbabwe. Tim de Lisle described the black armband protest by Henry Olonga and Andy Flower as "a shining moment in the game's history" and the current editor Matthew Engel has been a noble advocate of 'Don't play cricket with monsters'.

Among the well-chosen illustrations I was struck by the photograph of Michael Holding kicking down the stumps after an appeal was turned down during West Indies' fractious tour of New Zealand in 1979-80. The caption contains the withering phrase "later a respected TV commentator". I also found my blood pressure shooting up when reading Martin Johnson's essay on David Gower below - the best thing in the book - in accord with his contention that "it is a matter more for anger than sadness that he was prematurely lost to the game".

Gooch and 'sergeant-major' Stewart (MJ) should surely never be forgiven for curtailing Gower's Test career and it nettled me that Moss should categorise the bewigged press-up bore as a "great" batsman above Gower, who incidentally has a higher Test average than Goochie.

The row over Gower's exclusion is a surprising omission, as is the absence of any reference to Alistair Brown's amazing 268 in a C&G game against Glamorgan, a world record that has not received remotely enough recognition. But this indefatigable editor has done a splendid job. He has an acute eye for the quirky detail (such as Patsy Hendren wearing a helmet, made by his wife, in the 1930s) and a nice sense of humour. How right he is to give the lie to that absurd phrase "out without troubling the scorers".

There is immense pleasure to be had from these pages. My favourite pieces include John Woodcock's well-rounded assessment of EW Swanton; Mike Brearley's perceptive analyses of Alan Knott and John Arlott (as Moss observes, Brearley could have been one of the great cricket correspondents); Donald Woods' study of the black players ignored by South Africa; and David Hopps' affectionate tribute to Nancy Doyle, the Lord's cook. The obituaries linger long in the memory - Colin Milburn, who was 28 when he lost his eye, and Ben Hollioake, who died, as Moss puts it, "unbearably young", aged 24.