On editing an anthology of Wisden

I fear I may not have been entirely fair to Norman Preston. Preston edited Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack for 29 years until his death in 1980. The final three years of his tenure are the starting point for my new anthology of Wisden, covering the revolution in cricket that Kerry Packer initiated/channelled (delete according to taste) in 1977, and he became a useful symbol – along with the ubiquitous MCC panjandrum Gubby Allen – for the ancien regime.

Take this, from Preston’s preface to the 1977 Wisden. “In this The Queen’s Silver Jubilee Year when there will be celebrations over a period of six months throughout the country, we have as our guests the Australians on their 28th official tour of Britain. This time the first Test in the five-match series will take place at Lord’s, and it will be called the Jubilee Test.” Those were the first words you read as you opened the 1977 Wisden, and represented what might be called a settled view of the world – the Queen in her palace, Gubby at Lord’s, Boycott at the crease, the Ashes at stake. Preston was bald, bespectacled and looked a bit like Captain Mainwaring in Dad’s Army. He was extremely proud of his MBE, and in 1979 Wisden devoted a page to the lunch (or rather the “luncheon”) given in honour of its award. It was less than 30 years ago, just one generation (or perhaps two, in cricketing terms), yet it feels a world away.

Preston had many good points: he was quick to see the teenage Botham’s potential, came down hard on the upsurge in dissent in the late 70s, wrote succinct and unpredictable Notes, and was by no means a reactionary – he immediately saw the attraction of floodlit cricket and the white ball. But his essential confidence in cricket’s continuities made him underplay the dangers posed by Packerism. With the game, especially in Australia and the West Indies, facing its gravest threat for a century, his Notes were staggeringly parochial. “Brearley’s Indifferent Form”, “Sussex Thrive Under Arnold Long”, “Whither Somerset and Essex” – those were the vital issues engaging Preston at home in Bromley as he wrote his Notes in December 1978.

What I have tried to do in the anthology is trace how we got from this Preston/Gubby Allen world, in which men with three initials ran the game and Wisden took a dry-as-dust view of the sport, to one where an article by Peter Hayter in the 2006 almanack covered the celebration of the Ashes triumph thus: “ ‘I’ve not been to bed’,” Freddie explained to David Gower, Nelson’s column and a crowd of thousands – even though he could barely tell which was which. ‘Behind these shades there’s a thousand stories.’ ” From Norman Preston to the mischievous Matthew Engel; David Steele to Kevin Pietersen; luncheons at Lord’s to concerts (I believe young people call them “gigs”) featuring Atomic Kitten at Twenty20 matches. Cricket has, for better or worse, caught up with the modern world; Wisden, too – it now wants to tell all those thousand stories. (Well, almost all of them.)

So the task was to mould Wisden’s annual snapshots into a book that gave a picture of the rapid changes in the game over the past 30 years. It is supposed to entertain but also to inform – “fun with a purpose” was the dubious phrase I hit upon. I hope it will please both the dippers and the delvers. At the very least, at 1,300 pages and the weight of a breeze block, it will be useful to keep beside your bed as a weapon in the event of a burglary.

I decided on a structure for the book early on, and unusually it survived more or less intact – I trust out of innate logic rather than (equally innate) lethargy. The first section attempts a historical overview, dealing with the great themes of the period – Packer, politics, the crisis in behaviour in the late 70s and early 80s, commercialism and the growing power of television, the poison of corruption that threatened the game in the 90s, the growing centrality of international cricket and the attendant decline in domestic competitions, the emergence of Asia as the sport’s centre of gravity. Section two looks at how each of the 10 principal cricketing countries (one cannot quite say “Test-playing” as Zimbabwe is in limbo) has fared over the period. Section three offers portraits of the great players. Section four deals with the seven World Cups played in the past 30 years – eccentric, often unsatisfactory affairs, yet as I relived them I warmed to the notion of this batty global festival of cricket and looked forward to the future of the event with greater confidence. Section five charts the performance of the 18 first-class counties – as a Glamorgan devotee, I like to believe they still have a place, even in this absurd age of international cricketers arriving to play the odd fortnight for them. Section six samples Wisden’s less easily categorisable offerings, with contributions on village cricket, the world beyond the Test-playing countries (cricket in Antarctica!), umpires, pundits and women’s cricket. Section seven includes as many of Wisden’s marvellous obituaries as I was able to squeeze in. The book concludes with a chronology compiled by Steven Lynch and a section detailing key stats – where would Wisden be without them? – put together by Philip Bailey.

