The zen of browsing <i>Wisden</i>
A cornucopia of unbelievable cricket facts hidden in plain sight, that's what is just a click away with the online archives of the Wisden Almanack
Zeeshan Mahmud
16-Jan-2015
In the 1960 Wisden Almanack, Sir Neville Cardus called Godfrey Evans a 'boneless wonder' • Getty Images
A cornucopia of unbelievable cricket facts is hidden in plain sight. With nearly 150 editions of the Wisden Almanack archived online, an aficionado is only a finger-click away from their contents.
The reader may have heard about bibliomancy or divination by books. Well, when muggy weather hits southern California, what's a better way of spending your time than browsing the online editions? This process is richly rewarding. For example, the 1953 edition compiles a list of 'Dates in Cricket History', full of facts such as how it was decreed in 1899 that either umpire could call no ball.
From the 1960 edition you get to know about five stalwarts who retired. Among them is the wicketkeeper Godfrey Evans, with a rather colourful description by Sir Neville Cardus:
"Evans was modern in the almost surrealistic patterns achieved by his motions. He seemed to get to the ball by leaving out physical shapings and adjustments which ordinary human anatomies have to observe. He was a boneless wonder.
"Did he play to the gallery? If he did so the quicksilver snap-dragon leapings, dartings and flickerings of him were second nature. Nobody could pose with Evans's accuracy and get away with it."
In the 1952 edition, you get to read about the nightly ritual of Alec Bedser, whom "not even the most tempting invitation [could induce] to break his self-appointed rule of bed by ten o'clock throughout a Test match."
Lost in the maze of articles you discover that a 25-point penalty can be imposed for unsatisfactory pitches, a testament to the maxim of never giving up in cricket as uncertainty can affect a match anytime, anywhere. In the 1974 obituary of Frank Sibbles, you discover that Cardus - him again - doubted if the Lancashire bowler ever appealed. "He even asks the umpire, puts a question to him, instead of stating a fact."
The serotonin keeps flowing as you dig deeper. In the 1937 Miscellany, you find that in a rain-ruined match in Nottingham, GOB Allen of Middlesex batted on each of the three days for 6 not out, and that his innings occupied all of half an hour. But perhaps even more amazingly:
"In 1836, two professional cricketers, Wenman and Mills, defeated an Isle of Oxney XI at Wittersham, Kent. At the end of that game it was agreed that another of the kind should take place in 100 years time.
"The agreement was fulfilled on September 5, 1936, when Ashdown (Kent) and Wensley (Sussex) comprised the professional team. Oxney batted first, scoring 153; then Wensley (96) and Ashdown (83 not out) made 186, and won by 33 runs."
Then there is the tale of the strange match played at two grounds. That same 1937 edition mentions how a match was stopped at three o' clock after a blow was dealt to the head of a batsman at the Oxford University ground and restarted at the The Parks.
The 1917 edition lets you relive a remarkable spell from a certain Frank Field, for Warwickshire against Worcestershire in 1914.
Sydney Pardon writes: "In taking his six wickets for two runs he received no assistance, three batsmen being bowled, two caught and bowled, and one leg-before-wicket. The feat certainly deserves to be placed in future on the same footing as Pougher's famous five wickets for no runs for MCC and Ground against the Australians at Lord's in 1896, and Peate's eight wickets for five runs for Yorkshire against Surrey at Holbeck, in 1883."
The 1977 obituary of William Albert (Bert) Oldfield reveals how his Test career might easily have finished before it had begun. "A corporal in the 15th Field Ambulance, 15th Brigade, he was buried for several hours during the heavy bombardment of Polygon Wood in 1918 and was barely alive when rescued."
Lost in the pages of the 1952 Almanack, you are startled by the fact that Surrey's Edward Street was twice involved in a tie. Then there is the obituary of William Trumble, who coached his son, the great Australian bowler Hugh Trumble, by placing a feather on the pitch and urging him to hit it.
Even recent editions contain the odd startling fact. The 1994 edition tells you that Myrtle Maclagan, the first women's Test centurion, once "took five wickets in five balls with her offbreaks against Cheltenham Ladies College".
In the 2014 Wisden, David Frith laments the loss of the first-ever motion-picture recordings of cricketers:
"The earliest surviving conventional motion film is the little sequence of Ranjitsinhji wielding a wild bat in the Sydney nets late in 1897, although we have Eadweard Muybridge's multi-camera sequences from the 1880s of naked batsmen and bowlers from Pennsylvania University; the processed frames are viewable on his zoopraxiscope. A film clip of Clem Hill batting at Sheffield in 1896 was once listed, but nobody now knows where it is. Nor was proper care taken of shots of A. E. Stoddart's team and Victoria walking on to the field around the time of the Ranji mini-film."
Since this article is about the pleasures of reading Wisden, let me finish with the 1965 edition, in which Roland Ryder pens a meta-article pondering which editions he would choose to take to a desert island. Needless to say, I would vie to get my hands on absolutely any edition.
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