Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 58 i Wisden Cricket Monthly

“The Hollies Stand – raucously unhooked from the airs and graces of its southern cousins and a byword for libated lairiness – is a sub-brand all of its own. Ditto the Western Terrace at Leeds. These places are mythic. They’re also, in the main, absolutely plastered Stuart Cain, the genial CEO of Warwickshire CCC, stood in the sunshine next to Ian Ward and Nasser Hussain and spoke with great feeling. It was tea on day four, in the midst of a great Test match, overlaid by a cacophonous soundtrack orchestrated by the interweaving supporters of England, India, and Englandia. The ‘home’ side, whatever that meant out there, was edging it, but only just. The game was tumbling into the final day. Cain spoke at first about the inclusiveness at the…

Wisden Cricket Monthly columnist, UK editor of ESPNcricinfo and former editor of The Cricketer @miller_cricket Just imagine the conversation that must have taken place some two decades ago, as the ECB’s marketing whizzes sought to fine-tune the brand-new product that would save their financial skins. “Let’s call it... the Twenty20 Cup, cos, like, 20:20 vision! Yeah, we’re visionaries! [high-five]” And that, as hindsight relentlessly informs us, should have been that. No matter that the format was fathered by some deeply unsexy consumer research and brought into the world via Powerpoint, 20-over cricket really was the modern game’s immaculate conception, and as British an invention as the seed-drill or the thermos flask. Perfect, unimprovable, and, to judge by the sums of money flying around at the recent IPL rights auction, omnipotent…

Author and cricket writer for The Telegraph @timwig June 14, 2022 was a momentous day for the game in more ways than one. Jonny Bairstow’s final-day heist against New Zealand at Trent Bridge grabbed the headlines, but zoom out and the most significant event in world cricket’s development was taking place 5,000 miles away: the auction for the next cycle of broadcasting rights for the Indian Premier League. By the time the day was done, the IPL had earned £5.05 billion in rights for 2023-27: a three-time increase in the annual value of the league which will have monumental implications for the world game. In Crickonomics: The Anatomy of Modem Cricket, Stefan Szymanski and I explore how cricket has been unusual in where it has generated its cash. Most sports…

For so long, we held out. We even managed to keep ‘expected wickets’ confined to a few boffins on Twitter. But finally the footballification of cricket speak has begun to take hold, and now there’s no turning back. I’m talking, of course, about Baz-Ball, and the quiet acceptance of the soccer-originating -Ball suffix into cricket’s lexicon. It might seem innocuous enough. Hey, it’s fun to say. It’s alliterative. And it is a genuinely novel style of play. But make no mistake, this is the beginning of the end. Already there have been attempts to make Pant-Ball, even Bum-Ball, a thing. Jos-Ball is ripe for the taking. And it won’t stop there. Soon enough, everything that irks you about football’s online discourse will be here. There will be debates raging about…

The final Saturday of the 1993 season and Old Hill’s Jonathan Wright needs 50 runs to become just the eighth player (and fourth amateur) to put together a 1,000-run season in the Birmingham League (BDCL) – England’s oldest cricket competition and, through the 1980s and early 90s, undoubtedly its strongest. “We bowled Aston Unity out for 80-odd, ” he recalls, “and, unusually, my partner went off like a train. I was like, ‘What the hell are you doing?!’ So I went all-out attack.” Wright finished with 56, cracked a beer, and waited for West Bromwich Dartmouth’s result. Bad news: they won, denying him what would have been a second league title. Alas, there would be no more across a 33-year stint in the BDCL top flight. Two weeks earlier, however,…

WIN! 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 August 3, 2022 1. 5 years ago... On August 29, 2017, West Indies beat England by five wickets in the second Test at Headingley. Kraigg Brathwaite fell five runs short of becoming the first player to score twin centuries in a first-class match at the ground. Who went on to achieve the landmark in the same innings? 2. 10 years ago... On August 16, 2012, which seamer took 9-67 in a County Championship fixture at Trent Bridge, denying himself all 10 for the innings by effecting a run out? 3. 15 years ago... On August 13, 2007, India’s men…

