This year's Almanack may leave you feeling disgruntled and bitter

"It's the most wonderful time of the year," Andy Williams tells us. He was singing, erroneously, about Christmas, which, as any northern-hemisphere fool knows, is dark, miserable, costly and equidistant from the start and end of the English cricket season. It is the most wretched time of the year. Nonetheless, his song always comes to mind when the postman rings the doorbell to hand over the dense yellow brick that heralds the start of a new season.

This brick has become increasingly difficult to decipher without powerful reading glasses, as the morbid failings of the human condition wreak accelerated havoc on eyes and body. It may be, with the possible exception of Test cricket, the threats to which it highlights with commendable and almost fanatical assiduousness, the most user-unfriendly interface in the known world. It is five centimetres thick and only 17 centimetres tall, subjecting the devoted reader to frequent bouts of cramp in the hands as they flick from the index at the front to sections on international cricket 900 pages away. But, like inevitable decrepitude, it has been forever thus, and like Test cricket, no less admirable for it.

This year's edition of Wisden is, though, a tremendous disappointment. A disappointment to those who relish complaining about who has not been named one of the Five Cricketers of the Year. A disappointment to those who claim that Wisden has stopped speaking truth to power, or that it doesn't acknowledge women's cricket, or that it ignores T20 and the Associate nations. And a huge disappointment to that certain type of Virat Kohli fan who spends their life infuriated that Kohli is not getting enough accolades.

So let's get the housekeeping out of the way. Kohli was named one of those Five Cricketers of the Year, along with Jos Buttler, Rory Burns, Sam Curran and Tammy Beaumont. Given that the title is awarded for impact on the previous English summer season and that no one can win it twice, it's very hard to argue with editor Lawrence Booth's choices (disappointingly). Perhaps Mohammad Abbas might have sneaked in, but ahead of whom?

In further fabulous Virat Kohli news, he was named Leading Cricketer in the World for the third year running. Again, no controversy there. His fans might, though, be vexed by the choice of Rashid Khan for Leading T20 cricketer in the World, but a record 96 wickets in the calendar year proved too much even for Kohli to overcome. Smriti Mandhana is Leading Woman Cricketer and Geoff Lemon's masterful autopsy of #sandpapergate, Steve Smith's Men, was rightly awarded Book of the Year. (I'd have given it to him solely for the sandpaper effect with which the title is embossed on the front cover, but that's why they don't put me on judging panels.)

The articles that adorn the "Comments" section continue to be excellent under the stewardship of Booth. Raf Nicholson's summary of the England women's tour to Australia in 1948-49, drawing heavily on team manager and cigar aficionado Netta Rheinberg's rediscovered diaries, is a gem. Richard Hobson's piece on the 1919 season is a reminder that administrators have been tinkering with cricket's format for years: two-day first-class matches, ending at 7.30pm, were introduced that year (and promptly discarded at the end of the season). The strongest objection was that amateurs should surely not be expected to sit down for dinner at their hotel at 9pm.

Jonathan Liew, in marking the 250th anniversary of the first recorded century (by John Minshull), predictably blows our minds by questioning its worth and pointing out that the ancient Babylonians counted in base 60. Rob Smyth takes an in-depth look at the low-scoring and rather dreary 15-day World Cup of 1979, and there is no one better than Peter Oborne to explore the credentials of Imran Khan as Pakistan PM. Robert Winder's take on the Windrush generation of English cricketers should give us all pause for thought, as should Tanya Aldred's necessary, but depressing, exposé of how administrators continue to ignore the environmental impact of cricket. Given the countries most threatened by climate change form the core of the cricket community, it is a scandal that only three boards (West Indies, New Zealand and England) responded to Aldred's inquiries.

There is the very real danger that we are witnessing a golden age of modernity (if that's not an oxymoron) at Wisden. Booth's own notes are delivered with erudition, vigour and waspishness but mercifully lack the solemn pomposity of some of his predecessors. On The Hundred he opines: "[it] hung over the game like the sword of Damocles, suspended only by the conviction of a suited few". He rejects the analogy with Brexit because "Brexit had plenty of advocates". He fears for the other formats that will be squeezed to accommodate it, and quotes PCA chairman Darryl Mitchell: "if it doesn't work, we're all in trouble."

Read between the lines, and if nothing else you see a PR strategy that has, so far, failed abysmally, as is emphasised in Section 2 by Alex Massie's terrific summary of cricket in the media, where he lists the various journalists (Marina Hyde, George Dobell, Matthew Engel, Vic Marks and Elizabeth Ammon to name a few) whose hearts and minds are yet to be won over.

Inevitably #sandpapergate gets a full airing. Under the heading "Elite Hypocrisy", Booth describes David Warner's "apparent determination to become cricket's answer to life in the Middle Ages: nasty, brutish and short". He continues by asserting that "Australia had been undone by the hubris-nemesis one-two which has kept playwrights in business since Ancient Greece. With their prattle about the line - where it should be drawn (just beyond whatever the Australians had just done) and by whom (the Australians, naturally) - Smith's side forfeited the last drop of goodwill." The theme is taken up by Gideon Haigh, who forensically lists every Australian who lost their job as a result of the fiasco.

There is more, so much more. Alastair Cook's farewell at The Oval is given prominence by Booth in his notes and taken up by both Scyld Berry and Barney Ronay, who wins the best-simile award for this description of Cook's strokeplay: "from cut, to nudge, to block - the highlight that familiar off-side flay, like an arthritic under-gardener swatting a cloud of midges with a broom".

But I will leave you with a final disappointment for a certain type of fan. For the first time, Wisden has accumulated runs, wickets and dismissals across all formats into one list. Graham Gooch heads the runs ahead of Graeme Hick and Jack Hobbs; Wilfred Rhodes is unsurpassable with his 4187 wickets. But guess who has crept up to No. 7 on the list of all-time most prolific wicketkeepers? He is also the highest ranked non-Englishman. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Kamran Akmal.

Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 2019
Edited by Lawrence Booth
Bloomsbury
1536 pages, £35