Wisden EXTRA 7

The independent voice of cricket since 1864

WisdenExtra No. 7, June 2013

Champions Trophy

Cut off in its prime?

The Champions Trophy is that rarest of beasts: an international tournament without any flab. Fifteen games involving the world’s best eight teams will take place over 18 days in three cities, which compares succinctly with the last 50-over World Cup – a marathon of 43 days and 49 matches in three countries.

And unlike that tournament – mysteriously hailed as a triumph by the ICC, mainly because India won at home – this one could well maintain the attention from the first game (India v South Africa in Cardiff) until the last (anyone’s guess, which is part of the charm).

Some may think it’s typical, then, that the Champions Trophy is about to be axed, as the ICC put in place a four-year cycle containing one global event a year: two World Twenty20s, a 50-over World Cup and, from 2017 (if the will is there), a Test championship. It’s hard to escape the feeling – articulated in these pages by Mike Selvey – that the 50-over game faces an even bigger existential crisis than Test cricket. Selvey argues this need not be the case. The message is a simple one: enjoy the Champions Trophy while you can.

Injuries permitting, England may be well placed to do just that. In a revealing interview, their No. 3 batsman Jonathan Trott makes a persuasive case for the kind of one-day batting that could prove decisive on English pitches against two new balls. It’s his kind of batting, of course – steady, serious, relentless. And it sounds anachronistic in the era of Twenty20. But his words will be worth bearing in mind, especially when the critics inevitably slaughter his strike-rate. Closer students of the game may decide that Trott’s approach gives England their best chance yet of winning a global

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one-day trophy, though they’ll have to bowl better than against New Zealand.

Elsewhere in the seventh issue of WisdenEXTRA is a real treat. On April 10 at Lord’s, at a dinner to celebrate the publication of the 150th edition of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, Michael Palin delighted a packed Long Room with a beautifully crafted speech centring on cricket and childhood in Sheffield. With his kind permission we are reproducing it in full here. And, no, he couldn’t quite resist the “Four Yorkshiremen” sketch.

Graeme Wright, a former Wisden editor, goes back in time, too, in the first of a new series called My First Test. Graeme’s came surprisingly late: he was 30 when New Zealand had a sniff of victory at Lord’s in 1973.

Patrick Eagar chooses ten of his favourite one-day international photographs (a personal choice shows Greg Chappell playing a delicate late cut in sun-kissed rain at The Oval), and Tim Wigmore takes a breezy look at the eight teams. Benedict Bermange unearths some obscure Champions Trophy-related numbers, while his fellow WisdenEXTRA regulars Alan Tyers and Beach are as mischievous as ever.

We are also publishing a quietly elegiac piece by a reader of the Almanack, Howell Lovell, who was runnerup in last year’s Writing Competition. The winner gets his or her article published in Wisden, and you can find out how to enter this year by visiting our website.

As ever, we welcome your feedback. Above all, though, happy reading.

Lawrence Booth

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Patrick Eagar, the doyen of cricket photographers, has been capturing cricket for 50 years. In the following pages, he picks ten from the thousands of images he has taken of one-day internationals – including the first World Cup, in England, and a fire in Kolkata.

© John Wisden & Company Limited 2013

Wisden is a trademark of John Wisden & Company Limited

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The Big Hit

Jonathan Trott’s role in the England one-day team rarely escapes scrutiny.

But, as he tells George Dobell, he refuses to let his critics affect him

“I hope you’re going to put those stats in the piece…”

Rarely the prettiest or the flashiest, but often the most effective: Jonathan Trott accumulates against Australia, July 2012.

Pic: Tom Shaw, Getty Images 2

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“Selfish?” Jonathan Trott asks in genuine surprise.

“No one has ever called me selfish. That’s the worst thing you can say about someone in a team game.

It’s worse than being rubbish.”

The conversation had turned to Trott’s one-day international record and the perception, from some, that he has at times been guilty of putting personal achievement above team success. It is a suggestion that does not just shock him. It irritates him. “Look,” he says, “it’s not about personal statistics. It’s about winning. It’s all about the team winning.”

Such words may surprise Trott’s critics. Despite an excellent record, there are those who insist he has no place in England’s one-day side. They claim his strike-rate is too low, his approach too one-paced. They claim his method places a burden on his team-mates. They claim England would be better off without him.

It is true there is some contradiction among Trott’s comments. He insists he never reads about himself in the media: “That would be a distraction.

It can make you think about things you shouldn’t.” Then he recounts a story of stopping at an M40 service station to “check the papers and magazines for a couple of stories” he had heard about himself.

“Time was running out for me, apparently,” he says with a world-weary smile. “It always is if I average less than 70 in a series. But if I worried about what people thought, I wouldn’t be able to play the way I play. I wouldn’t enjoy it.

