Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 83 i Wisden Cricket Monthly

"We still think you’ll be alright," Rob Key assures Jofra Archer, and what else can he say? It’s them or us, big lad? Step one foot into that gilded ballroom and you’re finished as a Test cricketer? Key, a keen poker player, is nobody’s fool. He’s sat around plenty of tables in the last couple of years, reminding himself that what separates the sharps from the mugs isn’t knowing what makes a good hand, but how best to play a bad one. He’s learnt to sit in, and play the long game. To bleed the metaphor dry, the stakes have rarely been higher, and the tables never so crammed. This is not new territory for English cricket. It’s been locked in an unsteady truce with the IPL’s overlords for years.…

With any luck, Donald Trump’s direct influence on cricket will never extend much beyond his mangling of “Soo-chin Tendulk-err’s” name at that political rally in Ahmedabad (although, to judge by India’s my-way-or-highway attitude to the Champions Trophy, you’d be forgiven for thinking it already has). His indirect influence, on the other hand, has been felt ever since his re-election, and not simply by the scores of cricket folk who (to use the Bazball-style buzzword of 2024) have endured the “enshittification” of X / Twitter for long enough, and have fled to pastures new on Bluesky. The events of the past month have triggered a coarsening of discourse (not just on X), and an emboldening of attitudes that, Elon Musk will tell you, had previously been suppressed by a “woke mind…

Beth Barrett-Wild, the ECB’s director of the women’s professional game, has urged patience with the new domestic structure, stressing that attracting increased audiences “won’t happen overnight”. The overhaul, known as ‘Project Darwin’, will see counties given back control over the women’s domestic game. Eight fully professional Tier One sides will take over from the previously existing regions from 2025, with Yorkshire and Glamorgan joining in 2026 and 2027 respectively. Below that will be Tier Two and Tier Three sides - a mixture of semi-professional and amateur teams overseen by counties. A key aim of the restructure was creating greater scale and visibility to accelerate team and player fandom, as well as establishing a more compelling platform to commercialise women’s cricket. It was announced in November that the newly aligned men’s…

An alternative prize will be provided if the winner is aged under 18, or if requested *Only available to UK residents We reserve the right to edit letters for length and clarity LETTER OF THE MONTH Jacob scrambles up the ladder Jacob Bethell batted nicely to score a half-century in a straightforward run-chase at Christchurch and he’s clearly a special talent, but his ascent to become England’s Test No.3 feels far too quick for a young player still learning his craft. It’s been noted that Bethell was the first England batter to make his Test debut without having made a first-class hundred since Mike Gatting in 1978. It’s perhaps worth also noting that Gatting, who began his England career at the relative comfort of No.5, took six-and-a-half years to register…

LORD MACLAURIN 1997-2002 CV: A former chair of Tesco and Vodafone, Baron MacLaurin of Knebworth became the ECB’s first chair in 1997, a year after entering the House of Lords as a Conservative member. An ex-minor counties cricketer for Hertfordshire, he was president of MCC from 2017 to 2018. HIGHLIGHTS: Oversaw the implementation of central contracts, which proved crucial in reviving the fortunes of England’s Test team, and the popular move to split the County Championship into two divisions (although his original three-conference proposal was described as "barmy" by a former iteration of this magazine). GAFFES: Not known for his diplomacy skills, MacLaurin demanded that any Pakistan player accused of match-fixing be removed from the national team ahead of England’s 2000/01 tour. He later claimed his words had been misinterpreted…

We’re in a hotel in London, last gasps of the English summer. Travis Head has a cold. It’s raining hard outside. His team have spent the week touring the northern fleshpots, from Nottingham to Leeds and on to Chester-le-Street for a spurious one-day series that will nonetheless summon up a little narrative. At Trent Bridge, Head had produced his latest masterwork, a ludicrous 154* from 129 balls, his 10th hundred for Australia since returning to Test cricket three years back with a directive to muller everything that gets in his way. Despite the cold, Travis is in canny form, talking faster than he bats, ideas spooling out onto the table, words tripping over themselves to be heard. He’s excellent company. This is the third time we’ve spoken in the last…

* deeply subjective Nº16 England in Australia, 2010/11 Australia 1-3 England THE STARS Alastair Cook (766 runs at 127.66) recovered from a miserable 2010 summer, in which his footwork and technique had completely unravelled. Only Wally Hammond has scored more for England in Australia. James Anderson (24 wickets at 26.04) teased multiple tricks from the traditionally unresponsive Kookaburra ball with conventional and reverse swing. WHY IT WAS SPECIAL England were on the rise and Australia on the wane but don’t let hindsight fool you. Big runs (nine centuries to three); immaculately disciplined bowling; and brilliant catching. Not to mention the ubiquitous ‘sprinkler’ dance which exploded into the public consciousness through Graeme Swann’s video diaries. Asked recently by Mike Atherton to name the favourite memory from his 21-year Test career, Anderson…

