Innehållsförteckning för Issue 72 från Wisden Cricket Monthly

Wisden Cricket Monthly columnist, UK editor of ESPNcricinfo and former editor of The Cricketer @miller_cricket Anyone for flag football? Nope, me neither… and yet that is the company which international cricket will soon be keeping, now that both sports have been confirmed for the LA Olympics in 2028. How are we supposed to feel about this prospect? Some would say that ‘grown-up’ sports with multi-million dollar revenues such as football and tennis should have no place at the Olympics, which really ought to be a oncea-leap-year opportunity for sporting Cinderellas, such as badminton and white-water canoeing, to don their finery and turn the heads of a few back pages. But then there’s cricket, and well… just how grown-up is it really? The sport is clearly awash with money (if you…

In association with Chapel Down, the letter of the month receives a bottle of awardwinning English sparkling wine – Chapel Down Brut. Based in Kent, Chapel Down is England’s leading wine producer and the official sparkling wine of the ECB. An alternative prize will be provided if the winner is aged under 18, or if requested *Only available to UK residents LETTER OF THE MONTH Partisan issues I’m a lifelong cricket fan, whose interest in and love for the game has only grown as I have. However, as we begin another World Cup, I’ve realised that I’ve never really had a team to support – be that a club, county or nation – and I find myself contending with the possibility that it might be limiting my experience. I know…

Wisden Cricket Monthly magazine editor @Jo_Wisden It’s 20 years ago this month that a precocious 15-year-old leg-spinner from Bradford was sent to Adelaide to work with the fabled spin guru, Terry Jenner. Identified by the ECB as a rare talent who could end their long search for a high-class leggie, it was hoped that a fortnight under the tutelage of Shane Warne’s mentor would fast-track the development of Adil Rashid. The Yorkshire starlet was accompanied on the wrist-spin programme by Bhargav Modha, a Gujarat-born 17-year-old on the books at Leicestershire. “Our target,” said Hugh Morris, the ECB’s performance director, “is to develop a wristspin bowler for the England team by 2007.” It was an ambitious goal, born out of the ECB’s desperation to find their own Warne, and in the…

If you liked cricket in the Nineties but your mum wasn’t too keen on Rupert Murdoch, you took what you could get. Summers were OK – Test cricket, as one of the government’s ‘crown jewels’, was still a majorterrestrial-TV sport back then, but winter tours and overseas World Cups were distant affairs, maddeningly out of reach. So you made do. Clips of net practice from Lahore on a Saturday morning show called Transworld Sport. Fumbling over Ceefax for hot live county scorecards. Scouring the latest Morrant catalogue for that season’s Surridges and Slazengers. Newspapers. Books. Old chaps on the radio. Magazines. There was no easy way to sate it. One winter, England played a Test series in India which they would lose 3-0. Some weeks after the final Test (Hick…

Harold Larwood Location unknown circa 1928 PHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN Born in Nuncargate, a mining village in Nottinghamshire, Harold Larwood worked down the pits from 14, taking his place among the prematurely ravaged lifers of the mine. At weekends, in kit purchased by his father, who’d pulled double shifts to raise the money to buy it, he would bowl. At 18, Notts offered him a way out, a professional contract to play under the flamboyant captaincy of Arthur Carr. A quiet boy, churchgoing, teetotal, Larwood would escape into a wholly different world. It was 1923. Ten years later he would be cast as the bogeyman in an infamous Ashes series, carrying the can for the fallout; “a ‘disgraced’ hero,” in Wisden’s notably air-quoted assessment, “banished to obscurity”. Pound for pound, Larwood was…

‘‘SACA made me feel like I belong. If I’m sitting in a team meeting now, I feel comfortable to have a say. I don’t have to be shy, I don’t have to be scared I’m not from a cricketing family. When I was at school in Luton a lot of my mates used to play cricket in the park with a wind ball, just messing about. We started playing most evenings and I loved bowling fast. One of my mates asked if I wanted to go to a net at Dunstable Town Cricket Club. I was about 15 and had never even played with a ‘proper’ cricket ball before. I must have impressed the captain as he asked if I wanted to play the following Saturday. I scored 27 not…

WORLD CUP 2023 HALL OF FAME TOP SIX…* Rohit Sharma – Rohit the poet, the magus of Maharashtra, our very own bard of the blade, the boy who makes it all make sense. Mitchell Santner – Tight lines, great fielder, natural leftist, face always concealing some dark hilarity. Rahmanullah Gurbaz – Afghan sensation. Please join Essex. Please. Quinton de Kock – The greatest reluctant cricketer who ever lived. Roelof van der Merwe – “Look. No ID, you ain’t coming in.” Bullish conqueror of South Africa. No one’s about to argue. Devon Conway – My own personal ATM. *Two weeks in.…

Team selected based on performances from September 13 to October 15 1. Quinton de Kock South Africa Having announced in September that he will be retiring from ODIs at the conclusion of the World Cup, the 30-year-old showed what the 50-over format will be missing when he opened the tournament with a brace of brilliant hundreds. The first, an even 100 from 84 balls against Sri Lanka, laid the platform for South Africa’s highest ever World Cup total of 428, and the second (109 off 106) set the tone for a thrashing of Australia – taking his overall tally of ODI tons to 19. 2. Rohit Sharma India After a comparatively lean spell, the 50-over master reeled off three half-centuries to conclude the Asia Cup and blitzed 81 from 57…

Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack editor and Daily Mail writer @BoothCricket No one likes to be quoted uttering even the mildest criticism of Indian cricket, so we won’t name the seamer who, during England’s World Cup game against Bangladesh at Dharamshala, told one of the umpires: “It’s like jumping from a sandpit on to concrete.” We’ve left out the expletive, too. The fact that the Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association (HPCA) stadium is one of the wonders of the sporting world has everything to do with its awe-inspiring Himalayan backdrop, and nothing to do with an outfield that has been pummelled by torrential rain and ravaged by fungus, exposing a sandy underlay that appeared more suited to a bucket and spade than a bat and ball. Earlier in the year, a Test against…

Derbyshire FINAL POSITIONS: CC: 6th in Div 2; T20: 5th in North Group; ODC: 8th in Group B Reece makes history but Derbyshire denied Derbyshire’s efforts to force a long-awaited Championship win proved in vain as Glamorgan held on to secure a draw at Cardiff on the final day of the season. The visitors, who drew 10 and lost four red-ball matches this summer, may have reflected that a bolder declaration could have seen them break their duck, with Glamorgan finishing 135-6 after being set a target of 384 from 70 overs. Their 17-match winless streak stretches back to July 2022, but there was at least some consolation to be found in the record-breaking performance of Luis Reece, who notched twin centuries to make it four Championship tons from as…

Rehan Ahmed Age: 19 Teams: Leicestershire, Southern Brave Earmarked even before his teens as a special talent, Ahmed was just 11 when he found himself on the Nursery Ground nets at Lord’s bowling leg-breaks at England’s Test team as they prepared for Pakistan’s Yasir Shah in 2016. The boy duly dismissed Ben Stokes and Alastair Cook. “I didn’t celebrate, I just took the ball and walked back to my mark,” he noted wryly a few years later. England have had their eye on him ever since. Given the early seal of approval by the likes of Shane Warne and Mushtaq Ahmed, in December 2022 Ahmed fulfilled his early promise on the biggest stage by becoming England’s youngest Test cricketer, aged 18 years and 126 days, and returning match-winning second-innings figures…

Freelance cricket writer  @tahahash Mid-July, The Oval, the County Championship ticking along. Notts are visiting and Surrey, the champions, have got their stars on show. There are six Test cricketers out there for the hosts: Burns, Sibley, Latham, Foakes, Jacks and Overton. In another world, there’s a seventh: Zafar Ansari. He’s 31 years old, been there, done that. He’s probably having a word with Will Jacks, offering the young off-spinner a tip or two while his own left-arm tweakers do a job from the other end. Maybe there’s a larger goal at play, too. The Ashes are rumbling along elsewhere and Ansari, now with more than 300 first-class wickets in the bag, is the next man in if Mo’s finger injury persists. Ansari is certainly capable of making a score…

Vipers make it a double Southern Vipers continued their domination of the domestic scene with a fivewicket win over The Blaze in the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy final at Northampton, collecting their second piece of silverware of the season. Having swept aside The Blaze in June’s Charlotte Edwards Cup final, Vipers were too strong for the Nottingham-based side once again, restricting their opponents to 200-8 and reaching their target with 46 balls to spare. Tammy Beaumont’s 76 from 104 balls had threatened to take The Blaze to a more competitive score, but Charlie Dean’s dismissal of the England opener put the brakes on, with Sophie Munro’s 33 the only other score of note. Vipers lost both openers, Ella McCaughan and Maia Bouchier, to Kathryn Bryce in the second over of…

Assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo  @mroller98 James Harris can still recall his night in Lumley Castle, and an afternoon spent house-hunting in West Bridgford at the encouragement of his friend and England Lions teammate James Taylor. He can taste the steak dinner which Jason Gillespie bought him in Leeds, and remembers strolling around The Oval. The year was 2012, and Harris was openly courting attention. At 22, he was already a Lions regular and had a clause in his Glamorgan contract which meant he was free to leave with one-third of his three-year deal still remaining. Every Division One club expressed an interest in him, as did those who were in the running for promotion. “My dad was acting as my agent at that point,” Harris tells WCM. “I was really…

No.9 NORTH STAFFORDSHIRE Scott Oliver takes a trip to the West Midlands to examine the history of a region which has consistently punched above its weight Late August 1965, and the 4,500 people crammed in at Great Chell – back then the ‘Lord’s of the Potteries’, with its two-tier pavilion, ground-floor ballroom and long, covered stand – await to see whether the North Staffordshire & South Cheshire League XI (NSSCL) can defend 102 in the inaugural final of the President’s Trophy, the newly-formed League Cricket Conference’s inter-league competition. Optimism is fuelled by strike bowler Wes Hall, the Chell pro, having taken 6-6 in his opening burst in the semi-final, yet it is his new-ball partner, Garfield Sobers, who settles things – snaring 5-10 in a 20-run win, then stuffing sponsor…

WIN! The winner of this month’s quiz will receive a bottle of Wisden Ltd Edition Rye Whisky and a high-quality etched whisky glass, available to buy at Wisden.com*. 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 November 27, 2023. *An alternative prize will be provided if the winner is aged under 18, or if requested. Only available to UK residents 1. 5 years ago… On October 4, 2018, which 18-yearold became the youngest player to score a century on Test debut for India? 2. 10 years ago… On October 24, 2013, which South African scored the fifth Test doublecentury of his career in an innings victory over Pakistan…