Quotes from Wisden 2001

"The ICC's few years as a governing body have not been glorious. It is still perceived as little more than a talking shop, not always the sum of its fractious parts and impotent to act without the agreement of its member countries, with their own vested interests." Notes by the Editor on cricket's need for a strong administration

"There was, is, a power struggle in international cricket … and the Asian countries are resentful of England, the old colonial power, but the subcontinent has not helped matters by being very defensive about match-fixing." ICC source quoted by Mihir Bose in "A Game in Shame"

"Thankfully, for batsmen, there will no longer be the sight of Ambrose stood in mid-pitch after another wicket, pumping his arms skywards." Mike Atherton on Curtly Ambrose

"Also in 1900, A A Milne was playing for Westminster School, but it is not known after which famous cricketer he named his great character, Eeyore." Jonathan Rice on Wisden cricketers

"Inzamam, son of an Islamic saint, was drawn to complain to umpire Tiffin about the language used. `They [the Sri Lankan close fielders] were sometimes sledging and continuously tried to disturb my concentration,' he was quoted as saying." Pakistan v Sri Lanka Test report

"This book is about him learning to be a cricketer, a journalist, a grown-up. The first two he manages quite well." Gillian Reynolds reviewing Cricket Books

All it took was a change of editor … Prior to publication of Wisden 2000, editor Matthew Engel announced he was taking time out because he was fed up with having to explain "the continuing failures of English cricket". Graeme Wright, back as temporary Wisden editor after eight years away, had hardly taken over when England began winning again. Wright's Notes by the Editor celebrate England's three series wins in 2000 and predict that "If England get to The Oval with the Ashes still at stake this summer, they'll have to cordon off the Harleyford Road."

… and a Zimbabwean coach "Through both the way he deports himself and his organisational skills, Fletcher brought calmness and stability to the volatile mass, or rather mess, that was England's cricket."

Scyld Berry's perceptive essay on two overseas coaches with an outsider's perspective, Duncan Fletcher with England and John Bracewell at Gloucestershire, pinpoints reasons why England's cricket no longer needs apologists. Darren Gough's batting in Test victories over West Indies, Pakistan and Sri Lanka is a measure of Fletcher's worth.

Notes by the Editor

Understandably, match-fixing leads Wright's first Wisden Notes since 1992. He is severe on the ICC and the Australian Cricket Board for failing to disclose the dealings that Mark Waugh and Shane Warne had with an Indian bookmaker in 1994, pointing out that Mohammad Azharuddin and Hansie Cronje did not become involved with match-fixing bookmakers until 1996. "… the sound of silence rang out loud and clear both to bookmakers and cricketers. The game's administrators were not going to interfere in their activities."

Wright argues that the time has come "to put the ICC on a proper business footing, with full-time executives empowered to take decisive, unilateral action as a centrally functioning administration."

As if the match-fixing scandal did not make this apparent, it became starkly obvious when controversial umpiring decisions in England's recent series against Sri Lanka took the game closer to anarchy. The ICC's response? A reminder that it had a meeting of its Cricket Committee lined up for May. It was powerless to take immediate action.

Shame about the game

In a long, detailed article, "A Game in Shame", Mihir Bose examines the cultural and national power struggles in world cricket that provided the opportunity for bookmakers and match-fixers to infiltrate and corrupt the game. A list of more than 50 matches reveals that match-fixing was by no means restricted to one-day internationals.

But there's more to Wisden 2001 than match-fixing

Jonathan Rice sounds a light-hearted note with a trawl through the past pages of Wisden to come up with well-known names who have appeared in the Almanack without being famous as cricketers – among them noted novelists P. G. Woodhouse and John Fowles, heads of state and industry, and rugby league winger Martin Offiah.

In another feature on Wisden, David Rayvern Allen recounts how Jim Swanton's 1939 Almanack, rated "not subversive" by their Japanese captors, sustained prisoners-of-war on the Burma-Siam Railway.

Mike Atherton and Vic Marks pay tribute to Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh at the close of their great fast-bowling partnership, while, amid the colour pictures, Wisden marks the retirement of another legendary West Indian, Labon Kenneth Blackburn Llewelyn Bouchan Benjamin, better known as Gravy.

There are sadder farewells following the deaths, among many others, of Lord Cowdrey and Brian Statham. Hubert Doggart and Frank Keating pay tribute to these great cricketers from a "radiant era, rich in recollection". A tribute to Sir Donald Bradman, whose death, just as this Wisden was being printed, stopped the presses, notes that "the high standards he set on and off the field … are his legacy". As if with prescience, page 1581 in the Obituary section carries a picture of Bradman and Cowdrey together, demonstrating their batting stance.

In a Wisden first, the cricket books have a woman reviewer – Daily Telegraph radio critic Gillian Reynolds. "Now," she writes, "I have begun at last to get to grips with the real Planet Cricket: the passion, the politics, the psychology, the sex, the rifts, the nicknames, the statistics. Well, maybe not the statistics."

Cricketers of the Year

Wisden's Five Cricketers of the Year are: · Mark Alleyne of Gloucestershire · Martin Bicknell of Surrey · Andrew Caddick of England and Somerset · Justin Langer of Australia and Middlesex · Darren Lehmann of South Australia and Yorkshire

Round the world

Wisden's Round the World section takes in 26 countries, with pride of place going to Iceland's headline-making win over England, and a cricket club there that is probably the most unpronounceable as well as the most northerly – Ungmennafelagid Glaumur in Stykkisholmer. France gave pointers for future European friction by finishing runners-up at a Kwik Cricket festival in Kent, while Norway's reaction to becoming an ICC Affiliate country was to sack the Board members who brought this about. In Brunei Darussulam, a well-struck six and a broken window left Shell Recreation Club homeless.

Chronicle of 2000

Items include: 11-year-old Bethany Brown, who stunned her all-male opponents by taking seven for nought in three overs. A pet rabbit called "Hansie" in Northampton. "Our nine-year-old Lauren has been telling everybody that our rabbit has been arrested." An outbreak of naked cricket in Yorkshire. "There were men of all shapes and sizes. It's what sport is all about." The Sri Lankan umpire who was beaten to death after giving a batsman out in a softball cricket tournament.

Wisden 2002

Graeme Wright will continue as Editor of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, following Matthew Engel's appointment as Chief Washington Correspondent of The Guardian. Matthew will continue his association with John Wisden & Co Ltd as Consultant Editor.

Publication details

Wisden 2001 is published on Friday 6 April 2001 by John Wisden & Co. and will be distributed by Penguin. Both hardback (ISBN 0-947-76663-4) and soft cover (ISBN 0-947-76664-2) versions are available, and both cost £29.99.

© John Wisden & Co..