The 2012
Wisden has arrived, its yellow cover for us in New Zealand representing autumn
leaves rather than spring flowers.
Each almanack
records a cricketing year, but when you have 45 yellow jackets on your shelves,
as I do (46 if you count the 1964 edition that I picked up from the
second-hand-book stall at the Basin Test a couple of years ago) you find that each
Wisden represents another notch on the stick of your own mortality. I mention this because the 2012 edition is
the first to be edited by Lawrence Booth.
37-year-old
Lawrence Booth.
That is to
say, Wisden is now in the charge of a man who has no recall of the first two
World Cup finals, the Test match career of David Steele or Headingley ’81, and who
never watched cricket in black-and-white. Booth is the first of the Good Book’s
sixteen editors to have made his name, in part at least, through his on-line
writing, for The Guardian’s
over-by-over coverage of Tests and its email newsletter The Spin (an email newsletter – how quaint). That seems to be the
way in these days. Talented young sports writers such as the Daily Telegraph’s Jonathan Liew and The Guardian’s Barney Ronay serve
apprenticeships in front of television screens in newspaper offices in the dead
of night before being allowed out to file from a proper press box.
Lawrence
Booth’s appointment is a response to the question “What is Wisden for?” Throughout
the twentieth century the answer was so obvious that the question was not worth
asking. Wisden was the game’s record, unrivalled in its breadth, depth and
completeness. Then the internet arrived and Wisden suddenly found itself as
contemporary and useful as a powdered wig. Like most cricket followers, I turn
first to CricInfo and Cricket Archive for statistics (which
are up-to-date to the second) and scorecards, and when I get around to owning a
smart phone it will probably be with a view to having all this information at
hand when I am spectating at the Basin.
Wisden was,
in fact, an early adapter to the digital age, or tried to be. It had a website
going early in the new century, and experimented with a paywall for access to
its archive, but that did not work so it bought CricInfo, saving it from financial oblivion (and allowing a few of
us in distant corners of the world to be paid when we had almost given up
hope). A few years later CricInfo was
sold to ESPN and Wisden appeared to be left on the platform waving a
handkerchief as the age of electronic publishing sped towards the horizon.
Lawrence
Booth’s brief is to ensure that Wisden catches up and remains as indispensable in
the twenty-first century as it was in the twentieth. Not that the Almanack is
in commercial decline. On the contrary, sales have held up well, and it remains
one of the British publishing’s most bankable titles. But it cannot remain
immune to the effects of changing times, which will see any number of familiar
titles ceasing to appear in printed form over the next few years.
So the 2012
Almanack is the first to be available as an ebook. Booth has also initiated Wisden Extra, an online pamphlet full of
good writing, but which can only be easily read if printed out, which seems to
rather miss the point. The content of the Almanack is also increasingly
influenced by on-line competition, though some of these changes pre-date
Lawrence Booth’s accession to the editor’s chair by several years. The records
section has migrated to the back of the book, reflecting the loss of its status
as the main reason to buy the Almanack. The Wisden website will henceforth
update records in real time, but it would be a mistake to put much effort into
duplicating what is available elsewhere.
Almost all
scorecards of English domestic one-day and T20 cricket appear in potted form.
All hell was let loose when the Sunday League scores for 1976 appeared in this
form in the 1977 Almanack, as this removed the only collected source of these
records. Now the omitted scores are freely available on-line, so nobody cares.
But brief reports, not necessarily easily available with the full cards, are
retained, which is sensible.
And there we
have the reason why Wisden remains relevant, essential indeed, in digital
times. It’s not the numbers, it’s the words.
The biggest
change in Wisden in the period represented on my shelves is the quality of the
writing, for so long pedestrian, now often outstanding. I reached for the 1972
edition for comparison. The features give the impression of having been written
in a particularly dusty corner of the Carlton Club for a readership in another
part of the room. The editor’s notes have the dull air of the bowls club AGM
about them. Norman Preston, editing his 22nd edition, is sniffy about the
success of Ray Illingworth’s Ashes-winning side because of “unsavoury”
incidents that occurred during the series.
Though not
yet aspiring to the heights of pontifical infallibility achieved by Matthew
Engel, Lawrence Booth’s notes are intelligent and pleasingly written. They lead
a consolidated comment section of more than 200 pages, a book in its own right
and more than double the ration of forty years ago.
The overall
standard is so high that it is almost invidious to nominate a favourite. Mike
Brearley’s insightful piece on depression among cricketers contends. So does
Gideon Haigh’s account of the development of the International Cricket Council
from the time 20 years ago when it was housed in a converted canteen at Lord’s to
its present location in luxurious premises in Dubai. Haigh nails it by the
second paragraph in which he notes the appropriateness of the proximity of the
animal so often described as a horse designed by a committee.
Michael Henderson
writes an uncharacteristically cheerful, almost romantic, piece inspired by the
moment at Taunton when
Croft of Blackpool hit the runs that threw a hoop around
almost eight decades of history
and won
Lancashire the Championship.
For those who moved away long ago, and will never go back,
Lancashire – and Lancashire cricket – still grips us, for it is part of that
personal mythology without which no human being can feel entirely fulfilled.
