Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 55 i Wisden Cricket Monthly

We were still a fortnight out from the season but a few were in already, clasping their flasks, watching intently, un-thumbed Who’s Whos by their side. An inter-squad game was taking place, which meant a first view of the new intake. This was Chelmsford, where Essex play their cricket. But it could have been anywhere. I was sitting alone when a woman came over and introduced herself. She said she read the magazine, her husband too, and with England’s Test team flailing in Grenada we had plenty to talk about. She said she’d been waiting for this day for the best part of six months and now it was here: the new season. “The truth is, I can’t imagine life without it.” Since her mother died, she said, her attachment…

ANDREW MILLER Wisden Cricket Monthly columnist, UK editor of ESPNcricinfo and former editor of The Cricketer @miller_cricket It’s cards-on-the-table time. How do you fix English cricket? Someone needs to come up with a solution pretty damn quick, but first the ECB must find itself a new chair, a new director of men’s cricket, one (maybe two) new head coaches, in all probability a new chief executive, and God knows how many new matchwinners to arrest a run of series losses that has not been equalled in England’s Test history. And when you put it like that, it’s easier to see why Joe Root’s lack of tactical acumen is actually the least of the game’s concerns. It is, in short, an unholy mess. And that’s before you factor in the untold…

RAF NICHOLSON Wisden Cricket Monthly’s women’s cricket correspondent @RafNicholson It’s funny, really, that a World Cup which had so many twists and turns, so many last-over finishes, and so much unpredictability – hands up if you genuinely thought that West Indies would reach the semi-finals? – should end in such obvious fashion. Just 10 days into the tournament, Wisden editor Lawrence Booth summed it up when he tweeted that the competition was “posing a tricky question: who’s going to lose to Australia in the final?” Meg Lanning’s team were not just undefeated throughout, but rarely even made to sweat. England, by contrast, experienced a topsy-turvy campaign in which they were on the brink of elimination after losing their opening three matches – against Australia, West Indies and South Africa –…

Does the sanctity of April Fool’s Day mean nothing anymore? When did the boundaries of that 12 hours of lawlessness spill over into days and weeks of the stuff? Haven’t we suffered enough in the fake news era without reams and reams of journalists and teams making us doubt everything we see with a stream of increasingly elaborate smoke-and-mirror hoaxes, each one smokier and more reflective than the last? Indian commentator Harsha Bhogle at least had the good grace to act ashamed after his hijinks-gone-wrong. While previewing the IPL in an Instagram Live, he dropped his phone, obscuring any view of what was going on, before exchanging shouts with what appeared to be a group of intruders. A flustered host described it as “a minor inconvenience”, which is one way…

Derbyshire NEXT MATCHES: Leics, CC (A), April 21-24; Glam, CC (H), April 28-May 1; Worcs, CC (H), May 12-15 Mickey Arthur ‘I want to leave a legacy’ Derbyshire’s new head of cricket was one of the more remarkable county signings over the winter. Nick Campion spoke to the highly respected South African coach about his new role Mickey – why Derbyshire, why now? I’d coached internationally for 12 years. I’d been in a hotel for five years. I got to a point last year, living in a bubble, and I just thought, ‘What do I want?’ What I wanted – which coincided with the Derbyshire job becoming available – was a project. I wanted to come to a place where I felt we could have sustainable success, and where I…

LETTER OF THE MONTH It’s not easy being KP in this debate I find the debate about the inadequacy of the England Test team in conjunction with the incessant handwringing about the 18 counties both amusing and frustrating. As Mickey Arthur, Derbyshire’s new coach, recently said, “England are not losing because Derbyshire are in the County Championship”. At a time when we are struggling to find enough good players for the Test team, and enough players from diverse backgrounds, how can cutting the number of counties possibly be a good idea? There are already swathes of the country with no first-class cricket in easy distance. If we chopped back the 18 we would be making a bad situation worse. Fewer youngsters would take up the game in those counties and…

As England crumpled in the sweltering heat of Grenada, there was an overriding sense that this could continue no longer. The sight of Kyle Mayers dismantling England’s hapless batting line-up in a style not dissimilar to the county trundlers who are apparently degrading the domestic game felt somehow like a fitting coup de grace. The verdict from the gallery of former England skippers was near-enough unanimous. After five years in the hot seat, Joe Root’s tenure had reached the point of no return. It felt that way to me too in the hours and days after the latest maddening defeat. The ritual humiliation in Australia had stung, at times plunging to new depths of tragicomedy, even by Ashes standards, but England had been beaten by a comprehensively better team riding…

