Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 56 i Wisden Cricket Monthly

“No single issue is binary, Key says. Individual cases must be considered on their own terms, always for the collective good. As for Stokes, he wants his best team, so he wants Anderson and Broad. Why wouldn’t he? Key said he went into that one expecting an argument The conversation was over in seconds “Is English cricket ready for Stokes and Key?” asks a colleague, as we do the rounds on the next Test coach, who might end up as Eoin Morgan’s bag carrier, and whether our hidebound game will ever relax with two straight-shooters at the top of it. It’s a good and essential question, for which the answer, of course, is that it better had be. For all that English cricket harbours a radical streak – manifesting as…

ANDREW MILLER Wisden Cricket Monthly columnist, UK editor of ESPNcricinfo and former editor of The Cricketer miller_cricket As part of its hotly anticipated high-performance review, the ECB ought to mint a commemorative coin for use in County Championship fixtures, with a pair of distinct but related maxims embossed on either side. Call heads for “Be careful what you wish for”, and tails for “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. For these are the flip sides of the single issue that has dominated the Championship’s early rounds. “Flatter pitches will solve all the game’s ills, ” they said. “Sort the wheat from the chaff through a higher premium on wickets, ” they said. Well, we’ve got what the game ordered, and what’s been the defining upshot? Across the first five…

ISA GUHA Presenter, commentator and former England international @isaguha 6-46 Her match-winning figures in the 2017 World Cup final against India 227 Her wicket-tally for England, across all formats 5 She is the fifth-highest wicket-taker in T20ls, with 102 dismissals Isa Guha: Since retirement have you had a chance to reflect? How are you feeling about the decision? Anya Shrubsole: I feel really comfortable with it. I always promised myself that I wouldn’t overstay my welcome. If it was purely about bowling, then that’s a different story, but there’s so much more that comes with being an international cricketer. I didn’t feel that it would be fair to myself or the team to cling on. IG: Did you consider having some time out and coming back? AS: I did, I…

It’s in times of strife when you find out who your true friends are, and Virat Kohli has a lot of friends. Currently enduring his leanest trot as a professional cricketer, the cottage media industry – really more of a mansion industry – that revolves around his every run and Instagram post has ground to a halt, and scores of web editors and content managers are desperate for something, anything to fill the void. Enter Vivek Razdan, a former India cricketer with an anecdote about the big man to make life worth living again. Are you sitting down? Here’s the story: Viv Richards and Virat Kohli were on a flight together, and Viv couldn’t find a space for his carry-on in the overhead bins. Kohli put his own bag under…

Abdul Qadir The diminutive Qadir was only 5ft 5in but what he lacked in height he more than made up for with aura and wickets. The Pakistani almost single-handedly kept the leg-spin flame burning during a Test career that began in 1977 and ended in 1990 as most other nations turned away from the complicated craft. Bounding in under a mop of jet-black hair, Qadir made a performance of an over – smoke, mirrors and subtle variations were his thing, a style of subterfuge and psychological trickery that would heavily influence Shane Warne. He was an enigmatic, sometimes volatile character, but under Imran Khan’s captaincy he flourished – he even grew a goatee beard at Imran’s behest as his captain thought it would add to his mystique. Qadir took 236…

PHIL WALKER Wisden Cricket Monthly editor-in-chief @Phil_Wisden “I feel I can relate to anything going forward. If any of the players might be struggling with something – I have been that person in the dressing room Captaining England tears chunks out of a man. Atherton was on sleeping tablets by the end of it. Hussain left in tears, as did Vaughan, saying he no longer recognised himself. Flintoff, hollowed out, took to drink, Pietersen was hooked before he could torch the whole building, Strauss left in low dudgeon, and Cook’s well ran dry. As for Joe Root, he found himself scoring celestial hundreds every other weekend and still hating the game by Monday night. This is what Ben Stokes steps into. He is elements of all them (grit and fire,…

JO HARMAN Wisden Cricket Monthly magazine editor @Jo_Wisden On December 22 last year, a sequence lasting 2,228 days and 255 Test matches was finally broken. By making a century and a fifty in Australia’s annihilation of England at Adelaide, Marnus Labuschagne became the first batter outside the fabled ‘Fab Four’ to top the Test rankings for more than six years. It would be an exaggeration to say Labuschagne’s elevation marked a changing of the guard - he is, after all, joined by Smith, Williamson and Root in the top five (Kohli is clinging on by his fingertips to his place in the top 10) - but it was a recalibration of a landscape which had become so familiar. It’s eight years since the late Martin Crowe dubbed a quartet of…

