Zimbabwe affair shamed the game

The International Cricket Council's handling of the Zimbabwe affair during the recent World Cup brought shame on the game, Wisden Cricketers' Almanack says in its 140th edition, published on April 30.

The game's governing body turned a deaf ear to public opinion on shifting games from Zimbabwe, stood by in silence as protestors against Robert Mugabe's outlaw government were arrested at Australia's game in Bulawayo, asked Henry Olonga and Andy Flower to lay down their acclaimed black armbands, and punished the one team that declined to play in Zimbabwe - England. "The ICC ended up doing something that ought to have been impossible," writes the editor, Tim de Lisle: "washing their hands at the same time as burying their heads in the sand."

The Notes by the Editor, which traditionally take a fiercely independent view of the state of the game, are entitled "The Age of Speed". The Editor celebrates the way Steve Waugh's Australian team have "galvanised the whole of Test cricket" with their fast scoring, and but reserves strong criticism for the performance of another Australian, Malcolm Speed, chief executive of the ICC.

"Just when cricket has become more fun to watch," de Lisle writes, "its bosses have made it harder to follow. For much of the past year, the ICC were at their worst, which is saying something. Their Champions Trophy did not produce a champion. Their Test Championship produced the wrong one [South Africa]. Their new One-Day Championship was so arcane that it went virtually unnoticed. Their World Cup consisted of more than 50 matches but hardly any real contests. And they adopted a stance on Zimbabwe that shamed the game."

Wisden acknowledges that Speed had strong credentials for the job but notes that he had been a corporate lawyer as well as a businessman. "His time at the top of world cricket already bears this double stamp. It has been the most grimly legalistic period in the game's history, and the most dismally corporate." De Lisle concludes that whereas a couple of years ago, the gravest threat to the game's fabric was corruption, now it is corporatisation.

An Almanack with a difference
As ever, there is much more to Wisden than opinions. This is the biggest Almanack yet, at 1760 pages, and the most up-to-date, with a special 21-page section on the World Cup, which ended on March 23, only three days before the book was due at the presses. "The deputy editor, Hugh Chevallier, put in a phenomenal performance," de Lisle says. "After working 70-hour weeks since Christmas, he ended up putting in a 24-hour shift at the typesetters in Colchester, before driving bleary-eyed to the printers, Clays of Bungay, to deliver the finished CD at dawn on March 27."

Tim de Lisle is Wisden's first one-off editor, filling in for a year before Matthew Engel returns from abroad. He took the job on the understanding that the book would move forward, and has tried to apply his experience as an editor in newspapers, at Wisden Cricket Monthly and Wisden Online, to make the book more welcoming and useable.

This starts with the famous yellow jacket, which has already attracted worldwide attention by carrying a photograph for the first time - a black-and-white shot of Michael Vaughan, the young England star who has just gone to the top of the world batting rankings. "Wisden has been a great book since time immemorial," de Lisle writes in his preface, "but sometimes a closed book. This year, we have tried to make it a more open one." There is a Guide for New Readers for the first time and 14 sections start with a key using bullet-points to explain how they work. There are a hundred pages of comment and features at the front instead of the usual fifty, and the layout has been given "an upgrade, rather than a redesign" by Nigel Davies, art director of Wisden Cricket Monthly. There are pull quotes for the first time, bolder picture captions and page numbers, and full-page pictures marking the start of the book's eight main parts. Each county gets a headline and results at a glance, replacing the county officers at the top of its entry. "The yearbook section of Wisden is a work of reference, not deference," de Lisle argues.

Two new sections
There are two new sections. One is World View, which makes sense of the increasingly bewildering sprawl of international cricket, listing each team's results and commenting on their year in the same way that Wisden has long commented on the English counties.

The other is Arrivals & Departures, which captures the players taking the big stage or leaving it, ranging from Jimmy Anderson to Mark Waugh. "Wisden has traditionally said glowing goodbyes to the greats," de Lisle says, "but players just below that level have had to wait for an obituary before we summed up their achievement. There are more and more of these now, from Angus Fraser to Jonty Rhodes, so we have commissioned brief pen-portraits of them from leading writers, as well as registering the new stars on the circuit. It would be fascinating now to see what Wisden had had to say about, say, Brian Lara when he first emerged."

Other main themes
Among the main themes of the book are the overloaded interntional programme, which is discussed from two angles: Christopher Martin-Jenkins of The Times cries out for less, for the sake of everybody with a stake in the game. "When someone who loves cricket as much as CMJ has had enough," de Lisle says, "perhaps the game's bosses will finally sit up and take notice." Derek Pringle of The Daily Telegraph weighs up the impact on the players' family lives and talks to England wives of different generations in an article entitled "Don't Marry a Cricketer". After more than a hundred years of listing the players' Births and Deaths, this is believed to be the first time Wisden has taken a look at their marriages.

Another theme is fast batting, which is discussed not only by the editor but by Simon Barmes of The Times in a lead article on Steve Waugh's influence. "The tactic has been enthralling," Barnes writes, "but Waugh did not do it to enthral. He did it to enslave."

Sachin Tendulkar receives the rare accolade of a major article in mid-career, as he reaches 30 and passes 100 Tests. A new table shows that he is by far the leading international centurion of all time, taking one-day cricket and Test matches together: Tendulkar has 65 centuries, while the next man, Australia's Mark Waugh, has 38. "When Tendulkar bats," writes Rohit Brijnath, "India stills."

And much more
Frank Keating reviews the year's books, the biggest-ever Obituaries section describes the lives of Hansie Cronje and many others, and Cricket Round the World records the momentous day in Finnish cricket when galloping elk stopped play. Marcus Berkmann contributes possibly Wisden's first piece of pure humour, giving a fan's view of the World Cup. The Index of Unusual Occurrences includes "County captain shins up tree", "Bowler takes hat-trick without noticing" and "Labrador prompts taking of the new ball in Championship match". Alastair McLellan reports on the merger between Wisden Online and CricInfo, Simon Briggs identifies the unorthodox strokes that make up The 21st-Century Coaching Book, and there is a distinctly Indian flavour to the book with contributions from several writers on Wisden Asia Cricket magazine, launched in 2001. Wisden, as ever, is a vivid distillation of a fascinating game. As the posters in the bookshops put it: "Take a fresh look at Wisden. We have."

Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 2003 is published by John Wisden on April 30, in hardback and soft cover. The recommended retail price is £35 - but click here for our special offer.