Hayley Matthews 119 & 2-41 West Indies v New Zealand, Mount Maunganui The Windies opened the tournament with a nail-biting victory over hosts New Zealand thanks to a supreme display from Matthews. Moved up to open the batting, the Bajan allrounder struck a stylish 119 off 128 balls, including 16 fours and a six, setting the White Ferns a target of 260. She then picked up the wickets of Amelia Kerr and Brooke Halliday to help her side seal victory by three runs with one ball to spare – a win which eventually earned West Indies a semi-final berth. Marizanne Kapp 5-45 & 32 South Africa v England, Mount Maunganui Kapp’s display for South Africa against England in their third match of the tournament was the definition of an all-round…

250* On June 24 and 25 at Broadhalfpenny Down in Hambledon, a Hampshire XI will play an All England XI to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the inaugural first-class match. The matches will consist of a pair of one-day games (the men play on Friday, the women on Saturday), with the All England XIs selected from across the English counties as well as organisations from the Barmy Army, the MCC, and readers of this organ right here. If you want to be considered for the fixture, go to broadhalfpennydown.com and fill out the application form. CASTORE ROLLS IN Another year, another new sponsor, and this time it’s Castore taking on kit-making duties. This new number has been designed in collaboratior with Jofra Archer and Jos Buttler, plus Katie George and…

MARK RAMPRAKASH Former England batter and current Middlesex batting coach @MarkRamprakash To be back working in the professional game as a consultant batting coach at Middlesex is wonderful. It’s what I love. I still get a buzz from the intensity of getting up each day and trying to improve. Returning to the club where I spent 14 seasons as a player has brought back memories of my first steps in the professional game. I made my debut as a 17-year-old in 1987, fresh off the back of an England under-19 tour to Sri Lanka where I’d opened the batting with Mike Atherton. To see the Middlesex squad prepare for the new season has emphasised just how dramatically preseason has changed. Back then we would sign six-month contracts in late March,…

The month’s news in brief 1 Chris Silverwood, who was sacked as England’s men’s head coach following the Ashes defeat, has been appointed to the same role with Sri Lanka. The former Essex coach succeeds Mickey Arthur. 2 Graham Thorpe, another casualty from the backroom staff which oversaw England’s defeat in Australia, has been named as the new head coach of Afghanistan’s men’s team. The former Surrey lefthander takes over from Stuart Law, who had filled the role on an interim basis following Lance Klusener’s departure at the end of last year. 3 Australia’s men beat Pakistan by 115 runs in the third Test at Lahore to take the series 1-0. Pat Cummins was named Player of the Match after returning match figures of 8-79, while Usman Khawaja picked up…

TAHA HASHIM Wisden staff writer @Taha_Wisden Perched behind a desk in a vast office at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore, Ramiz Raja welcomes me in. Outside, day four of the series-deciding Test between Australia and Pakistan is bubbling nicely; the visitors are setting up a declaration which will eventually bring them victory in the match and series. “I had a complete strategy for how to attack Australia this morning, ” admits Ramiz. “But I couldn’t share it with the team because I don’t want to get involved in the nitty-gritty stuff.” Not every call is his to make, but Ramiz is a natural fit in the halls of power. Last September he was elected as the Pakistan Cricket Board’s chair in an eye-catching ascension; for a generation, his contribution to…

The alternative compendium of cricket Pitch report Traditionally delivered by a blue-blazered, chino-clad pundit, the assessment of the pitch was once an integral part of pre-match coverage. Most evocatively delivered by Boycott, Botham and Greig, the broadcaster would get down on their knees, have a poke around in the soil and give their verdict, declaring that any spinner worth their sodium chloride should be picking up a hatful of wickets on said deck, or that the batters should be booking themselves in for a long stay. Greig famously once lost the keys to his hotel room down a sizeable crack in the WACA pitch. It could have been worse, though. The former England skipper was known to prod pitches with the keys to his Saab before the incident at Perth…