JO HARMAN Wisden Cricket Monthly magazine editor @Jo_Wisden When England exited their own World Cup before most of the country had even woken up to the fact it was happening, it appeared the team could sink no lower. In Wisden, editor Matthew Engel lamented the failure to seize upon a “make-or-break opportunity [for cricket] to re-establish itself in the public’s affection”, and that disconnectwould only grow as the summer continued, as sparse crowds watched a chaotic and demoralised team plunge to the bottom of the Test rankings. Having fallen at the first hurdle in a dismal World Cup campaign and then disposed of Alec Stewart and David Lloyd as captain and coach, the visit of lowly New Zealand for a four-Test series was supposed to provide a welcome pick-me-up. The…

Scratch your guard, look at the scoreboard: 12-3, Allan Donald with all three wickets and rampant - a tough gig for Sachin in 1992, let alone an amateur. Simon Myles pushes a two through mid-off. “You won’t be forward to the next one, ” snarls AD. A smile from ‘Smyler’ to his flatmate of four years earlier, the pair having lodged together in the old Edgbaston pavilion during Myles’ one-year deal at Warwickshire. The next one isn’t pitched up. No matter, Myles digs in for 60 as Staffordshire are bundled out for 172. It would not be Myles’ only valiant top-scoring effort across the smattering of List-A games he played for Staffs, Berkshire and the Minor Counties after a brief flirtation with professional cricket had petered out, proof of what…

Tales & treasures from cricket’s glorious past The Oval, August 20,1994 South Africa 332 (McMillan 93, Richardson 58; Benjamin 4-42, DeFreitas 4-93) &175 (Cullinan 94; Malcolm 9-57) v England 304 (Thorpe 79, Stewart 62; de Villiers 4-62, Donald 3-76) & 205-2 (Hick 81*, Atherton 63) England won by 8 wickets “Athers didn’t hold back as he strapped his pads on before our first innings. He gave Devon a roasting I first became aware of Devon Malcolm when I was 16 or 17. I was playing for Yorkshire against a side made up of the best cricketers in the Yorkshire leagues and he bowled Boycott with a yorker. I don’t know whether he meant to bowl a yorker or if it just slipped out, but that was when he first made…

RUNS! The Championship has had a good month. Batters are making big scores, pitches are generally a bit livelier, Alastair Cook is still the best opener in the game and bowlers are having to bend their backs to get much from a new Dukes ball which has a much less pronounced seam. With two overseas players now in most teams, the quality has gone up too: even in Division Two, there is international pedigree – Shan Masood, Cheteshwar Pujara, Mohammad Rizwan, Marnus Labuschagne, Shaheen Afridi – sprinkled around most teams. Going forward, this is how it has to be. WICKETS! Matt Parkinson must be in that first Test squad. There is no longer any logical reason to argue against it. With 17 wickets in his first three matches for Lancashire,…

MARK RAMPRAKASH Former England batter and current Middlesex batting coach @MarkRam prakash I don’t think it would have been a difficult decision at all to give Ben Stokes the Test captaincy. He is absolutely the right man for the job – and the only candidate, quite frankly. If it wasn’t Stokes it would have to have been someone who isn’t established in the team or someone on an interim basis, which I’m never in favour of. It’s just wasting time. Stokes is hugely respected in the dressing room because of the feats he’s achieved but just as much, if not more so, because of the man he is. As great a cricketer as he is, he doesn’t have an ego, and Ben will welcome and support any new players who…

1 West Indies white-ball captain Kieron Pollard has retired from international cricket, with Nicholas Pooran stepping into the role. Pollard, 34, has played 123 ODIs and 101 T20ls since making his debut in 2007. The hard-hitting all-rounder is set to play in The Hundred this summer for London Spirit. 2 Graeme Smith, the former South Africa director of cricket and captain, has been cleared of racism allegations by two independent arbitrators. Cricket South Africa (CSA) had commissioned an investigation after Smith and current head coach Mark Boucher were among a number of their employees implicated in alleged discrimination. CSA has withdrawn disciplinary charges against Boucher. 3 The England men’s team have slipped to No.6 in the Test rankings, dropping below Pakistan, after recording their lowest points rating since 1995. The…

JAMES WALLACE Wisden staff writer @Jimbo_Cricket “You got any cash on you?” This is Chris Gayle, the self-anointed Universe Boss with a reported net worth of $35m. The hitter of more sixes than any cricketer in history, double World Cup winner, veteran of 103 Test matches, one of only four men to notch two Test triple centuries, and he’s… trying to wheedle some readies out of me? “Err… I’ve got a tenner, ” I reply. “Give me a tenner then, I’ll take it.” “What do you want my money for?” “To get a drink.” “Nah, I don’t think so.” Gayle gets up and leaves the room without another word. This is the last exchange of a surreal 45 minutes. 1 make my exit from the London hotel, unlock my bike…