Boiling down the 40,000-plus pages of the Almanack from the past 30 years proved both a joy and a nightmare (probably slightly more the latter, if I’m being totally honest). At one point I had well over a million words on my computer – we were looking at a book of Proustian proportions. The publisher, patient and surprisingly forgiving, made space for more than we had budgeted for, but some last-minute pruning was still necessary and I hope the omissions are not too obvious.

The section I was saddest to lose was one I was planning on the worst matches of the period, perhaps inspired by a Glamorgan-Derbyshire match I attended in the mid-70s. Neither side scored more than 300; the scoring rate was a shade over two an over; Glamorgan lost by 56 runs; I was there for all three days, and the only thing I remember 30 years on is a gutsy half-century by Derbyshire’s left-arm spinner Fred Swarbrook. An anthology for the future perhaps – cricket’s most forgettable games. That really would be a big book.

So the worst had to give way to the best – the most exciting and significant Tests, the most thrilling one-day matches, the games that decided the fate of championships, the talismanic players. I had a debate with myself about the nature of “greatness” when it came to individuals. Lara, Gooch, Miandad, Gavaskar, Tendulkar, Graeme Pollock and Viv Richards are, clearly, great batsmen – as defined by sheer weight of runs made over a long period, and often by the manner in which those runs were made. They are a cut above, true champions. But what of Gower, Atherton, Hick, all of whom made the final selection? Is there a different sort of greatness? Gower’s was an aesthetic greatness; Atherton played one unforgettable innings and many fighting ones; Hick is a phenomenon outside the Test arena. The choice became highly subjective – an amalgam of some quality in the player and in the way Wisden had memorialised the career.

Matthew Engel calls picking the five Cricketers of the Year his annual perk. I gave myself a perk for compiling this book – the chance to pick an XI from the greats who played in the period being anthologised: Gooch, Greenidge, Viv Richards, Lara, Tendulkar, Botham, Knott, Marshall, Warne, Muralitharan, Waqar. Who should skipper? Several of these were, after all, flawed captains. I decided it should be Warne – the great Australian captain who got away. Bird and Shepherd would umpire; Benaud, Arlott and Johnston would commentate; Frindall would score; the game would be played at The Oval, my favourite ground (pre-makeover anyway). Corporate diners and the singing of Jerusalem would be banned. When cricket writer A A Thomson used to indulge in these exercises, he always pretended he was picking a team to play Mars. A dusty wicket, presumably, so good that we have two world-class (nay, universe-class) spinners.

The section that really did prove a joy was the obituaries, which under Engel have been startlingly good. In the Prestonian era, they were sometimes rather bald recitations of facts and figures – by my average shalt thou know me. Now, they divine the man (or woman – women are not ignored) behind the statistics, and trace the life – too often a challenging one – after cricket, that all-consuming occupation which, once one’s playing days are over, can leave a vacuum.

The funniest obit is of Anthony Ainley, the actor who played The Master, the arch-enemy of Doctor Who, in the 1980s. But more to the point, according to Wisden’s farewell, “A keen club cricketer for The Stage and London Theatres CC. ‘He was an eccentric and very effective opening bat who appeared in full body padding, sunblock, helmet and swimming goggles,’ according to his fellow actor Christopher Douglas, ‘and had a penchant for charging down the track and smashing the ball back over the bowler’s head.’ … A complex character, he usually took his cricket teas alone in his car – possibly because, according to one report, he ‘despised cheeses of all kinds’.”

The most touching send-off, and a piece that for me captures the essence of cricket, is of leg-spin bowler Roly Jenkins. “He will forever be associated with long afternoons at Worcester, running up to bowl his leg-breaks in his cap (though he batted without one) with a seaman’s gait (though his furthest posting during the war was fire-watching at the top of Worcester Cathedral) and punctuating the game with a very mellow sort of humour … Jenkins played on in the Birmingham League as the pro for West Bromwich Dartmouth until his mid-fifties. By then, he was a revered figure and one umpire insisted on letting him deliver a 10-ball over for the sheer pleasure of watching him bowl … For some years, he umpired village matches for Ombersley – and coached as he did so. He never lost his love of cricket, or cricket talk. ‘We’re given memories so we can have roses in December,’ he once said.” I would love it if this book awakens those memories, encourages the occasional bud.

Wisden Anthology 1978-2006: Cricket’s Age of Revolution

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