"The quickest I faced were Hartley Alleyne and Ezra Moseley,” begins Chris Dearden, Littleborough CC’s pugnacious No.3 during the Central Lancashire League’s overseas-pro heyday, “but the most awkward, with me not being particularly tall, were Curtly Ambrose and Colin Croft. Speed didn’t worry me too much but the bounce was tough. Thankfully, we had Ezra on our side for five years. He was real quick." Dearden first came through the gates at Hare Hill in 1971, aged 13, after his parents bought The Ox & Plough in the village, and made a first-team debut four years later alongside Garry Sobers, placing his bets and keeping him abreast of the Wimbledon men’s singles final from third-man. Three years of Joel Garner followed - the pair remain friends, ‘Big Bird’ greeting ‘Noddy’…

9. SWAMI AND FRIENDS BY RK NARAYAN (1935) Swaminathan Srinivathan, the engagingly naive 10-year-old hero of RK Narayan’s first novel, doesn’t like Mondays. He lives in Malgudi, the imaginary location of all Narayan’s fiction, very loosely based on Mysore where the author made his home. At the end of each weekend, Swami comes to dread the “very thought” of going back to the Albert Mission School, less loosely based on the Lutheran Mission School in Madras where the author was once a pupil. Swami lets a “heap” of homework build up, not helped by a curriculum biased more towards English than his native Tamil. He lacks the self-assurance of his good friend Rajam, the son of the deputy superintendent of police, the only pupil to come to school in a…

DIFFERENT CLASS: THE UNTOLD STORY OF ENGLISH CRICKET- BY DUNCAN STONE Prompted by a listener question on the Wisden podcast, I’ve gone back to this incendiary book this month. It still packs a heavy punch second time round. Stone’s fury at what he sees as the game’s hidebound classism is directed more at the recreational game, where he sees opportunities spurned and progress stunted by a culture that still, even now, appears in thrall to the essentially false vision of a lost England: one of bucolic splendour and lazy, genteel afternoons. Stone, an academic and historian who loves cricket but despises its complacencies, writes angrily and often persuasively. Buy it for a friend, but make sure they’re up for a good debate. GARY PALMER’S BATTING APP Gary Palmer is a…

On the eve of England’s Test series in New Zealand last month, Ben Stokes was invited to give his thoughts on the World Test Championship. For a moment, he looked as if he had been asked to discuss the pros and cons of chocolate teapots. “Honestly, it’s a bit confusing,” he began, before summing up an attitude that probably makes sense to England fans, but to the rest of the cricket-playing world sounds curiously detached: “We don’t really look at it.” And while he did his best to explain that qualification for the final of the WTC was the natural consequence of playing well for a couple of years - and who wouldn’t want to do that? - he mainly exuded a sense of… indifference. The word salad that ensued…

Anthony McGrath has little interest in tempering expectations. “Hopefully we can really push on and challenge in all competitions,” Yorkshire’s new men’s head coach begins. His voice audibly lifts and the cadence quickens as the words, full of belief, spill out. “I see it as a great challenge, but an exciting one.” McGrath takes WCM’s call from a frozen Headingley car park having just overseen one of the first training sessions since his appointment. Many coaches, particularly those freshly installed, would see the season following promotion as one of consolidation. But McGrath, knowing the potency of the talent he has at his disposal, and the high expectations of Yorkshire supporters, is aiming higher. “Some people make a lot of [the jump from] Division One to Division Two,” he says. “But…

England’s men’s Test team arrived in New Zealand last month but did so without their first-choice wicketkeeper, Jamie Smith. It’s not injury or poor form that has kept the 24-year-old at home. Far from it. He’d scored one hundred and four fifties in his first nine matches and been reliable with the gloves. Smith had chosen not to represent his country so he could be present for the birth of his first child. Not everyone, though, is in full support of the decision. “I know it’s the birth of your first child… but I would not be giving up my spot for anybody if I was Jamie Smith," Mark Butcher, the former England batter, said on the Wisden Cricket Weekly podcast. “That’s just the way things are in the modern…

Send in your answers via email (editorial@wisden.com). Entries must be received by January 6, 2025 1.5 years ago… On December 15, 2019, Australia beat New Zealand by 296 runs in the first Test at Perth. Which Kiwi fast bowler suffered a calf strain on day one of his debut, restricting him to 11 overs in the match, and hasn’t played Test cricket since? 2.10 years ago… On December 19, 2014, who scored a century at Brisbane in their first Test match as captain? 3.15 years ago… On December 20, 2009, the first Test between South Africa and England at Centurion ended in a draw. Which No.11 blocked out the final over to deny the hosts victory, and did so again in the third Test at Cape Town? 4.20 years ago……