Wisden Cricket Monthly editor-in-chief @Phil_Wisden Ian Bishop, who knows him well, had already warned me. “Kraigg will tell you himself he’s a man of few words; I think it’s even less than that.” He adds the corollary that behind the shades lies a kind of “quiet confidence”, of the sort that imparts itself by stealth on a disparate group. “Look, they’re growing,” he says. “Kraigg is starting to understand that this is his team, and they’re buying into it.” That cricket teams take their identities from the captain can be a burdensome truth. For the boss of the West Indies Test team, it must be a nightmare. The role requires more than just a pan-island sensibility for the sprawling cultures that coalesce under the maroon flag. You also need a…

THE HEADACHE OF RECRUITMENT For a club which struggled to get 22 on the park at times in 2021, this summer we have rather audaciously opted to field a third Saturday team for the first time in nine years. My childlike enthusiasm for my new role as vice-captain of the twos has already waned somewhat as I’ve come to realise the scale of the logistical challenge ahead; it appears it’ll revolve more around spreadsheet-filling and availability-chasing than game-clinching tactical interventions. A month out from our season opener, we’ve already exhausted the tried-and-tested avenues of last-minute recruitment. Colleagues? Done. Colleagues of spouses? Also done. Spouses of colleagues of spouses? You can check that one off too. I suspect that once we establish a core of regulars we’ll be fine, but getting…

Send in your answers via email (editorial@wisden.com) or via post (Time Warp, Wisden Cricket Monthly, Fourth Floor, Bedser Stand, Kia Oval, Kennington, London, SE11 5SS). Entries must be received by May 11, 2022 1. 5 years ago... On May 29, 2017, South Africa beat England by seven wickets at Lord’s to claim a consolation victory in a 2-1 ODI series defeat. Which debutant seamer dismissed Hashim Amla in his second over in international cricket but hasn’t played an ODI since? 2. 10 years ago... On May 31, 2012, who was left 50 runs short of becoming the first player to score 1,000 first-class runs before the end of May since Graeme Hick in 1988 after rain forced an early finish at Worcester? 3. 15 years ago... On May 28, 2007,…

LAWRENCE BOOTH Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack editor and Daily Mail writer @the_topspin Is there a cricketing nation less temperamentally suited to a brave new world than England? The question seems worth asking partly because of the treatment of Lancashire leg-spinner Matt Parkinson on the recent tour of the West Indies. And the tours last year of Sri Lanka and India. And the tour the previous winter of New Zealand. On each trip England have spoken a good game about “finding a way” to take 20 wickets in overseas conditions. And on each trip they have fallen back on their comfort blanket of seam – always right-arm, usually 83mph – and finger-spin. Of the bloke who can turn it both ways on a flat one, little has been seen or heard. The…

LAWRENCE BOOTH Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack editor and Daily Mail writer @the_topspin Ernest Hemingway was supposed to have won a bet by telling a story in six words. “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Each year, Wisden tries to be even more succinct, providing a flavour of the previous summer in five names. The annual reaction to the choice of the Five Cricketers of the Year is useful confirmation that you can’t please all of the people all of the time. But if each new set of five achieves some kind of snapshot, then – well – maybe you’re halfway to a Hemingway. This year’s Five, I think, do that job reasonably well: Bumrah, Conway, Robinson, Sharma, van Niekerk. They reflect a season in which overseas Test stars shone more brightly…

It’s not only one format that he is so good at. Babar’s cricket awareness and how he plays, he’s aesthetically so pleasing to watch. He’s led the team extremely well, he’s played the pressure points well, and I think he’ll break a lot of records. The more he’ll play at home, the better he’ll get, because he’ll get the backing of the crowds. There is this belief in Pakistan cricket now that the fans are coming. The PSL was a roaring success for us. So they’re believing in our cricket, and largely because of three, four superstars that we’ve now got in the shape of [Mohammad] Rizwan, Shaheen Afridi, Babar Azam and Haris Rauf. And Naseem Shah, for example, he’s only 19, yet he’s on a par with some of…

JO HARMAN WCM magazine editor In the men’s tournament, Manchester Originals disappointed last year, winning only two from eight matches, but their skipper Jos Buttler missed six of those. With Buttler’s Test career seemingly over, he should be available for the whole shebang this summer, and they’ve added two more bona fide short-format guns in Andre Russell and the Sri Lankan mystery spinner/power-hitter Wanindu Hasaranga. Alongside their overseas stars the Originals have a strong English core of Laurie Evans, Phil Salt and Matt Parkinson. They’ll take some beating. As for the women, Oval Invincibles – with their South African triumvirate of van Niekerk, Kapp and Ismail – will be strong again, but I like the look of Trent Rockets. In Sciver, Lanning and Brunt they have a trio of international stars…