Former England batter and current Middlesex batting coach @MarkRamprakash My first encounter with Eoin Morgan was playing against him for Surrey in 2006, when he hit a rapid half-century on his T20 debut for Middlesex. It was immediately clear that he was very unorthodox, and he hit the ball very hard. He was a pioneer for inventive shots in the early days of T20. A few years later I worked with him while I was batting coach at Middlesex. He didn’t say a huge amount but he had a maturity about him and a mindset that a lot of elite players have – strong-minded but inquisitive at times. I remember a one-to-one session with him at Radlett Cricket Club in early April on a net which was tinged with green.…

1 Australia’s men won the first Test against Sri Lanka in Colombo by 10 wickets, with spin accounting for 18 of the 20 Sri Lankan wickets to fall. Nathan Lyon picked up eight, Mitchell Swepson five, and the part-time offie Travis Head collected career-best figures of 4-10 in the hosts’ second innings. Cameron Green was named Player of the Match for his 77 on a tricky wicket. Sri Lanka won the preceding ODI series 3-2. 2 New Zealand Cricket and the players’ association have announced a five-year deal which sees men and women receive equal pay, including the same match fees at international and domestic level. “This is the most important agreement in our sport, ” said NZC chief David White. 3 West Indies’ men defeated Bangladesh 2-0 in a…

Wisden staff writer @Taha_Wisden When you get Buttler coming in, in that situation, with the bowlers on the back foot already, it’s going to be a bit of carnage, ” says MarkAlleyne. And so it was. In England’s opening ODI against the Netherlands at Amstelveen in June, Jos Buttler’s unbeaten 162 off just 70 balls lifted the visitors to a world-record total of 498-4. Alleyne, England’s batting coach for the three-match tour, was present to take it all in. “No one was really talking about scoring 500. I mean, at one stage, I remember a short conversation about 400-plus being roughly what we would get after such a brilliant start, but we probably got 70 or 80 more than we anticipated.” England’s ball-strikers continue to astound – making it seem…

“DHONI SAID TO ME, ‘WHEN YOUR COUNTRY CALLS FOR YOU, YOU PLAY’” Five years ago, Moeen Ali and the cricket writer Tanya Aldred got together to write a children’s book. They spent a day at Moeen’s mum’s house going back through his early years in Sparkhill, Birmingham, from which the story of ‘Mo Akeel’ was born. For years The Legend of Sparkhill sat on Tanya’s desk gathering dust. The project was only resurrected when the publisher of Fairfield Books, Matt Thacker, got hold of the manuscript. He read it and loved it. “I immediately thought it could be a great recruitment tool for getting kids from all backgrounds into cricket, ” he says. “It is authentic, powerful and beautifully written.” WCM is sitting with Moeen in a corner of Headingley,…

Author and WCM reviews editor @theoldbatsman There were rumours of a manuscript by Geoffrey Boycott going around for a while before I got to see it. When I finally did, I was amazed. It was a retrospective diary of each of his 108 Test match appearances, more than 110,000 words long and exactly as he had originally written it, in a pure and unmediated voice that was immediately recognisable to anyone that had ever watched him on television or heard him on the radio. I didn’t know the story of its creation at that point, but what struck me was how good a way of telling his story this was: match by match, from his debut in 1964 as a 22-year-old who batted in his glasses and lived at home…

1. No pain, no game What once the body would perform immediately, on command, it now does slowly, in protest – or not at all. But understand one important thing about your dodgy shoulder/ dicky knee/inflamed whatever: no one cares. Literally no one. So it’s either play in pain and shut up about it, or shuffle off and join the Bowls Club – where Geoff and Mary will be more than happy to swap stories on NHS waiting lists and the increasingly youthful complexion of police constables. For the maturing weekend cricketer, physical discomfort is like the success of Ed Sheeran: grimly inevitable and utterly relentless. It needs to be borne, like all of the ageing process, with graceful equanimity. After all, it’s hardly surprising your back’s giving you jip…

Tales & treasures from cricket’s glorious past The Oval, September 4 8, 2003 South Africa 484 (Gibbs 183, Kirsten 90) & 229 (Harmison 4-33, Bicknell 4-84) v England 604-9dec (Trescothick 219, Thorpe 124, Flintoff 95) & 110-1 (Trescothick 69*) England won by 9 wickets “Flintoff was coming into his own as a player. You could see him becoming a real force in world cricket This was my only series as a Test player and it was a very good one. South Africa went 1-0 up at Lord’s after Michael Vaughan took over the captaincy from Nasser Hussain and we fought back with a win at Trent Bridge, where James Kirtley and I made our debuts. They then beat us at Headingley so they were 2-1 up coming to The Oval.…