RECALL BROADERSON? The discarding of Broad and Anderson was the major decision made prior to the last act of Root’s captaincy. Although their absence might not have made a difference to the final scoreline in the West Indies, it was clear that England do not yet possess a queue of seamers ready to step up in their absence. Saqib Mahmood impressed in his first series as a Test cricketer, but Chris Woakes, Craig Overton and Matt Fisher weren’t incisive enough. There was logic behind the pair’s exclusion – in fact, Rob Key didn’t object to it in his capacity as a pundit for Sky – but with new leadership, a decision needs to be made, and Stokes has already made up his mind. “They are the two best bowlers in…

14 The fourth Test at The Oval was the 14th match in a row in which England had been behind on first innings, a then world record 9 New Zealand became only the ninth side in Test history to win a series of fewer than five matches after going behind 7 Number of years New Zealand had gone without a Test series win away from home before defeating England 0 Number of centuries scored by England in the series, making it the first time since the 19th century that an English batter had failed to score a hundred in a home Test summer 108 Number of days England spent at the bottom of the Test rankings 6 Test matches won by England in 2000 after Duncan Fletcher took over as…

LAWRENCE BOOTH Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack editor and Daily Mail writer @the_topspin Indifference, as Oscar Wilde knew, is the killer. But the centre of attention is not always a comfortable place either. The reaction to this year’s Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, published in April, was both a reassuring reminder that people still care about an ageing annual in the era of hot takes – as well as confirmation that cricket is no more immune to the culture wars than anything else. On the one hand, the selection of Ollie Robinson as one of the Five Cricketers of the Year was regarded by some as a slap in the face for the sport’s anti-racism movement, after his Test debut against New Zealand at Lord’s coincided with the emergence of some deeply unpleasant old…

BEN JONES CricViz analyst and co-author of Hitting against the Spin @benjonescricket This winter, much was made of Jos Buttler’s smile. Or rather, the lack of it. As the England Test keeper trudged around Australia, his form stumbling and his glovework faltering, Aussie camera operators were often inclined to zoom in on Buttler’s face. Big sad eyes, blank expression, Kendall Roy death stare. He looked cooked. Aside from the glee which some people seem to take in Buttler’s Test record being only fine rather than reflecting his historic exceptionalism in the other formats, most observers found it all slightly dispiriting. A world-class white-ball talent reduced to a limp background presence in The Biggest Show of All. Regardless of whether he is the best keeping option for England in Test cricket,…

Derbyshire NEXT MATCHES: Notts, CC (A), May 19-22; Birmingham, T20 (H), May 27; Leics, T20 (A), May 28; Yorks, T20 (A), May 31; Lancs, T20 (A), June 1; Notts, T20 (H), June 3; Northants, T20 (A), June 7; Leics, T20 (H), June 9; Worcs, T20 (A), June 10; Middx, CC (H), June 12-15 Guest conies to the party There’s no doubting who the star has been of Derbyshire’s quietly impressive start to the season: after four matches (in which the club went unbeaten, taking one win and three draws), Shan Masood had amassed 713 runs, raising the prospect of the Pakistani opener becoming only the ninth player in history to reach the fabled landmark of 1,000 before the end of May in an English season. Masood’s first six knocks for…

An alternative prize will be provided if the winner is aged under 18, or if requested ★ LETTER OF THE MONTH Easy shift for Buttler I don’t watch the IPL but I’m aware that Jos Buttler has been smashing the ball around rather well out there. It’s always good when England players do well overseas, even if it would be nice to see Buttler playing for his county and trying to win his Test place back, but it does raise a question. I hear constantly that the IPL is the best T20 competition in the world, with all the best players, so how is it that Buttler treats bowling attacks out there as though they’re a bunch of schoolboys and yet when he plays in the Blast his performances are…

JOHN STERN Wisden Cricket Monthly editor-at- large @SternWords For Ashley Giles, it was a job that he said he wanted and one that he had prepared for. The same could hardly be said for his successor Rob Key, whose appointment as managing director of England men’s cricket was made public at 2pm on Easter Sunday. Following Joe Root’s captaincy resignation on Good Friday, this was not quite the bank holiday weekend that Her Majesty’s Press had envisaged. “Stinker, ” was how one journo described the timings of these major cricket news stories. But at Key’s first media briefing – conducted informally around a large table in the ECB boardroom – the new boss had the scribes eating from his hand. No tie, no ECB branding, trainer socks peeking out from…

