Wisden 2011’s cover star revealed…

After Alastair Cook’s spectacular Ashes series (766 runs at 127.66, in case you’ve forgotten), it surely wasn’t a very difficult decision.

An endangered species (Wisden review part 4)

There's a great piece by Gerald Mortimer, cricket correspondent of the Derby Evening Telegraph for 32 years, in this year's Wisden, in which he describes the plight of the county reporter. This, of course, follows on from last year's scandal uncovered in Private Eye, in which the Daily Telegraph was shown to have passed off PA copy from county matches as its own, and even invented names for the imaginary reporters.

However, there is still good reporting on county cricket, it's just it's more difficult to find. Some of the best I have read for a long while appeared just last week on Cricinfo, about Gloucestershire versus Worcestershire, written by George Dobell.

You can read his reports by following these links
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4

Wisden review, part 1

A new section in this year’s Wisden is ‘Cricket and Blogs’, starting on page 1628. It’s written by blogger Jarrod Kimber, contributor to many a cricket discussion board under the alias of jrod, and author of When Freddie became Jesus.

My excitement at this new development soon turned to disappointment. There’s nothing wrong with the quality of the writing – as this post from his own blog demonstrates, jrod certainly has a way with words.

What grates is his choice of blogs. Is this really the best he could come up with? Most of the article is taken up with amy-cricket.blogspot.com and the bizarre and tedious ‘death’ of its writer. Another recommendation leftarmchinaman.blogspot.com hasn’t been updated since January.

It’s incestuous too. The blog of Kiwi test player Iain O’Brien (‘my matches, my thoughts, my head’), is apparently ‘a gold mine for cricket lovers’. It’s also a place where jrod flogs copies of his book, through an Amazon link that his friend O’Brien kindly provides.

I’d like to recommend the author’s own blog, the always entertaining cricketwithballs, but it doesn’t need my approbation – jrod even manages to lever in some shameless self-promotion.

‘Cricket and Blogs’ is a welcome addition to Wisden, but surely it can be done better than this.

This year’s little yellow book

Reviews of Wisden Cricketer's’ Almanack are a strange thing. They appear in newspapers on the day of the book’s release, and yet even the sadly-departed Kim ‘Rain Man’ Peek would not have been able to read the book in such a short space of time.

Peek’s speed reading skills would have even been put to the test if he had been charged with finishing the book before the next issue of the Wisden Cricketer.

And let’s face it, the book isn't designed to be read like that anyway.

The fact that Wisden lasts for the entire year is the very essence of its unique charm. It is twelve days since the package from Amazon dropped through my letter-box with a hearty clunk, and I am on page 24. Only 1704 to go.

Therefore a conventional review is pointless. The book looks great, has articles by the best writers, and is accurate and comprehensive. Big deal. We knew that already.

My plan is different. Instead, I will treat Wisden 2010 like about fifty separate books, and review on this blog each ‘book’ as I complete it.

The reviews may not go in order, but neither does Wisden. There’s no way I’m waiting until about next March to read Robin Martin-Jenkins’ book reviews .