What they say

“The publication of Wisden is cricket’s equivalent of the state opening of Parliament. It’s another great edition. ” Oborne and Heller on Cricket podcast

“The pages are stacked full of information, quirks and great analysis of the game, as well as being a wonderful record.” Alison Mitchell, BBC World Service 

“The famous yellow book has never been afraid to hold up an unflattering mirror to its subject but, even by its own standards, the 159th edition represents a searing state of the nation address.” Press Association

“Wisden coming out once a year feels like a cricketer’s Christmas. In an ever-digitised world, to have an actual book in front of us is a good thing.” Talksport

“The Almanack is pulling cricket towards the outside world: themes of racism, sexism, intolerance and conflict, it says, are global and not local. They concern “common humanity” and how it might want to proceed, within cricket and without.” Wisden Cricket Monthly

“It’s not just the statistics and match reports – it’s another towering achievement.” Daniel Norcross, BBC Test Match Special

“The big yellow book. The important one. The one aliens will be reading in hundreds of years’ time when we as a species have wiped ourselves out and they’ve come down to work out how cricket worked.” The Final Word podcast

What’s inside

Editor Lawrence Booth calls on ECB chief executive Tom Harrison to return his share of the £2.1m bonus after an annus horribilis, on and off the field, for the English game. He criticises English cricket’s “tone-deaf” handling of the racism crisis, says England are “delusional” about Test struggles, and praises The Hundred for its potential to “help the women’s game achieve autonomy”.

Booth writes: “Can there ever have been a bigger gap between what English cricket hoped to be, and what it was – between reality and fantasy? Early in 2022, a long-planned assault on the Ashes ended with all-out surrender… Before that, a racism scandal brought to light by the courage of Azeem Rafiq made the game look unwelcoming, and worse. There was little to cherish.

Azeem Rafiq writes powerfully about his experiences at Yorkshire and the way forward for English cricket. David Hopps explores the racism affair in detail. Emma John and Alex Massie discuss the evolution of cricket’s gender-inclusive language. 

Wisden pays tribute to its award recipients: Jasprit Bumrah, Devon Conway, Ollie Robinson, Rohit Sharma and Dane van Niekerk are the Five Cricketers of the Year. Joe Root and Lizelle Lee (and Mohammad Rizwan in T20 cricket) are the Leading Cricketers in the World.

Four musical greats are displayed in photographs in this year’s Wisden. In a new series that began in 2021, this year’s Almanack features three cricket photographs from the 1960s, including an image taken by Zdenko Hirschler of John Lennon playing cricket off set while filming How I Won the War. The Almanack also includes a piece on John Lennon and Cricket by Timothy Abraham. Cricket-loving Rolling Stone Charlie Watts earns an obituary, and is pictured at Lord’s in 1984 with Mick Jagger, Bob Willis and Dilip Doshi. Elton John is also pictured with Bernie Coleman at the MCG following an England victory in December 1986 alongside Coleman’s obituary.

This year’s Cricket Round the World section includes a piece on cricket in Ukraine, written by James Coyne in November 2021, and mentions the “ongoing stand-off between pro-Russia separatist troops in Donbas”. The piece focusses on Kobus Olivier’s work teaching English in Kiev through cricket classes, and Hardeep Singh’s work building Ukraine’s first proper cricket ground in Kharkiv.

Other front-of-book pieces include:

• Forty years on from the controversial first rebel tour of apartheid South Africa, Andrew Miller talks to the England players involved
• Henry Blofeld relives the journey he and former Wisden editor and cricket correspondent of The Times, John Woodcock, made to India by Rolls-Royce in 1976.
• Following the abolition of the role of national selector, Richard Hobson examines selection’s history
• Mike Atherton remembers and celebrates John Woodcock
• Tuba Sangar, who used to be in charge of Afghanistan women's cricket, tells of fleeing the country after the Taliban took over, and makes an emotional plea to the world game not to forget her team
• A transcript of Stephen Fry’s 2021 MCC Cowdrey Lecture
• Raf Nicholson tells the untold story of women's cricket flourishing during the Second World War
• Andy Bull looks at pitch preparation ethics after England’s 2021 loss in India on spinning pitches