When you see these sorts of lists – Next Big Things, Future Captains, New Gen Stars - you tend to see a particular profile of a person. Young, naturally Stylish, usually Serious, a student of the game, chiselled intensity and winning mentality It’s a familiar template for a player loaded up with expectation. Rishabh Pant is not this player. But then, there aren’t many players like Rishabh Pant. As with so many of the younger Indian players, there’s the unmistakable sense of rockstar around Rishabh. But rather than the polished, almost filmic charisma of Shubman Gill and that cohort, Pant retains an element of chaos, of amateurish charm. A lack of brooding athleticism, the tendency to collapse in a heap after swinging across the line and off his feet; both…

CAMERON GREEN Australia Age: 22 Test record: 12 matches, average 36.41, 4 fifties F/C record: 42 matches, average 50.22, 8 hundreds, 10 fifties A monstrously talented cricketer who can do it all, Green’s batting has only flickered so far in the Test arena but his maiden half-century against India at the SCG - beginning cautiously before belting a succession of sixes to set up a declaration - showed his adaptability A prolific run-getter from Nº4 for Western Australia, he’s serving his apprenticeship at Nº6 in the Test side but is likely to settle a place or two higher than that. Green has already shown he has the temperament to go big, turning four of his eight first-class tons into scores of 150-plus. WHAT THEY SAY: “The best batting talent I’ve…

PHIL WALKER Wisden Cricket Monthly editor-in-chief @Phil_Wisden Raising the roof Kensington Oval, Barbados March 14, 1981 PHOTO BY PATRICK EAGAR The culmination of one of Test cricket’s greatest overs sees Geoff Boycott’s off stump uprooted by Michael Holding for the ninth and penultimate duck of Boycott’s 108-Test career. Holding may be out of frame but his presence as protagonist is keenly felt, with Desmond Haynes (in the white sunhat) drawing us towards him while his victim, Boycott, surveys the wreckage. Like swatting a fly Old Trafford, Manchester August 15, 1981 PHOTO BY PATRICK EAGAR Ian Botham goes on the hook against Dennis Lillee, hitting three sixes in the over, two with his eyes closed, leading Richie Benaud on commentary to compare it to swatting a fly. His 118 from 102…

“What do you reckon? Bowl first?” my captain asked 45 minutes before our season opener. I’ve never really known why I bother performing my own pitch inspection before each game. Until now, my opinion on what to do at the toss has carried little weight and the state of the pitch has never had any bearing on what I’ll try to do with the ball. My pre-match wander to the middle had always been more of a ritual than a fact-finding mission. ‘Aren’t you supposed to always bat first in a limited-overs game?’ Scoreboard pressure and all that?’ I wondered, slightly taken aback by the realisation that my opinion now seemed to matter. I looked at the pitch and then at the clouds above me - I had no idea…

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 June 8,2022 1. 5 years ago… On June 24, 2017, England began their Women’s World Cup campaign with a 35-run defeat to India. Which Indian became the first woman in ODI history to score seven consecutive half-centuries? 2. 10 years ago… On June 11, 2012, who marked scoring a Test hundred at Edgbaston by holding up a written message to a member of the BBC commentary team? 3. 15 years ago… On June 7, 2007, which top-order batter – who later became a respected broadcaster –replaced the injured Ramnaresh Sarwan as West Indies captain for the third Test at Old…

England v Pakistan, World Cup group match, Cape Town, 2003 The Match England 321-8 (Knight 124*; Akhtar 4-41) Pakistan 134 (Anderson 5-33, White 5-21) England won by 187 runs The Cast Shoaib Akhtar Brett Lee Nick Knight James Anderson Dennis Lillee Jeff Thomson The 2022 Fast Bowler’s Convention is in full swing. The camera pans around the room to reveal the pacemen of past and present chatting away. DL: ’Ere Thommo, do you know who this ‘special guest’ is supposed to be? JT: Not a scooby Lil’, though I just seen Waqar by the vol-au-vents and he reckons it’s Obama! DL: Obama? Pffft. As if he knows anything about cricket. Makhaya reckons it’s Mick Jagger. JT: Mick does love his cricket. Their conversation is interrupted by raised voices elsewhere in…

Ben Stokes had played 79 Tests before being appointed England’s full-time captain, 78 in the ranks and one as stand-in skipper for Joe Root in 2020. Only one England player had appeared in more Tests before first being appointed as long-term leader - Alastair Cook, England’s 79th male Test captain, who had played 83 Tests (including two as temporary captain in Bangladesh) before he was installed as Andrew Strauss’ successor for the India tour of 2012/13. 79 has proved to be an unusually popular number of Tests with which to depart the international stage. A total of 10 Test players from all nations have finished their careers with 79 caps, equal-second most amongst numbers over 46. The precise attraction of ending your career with 79 Test caps remains one of…