2017 – P11 W5 L5 D1 Home wins v SA and WI; 0-4 defeat in Australia Replaces Alastair Cook in February with Ben Stokes announced as vice-captain. “Root quickly discovered the perils of captaincy, ” wrote John Etheridge in Wisden after defeat to South Africa in his second Test led Michael Vaughan to accuse England’s batters of disrespecting Test cricket. Root’s response: “I cannot believe he actually said that.” Wisden lauds him as a “more instinctive tactician” than Cook but says his strategy in the Ashes defeat in Australia “erred towards caution”, adding: “There were just so many distractions.” Chief among those was the arrest of Stokes outside a Bristol nightclub and his subsequent absence from the Ashes. 2018 – P13 W8 L4 D1 Home win over India, draw v…

Wisden writer @Jimbo_Cricket Hear that? Pitter patter of footsteps. Whooosh. Silence. Thud. Groan. The sound of leather not on willow. Cricket revolves around the tussle between bat and ball. But in order to make runs, batting in the longest format is as much about survival and occupation: of actively choosing not to hit the ball. According to CricViz, 16 per cent of all deliveries in Test cricket are left, which makes the refusal to play the ball comfortably the second most common ‘shot’ in the format after the forward defensive. All that energy expended over nothing. A Beckettian passage of play that sometimes repeats over a hundred times a Test match. Day after day. Nothing happens. Somebody bowls. Somebody lets it go. It’s... absorbing? Gideon Haigh describes the leave as…

Pugnacious left-hander, canny off-spinner, diminutive and hard-nosed skipper with 23 years as a pro in the north-west and 28 playing for Cheshire, Arthur Sutton is also the only person in the 27-year history of the B&H Cup to win the gold award in 100 per cent of his matches. Sure, it was only one game – for Minor Counties North against his native Lancashire in 1975, when he dismissed Bumble in a tight spell of 10-2-27-1 before scoring 54 in a forlorn chase – but it was one of many highlights in a superb cricketing life. Born in Manchester in 1939, Sutton started out at Longsight in the Lancashire & Cheshire League, beginning his pro-ing adventures in 1961 with two years at Kendal, followed by four at Eagley in the…

Tales & treasures from cricket’s glorious past Edgbaston, June 6, 1994 Durham 556-8 dec (Morris 204, Bainbridge 67, Graveney 65*, Cummins 62, Hutton 61) v Warwickshire 810-4 dec (Lara 501*, Piper 116*, Twose 51, Penney 44) Match drawn When Brian Lara arrived at the club, just a couple of weeks after scoring his worldrecord 375 against England, everyone was really excited, but we already had a group of players who were super-charged and confident. Brian was just the icing on the cake. When he turned up Roger Twose had put a sign on Brian’s locker saying: ‘Welcome to the second-best left-hander in the world’. It was that type of dressing room. Under our coach Bob Woolmer we played confident, expressive cricket, and we’d worked hard to get to that position.…

Australia v South Africa, Super Six Match, World Cup, Headingley, 1999 The Match South Africa 271-7 (Gibbs 101; Warne 2-46) Australia 201 (S Waugh 56; Donald 4-48) South Africa won by 70 runs The Cast Steve Waugh Herschelle Gibbs Mark Waugh Lance Klusener Peter Willey Allan Donald The 1999 World Cup was no party for England’s cricketers, Alec Stewart’s side dumped out before the Gaffer’s namesake and frosty-tipped synth-botherer, Dave, had got around to releasing the tournament’s official single. Steve Waugh’s Australia were similarly out of tune in the early stages, losing to both New Zealand and Pakistan. It left them needing to defeat tournament favourites South Africa in the final match of the Super Six phase to scrape through to the semi-finals. Klusener: You know, looking back, that was…

In the spellbinding Women’s World Cup final in Christchurch, Australia and England combined to score 611 runs off the bat. Only six of these were scored via the medium of the six – Nat Sciver, en route to 148 not out, was the only player to clear the ropes in what was otherwise a festival of fours and a splurgement of singles (239 of them, a record for a women’s ODI). In all one-day international cricket, women’s and men’s, there had never previously been a match in which more than 570 runs had been scored off the bat without at least two sixes being struck. Alyssa Healy scored 170 of those 611 runs, her turfscorching sixth international century driving Australia to victory. It was the first time she has made…