So true,
just substitute the name of your county or team. Will Kent win another
Championship in my lifetime?
Colin
Schindler, another Lancashire man, marks the fifty seasons that have passed
since amateurism was abolished in English first-class cricket with a few
stories that suggest the move was overdue, such as that of Peter Murray-Willis,
captain of Northamptonshire in 1946, who once stopped chasing a ball to the
boundary because his cap fell off.
But it is
PJK Gibbs – yes, Alan Gibson’s bĂȘte noire again – who tops the rest with his
account of a day in 1964 that he spent in the company of SF Barnes, perhaps the
greatest bowler ever to play the game. It is like somebody still living
describing a day spent chopping down trees at Hawarden with Gladstone. Gibbs, a
junior player in the Staffordshire team playing in the Minor Counties
Championship against Bedfordshire at Walsall, was assigned the task of looking
after 91-year-old Barnes, a short straw given the great man’s reputation for
irascibility. Barnes was a century ahead of his time when he followed the money
to the leagues when Lancashire would not pay him enough. He would play for
England only if “the money was right” and would have approved enthusiastically
of Chris Gayle and the like, seasonally migrating from T20 team to another
across the globe.
Despite his
great age Barnes’s mind and prejudices were steel-tipped.
“Batsman?” he said after a pause. “Yes”. “Oxford?” “Yes”.
“Blue?” His voice had a dark, accusing tone.
His opinions
on the modern game and its players were acute.
“Frank Worrell, fine player, fine man. Laker? Those pitches
in ’56 were a travesty. Money for old rope. What did he do in Australia?”
Barnes took
77 Test wickets in Australia, in just 13 Tests. On that day in 1964 Gibbs got a
pair.
And then
there are the obituaries, the anticipation of which has kept my Blean
correspondent and myself reason to live through many a cold English winter. Year
by year, the number who I saw play edges up. Abberley, Bailey, Carew, Dilley,
d’Oliveira, Pataudi, Reifer, Roebuck, Saxena, Titmus, only a wicketkeeper short
of a team. All the notices are unsigned, so I don’t know who to praise for the
outstanding piece on Peter Roebuck, which gets the blend of dark and light just
right (though I’d guess Gideon Haigh). Those on Graham Dilley and Basil d’Oliveira
manage to say something fresh despite the thousands of words written about both
men in the days after their deaths.
But the real
attraction of the obituaries is the stories told of minor figures, some of whom
are included only because there is a good story to be told, not necessarily
related to cricket. So the notice for Martin Searby, the Yorkshire journalist
who was something of legend on the county circuit, records an exchange that took
place in a cruise ship swimming pool. “Are you Martin Searby?” asked a woman he
did not recognise. “Who wants to know?” “I was your first wife” came the reply.
I met Searby once. “A good bloke before nine in the evening” was what I had
been told about him. As he entered the Vittoria on the Whiteladies Road in
Bristol – the last call of an all-day drinking session in the company of David
Green of Lancashire, Gloucestershire, and the Daily Telegraph – I looked at my watch. It was ten to ten. The next
hour was a long one.
Sir Roger
Jowell is included on two grounds. In 1965 he was protesting at Lord’s against
the team representing white South Africa, but was so taken with a shot by
Graeme Pollock that he put down his placard to applaud; and “one of the
Americans he succeeded in converting to the game” (this conjures up a
marvellous image of him going from door to door in the mid-West, Wisden in
hand) was Bill Clinton’s campaign chief of staff.
Richard
Douglas-Boyd’s claim for inclusion is slim: his company published a few cricket
books. But had he been omitted we would not have known that he severed his big
toe with a lawnmower, or that his spaniel ate the toe before it could be
recovered.
So callow
youth as Lawrence Booth may be, the first Wisden in his charge matches the high
standards set by his recent predecessors. The 2013 edition will be the 150th
Good luck Wisden for the 150th edition
ReplyDeleteWhat a fantastic piece on the little yellow book, and great to hear of another collector in New Zealand - they seem rarer than a T20 maiden. I am a little younger than Mr Booth but find Wisden one of life's true pleasures though unfortunately my 2012 has only just arrived - the joys of the Royal Mail.
ReplyDeleteI now have about 100 of cricket's bible but with young kids and a small house they sit in storage and will have to remain there for the next year or two which seems a pity given they should be both read and shared.
For me the joy of reading reports in Wisden is the opportunity to be transported back in time to matches long forgotten or never seen and be enlightened in the language of the day.
Thanks for a fantastic review.
Thanks for your kind words Cricketing Buddha. Compared to you, I'm a mere acquirer of Wisdens. The century is a great achievement. I sympathise with your separation from your collection. For about 10 years most of mine were in a loft in Kent while I was in NZ, and it was a great day when I was reunited with them, and had them all on the shelves together. I was going to say in the piece that, however convenient on-line sources are, they cannot be randomly browsed in the way that books can.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed Donning the Whites with Grace, though it's a shame you've chosen Surrey. That always ends in tears.
Look forward to hearing more from you.