No.8 The Duke of Dorset In the 18th century there were a few aristocrats who were obsessed with cricket. Among the best known were Horace Mann, the Earl of Tankerville and the Duke of Dorset. They each bankrolled teams, and often hired good cricketers to be gardeners or gamekeepers, so they were always available to play. Games were played for enormous stakes, sometimes thousands of pounds. The Duke of Dorset leased the cricket ground at Sevenoaks Vine to the town for a peppercorn rent, and the yearly rent is still two peppercorns and a cricket ball. He was also a gambler and a well-known womaniser. The print from the Town and Country Magazine, published in 1776, shows him, “The Noble Cricketer”, with one of his conquests. The magazine was the…

Peaks and troughs, many more troughs than peaks, but the thing about troughs is they make the view from peaks all the more splendid. Never more so for a lifelong New Zealand cricket supporter than a couple of months ago when their men’s team defeated India 3-0 away and their women’s team won the T20 World Cup. Last month in these pages Phil Walker wrote that even these remarkable triumphs would be seen as India and the rest of the world’s loss rather than New Zealand’s gain, “producing mere ripples of goodwill” for the modest little nation’s double whammy. Not if you’re a Kiwi. Let me take you back to March 28,1955, the third day of New Zealand’s Test against Len Hutton’s tourists at Eden Park, Auckland. I’d been there…

ISSUE 83 Cricket is perhaps unique among sports in that those who profess to be among its devotees would almost always rather not actually be playing it. Golf courses, rain cards and the unyielding fear of failure all combine to mean that an unexpectedly sunny day can be a rather gloomy prospect, and it’s a truth that extends from the recreational game all the way up to the top level. Case in point: last month’s final of the Super50 Cup, West Indies’ premier List-A competition. You’ll be forgiven for not following the game closely, not least because it didn’t actually happen. After heavy rain, the groundstaff worked tirelessly to get conditions in a fit state for the umpires to decide a 20-over game would be possible. At which point both…

As Storm Bert wreaked havoc last month, triggering 150 flood warnings and damaging more than 500 homes and businesses across the UK, beleaguered cricket clubs would have been fearing the worst. Southern England had already experienced its wettest September since 1918, while the 18 months between October 2022 and March 2024 were the wettest ever recorded in England. “You can see the effect of climate change over time,” says lain James, the ECB’s head of facilities services tasked with mitigating flood damage at professional and grassroots clubs. “But it’s also urbanisation, house building, sealing off lands and under-investment in sewers and rivers.” James has been examining the impact of flooding on cricket grounds since 2007 and says the game is at particular risk because of the locations where it’s typically…

Richard Thompson calls himself a “workaholic", which is just as well. As ECB chairman, his itinerary might have exhausted Phileas Fogg - and it isn’t even his main job. We are talking in a smart meeting room in central London, but this is not Lord’s: Thompson is chair and founder of M&C Saatchi Talent Group, and the skyline from the top floor hints at horizons broader than the sport he administers. Yet he has devoured cricket all his life, just as cricket now devours him. And, gosh, the travel. “Within days of the season finishing, you’re thinking about packing for Pakistan," he tells WCM. “You’ve got the women’s World Cup, the ODIs in the Caribbean, then New Zealand. In January, it’s the women’s Ashes, eight white-ball games in India, and…

FACTFILE AGE: 25 PLACE OF BIRTH: Keighley, Yorkshire ROLE: Right-hand middle-order bat ICC TEST BATTING RANKING: 4 INTERNATIONAL RECORD: 22 Tests, 2,102 runs at 60.05, 7 hundreds, 9 fifties, SR 87.65, HS 317 20 ODIs, 719 runs at 39.94, 1 hundred, 5 fifties, SR 106.83, HS 110* 39 T20ls, 707 runs at 30.73, 3 fifties, SR 146.07, HS 81* "The shots of Pietersen and the rhythm, and hunger of Root Nasser Hussain ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS How Brook’s Test record compares with the original Fab Four at the same point in their careers A seventh hundred in 22 Tests in England’s victory at Christchurch pushed Harry Brook up to Nº2 in the ICC’s batting rankings. Jo Harman examines a truly remarkable start to the Yorkshireman’s Test career It doesn’t take long for Harry Brook to make an…

For all the shocks and drama, the recent Women’s T20 World Cup was not an exhibition in free-flowing batting. Turgid pitches and sluggish outfields in the UAE - employed as emergency hosts after Bangladesh was deemed unsafe led to a tournament dominated by slow bowlers. Just 39 sixes were hit across 23 matches and only twice did a team post a total in excess of 160. In some ways the competition was a throwback to a previous era, where totals of 120 regularly proved enough. It led to some exciting finishes - and helped to upset the natural order as Australia came unstuck and New Zealand won their first global trophy for 24 years but the tournament was a poor representation of how far the women’s game, and batting in…