Pakistan v South Africa, World Cup group match, Brisbane 1992 The Match South Africa 211-7 (Hudson 54; Akram 2-42) Pakistan 212-5 (Inzamam 103*; Pringle 2-44) Pakistan won by 5 wickets The Cast Inzamam-ul-HaqJonty RhodesMark NicholasMorgan Freeman Mark Nicholas is having his nose powdered and his hair lightly tousled by production staff on the studio floor. The director calls out, “Ready in 10,9, 8…” MN: How do I look guys? Floor staff: Radiant, Mark. MN: I do, don’t I? Thanks, and catch you later? Mimosa Tuesday round at mine – you’re in, right? Floor staff: Err, we need to… MN: Cool, see you there. I’m low on cherries for the garnish – pick up a couple of punnets en route for me, yeah? Floor staff: Well, we sort of need to……

After four matches of the men’s Test summer, No.5 batters had collectively made seven centuries – four by Jonny Bairstow, two by Daryl Mitchell, and Rishabh Pant’s Edgbaston sizzler (his fifth Test hundred to go with five dismissals in the 90s). This sets a new record for Most Hundreds By Fives in an English Test summer, overtaking the six made in 2013. In the five English summers from 2017 to 2021, Fives combined for a total of just five centuries in 33 Tests (and an average of 31.0, a figure which 2022’s Fives have more than trebled, to 93.5). Overall, 2022 has seen a startling return to form for No.5 as a batting position. At the end of 2019, Five was luxuriating in unaccustomed glory – the highest-averaging Test batting…

Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack editor and Daily Mail writer @the_topspin If you’re feeling energetic, you can reach the VRA ground in Amstelveen on bicycle. It’s less than half an hour from the centre of Amsterdam, thanks to the beautifully endless network of bike lanes. Almost no one is wearing lycra, and road rage is non-existent. The ground’s location next to the Amsterdamse Bos – a large park to the city’s southwest – adds to the laid-back vibe. So do the local ‘coffee shops’, where you’re unlikely to find a flat white. For England fans who made the trip last month to watch the three-match one-day series against the Netherlands, there were memories to last a lifetime (or not, depending on those coffee shops). And a good job, too, because there’s every…

Wisden Cricket Monthly’s women’s cricket correspondent @RafNicholson Another day, another drawn women’s Test match. A year on from the stalemate against India at Bristol, Heather Knight’s side again had their chances of securing a positive result scuppered by rain. England were in a strong position to push for victory at Taunton, Knight declaring on the third morning with a first-innings lead of 133 and South Africa leading by just 48 with five wickets remaining when the weather brought an early end to proceedings. The last women’s Test not to end in a draw took place seven years ago in the Ashes encounter at Canterbury. Is adding a fifth day to women’s Test matches the answer? Knight reiterated her calls for that change after the match. “We play a Test so…

An alternative prize will be provided if the winner is aged under 18, or if requested LETTER OF THE MONTH Fifth-day freebies offer a welcome shift Tickets for the fifth days of the Trent Bridge and Headingley Tests were given away for free this summer, making one wonder whether fifth-day freebies could always be the case? The clubs will still make a considerable revenue through the mass-purchasing of food, drinks and merchandise, and on a marketing level there’s sure to be first-time spectators who become lifelong visitors. Plus, after the recent sorry saga around extortionate ticket prices at Lord’s, isn’t it time cricket stopped pricing itself out? Finally, as one of the unfortunate few who travelled to the Champions League final in Paris (queues, tear gas, riot police etc), I…

Wisden Cricket Monthly editor-in-chief @Phil_Wisden Caddick’s Four Headingley, Leeds August 18, 2000 MICHAEL STEELE Andrew Caddick wheels away after bowling Curtly Ambrose first ball in the fourth Test against the West Indies at Headingley Ambrose is Caddick’s third of four wickets in a single over as the tourists fold in their second innings for just 61 in 26.2 overs, bringing the game to a close inside two days. England’s victory gives them the lead in the series and at The Oval they would clinch it – the 3-1 result seeing them regain the Wisden Trophy for the first time since 1967/68. Out of the darkness National Stadium, Karachi December 11, 2000 LAURENCE GRIFFITHS Nasser Hussain and Graham Thorpe celebrate England’s first series win in Pakistan for nearly 40 years after…