I think I know what’s important and what isn’t.

And the opinions of people outside the team aren’t important.”

He insists he doesn’t know his personal statistics, either. But during this interview he mentioned his one-day batting average: it was correct to two decimal points.

And he has every reason to be proud of those stats. After all, his batting average at the start of the summer (50.61) was 20% higher than any man to continued overleaf

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have represented England in more than 20 ODIs. Kevin Pietersen, in second, averaged 42.24. Eoin Morgan and Alastair Cook featured in the top five, too, which goes to underline England’s current strength.

Trott’s strike-rate isn’t so bad, either. Only eight specialist England batsmen had scored more quickly than his 75 runs per 100 balls.

More importantly, he wins games. Between the start of 2012 and the beginning of this summer, Trott was involved in 17 of England’s 23 one-dayers. Of the 17, England lost only two. They were bowled out only twice – and never for under 200.

But in the six games without him, England were beaten four times and bowled out for under 200 on three occasions. It is no coincidence that his former captain Andrew Strauss, recently asked to name “the most reassuring man to have in a team”, unhesitatingly answered “Trott”.

“I’m not worried about how people perceive me as long as we’re winning,” Trott says. “But I hope you’re going to put those stats in the piece. Those are good stats.”

Indeed they are. But his critics will point out that, while Trott may be the perfect man to marshal a chase of around 250, his limitations are exposed in conditions where England need, say, 320. It’s an argument which overlooks the fact that England have never overhauled more than 306.

“The thing that matters to me is that the team tend to win when I do well,” Trott says. “I feel confident in my ability to contribute for the team and I feel backed by the management. Alastair Cook and the coaches are clear about what my role is.”

And what is that role? “It’s to bat through and score as close as I can to a run a ball,” he says. “There are times when it may seem I’m a bit behind the rate but, if I bat through, I won’t be far away from that. We all have to improve constantly, and I have to find more boundary options. But it can’t be too bad a method. We were No. 1 in the ODI rankings last year, you know.”

He admits “there have been times I’ve got it wrong”.

The World Cup game against Bangladesh in Chittagong in 2011 is one that springs to mind. “I thought it was a tough pitch and that we had a decent score.” Not untypically, Trott bore the brunt of the blame for that defeat after making 67 from 99 balls in a total of 225.

And yet it was England’s highest contribution. Only one other man managed more than 18.

“People have seen so much T20 cricket they forget that 50 overs is a long time,” he says. “So if I come in during a powerplay at 45 for one after eight, I always think it’s better to be 45 for one after ten than 50 for two. I play the first ten balls pretty much the same as in Test cricket, but then look to score more all round the wicket.”

England rose to No. 1 on the back of the best run of successive one-day victories in their history. Benefiting in part from the rule changes that introduced a new ball from either end, they won ten in a row in 2012. It is such form that has seen them installed among the favourites for the Champions Trophy.

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To what does Trott ascribe England’s improvement in a format at which, with momentary exceptions, they have been dire for two decades? “The main thing is that we have very good players,” he says. “In the past we tried to mix and match with people that batted and bowled a bit, rather than specialist players. Our net sessions are ridiculously hard. Graeme Swann is one of the best bowlers I’ve ever faced and our seam attack is hugely demanding. The batsmen and bowlers have a lot of respect for each other.

“The other thing England have lacked – until the last couple of years – is consistency of selection in one-day cricket. Knowing your role, and that of your team-mates, is even more important in this format. You need guys who communicate and understand what is expected of them.

“And maybe, after a long time of seeing ODI cricket as the lesser form of the game, we’re taking it as seriously as Test cricket. Tests have always been the priority in England, but now limited-overs cricket is getting the same attention. In the past, England tried to copy other teams. Now I think you’ll see other sides copy us.

“The rule changes help. We don’t have many players who muscle the ball to the boundary but, with two new balls, you can still time it for four in the final few overs.”

The role of Ashley Giles has also been a factor. Even before Giles was appointed as England’s limited-overs coach, Trott credited him as one of the defining influences on his career, partly because he had the strength to tell him things he may not have wanted to hear.

“I owe a lot to the arguments I’ve had with Gilo,” Trott says. “There haven’t been many, but they have been important. And he’s always been right. He taught me to focus on the processes and take the pressure off the end results. You do everything you can to give yourself the best chance, but you accept it won’t always happen.

“And there were a couple of times he kicked off after he thought I had mis-paced innings. One game against Northants sticks in the mind. I thought I was going about it in the right way, but looking back, I can see I had it completely wrong. I thought I was the one who had to score the runs and that it would be a disaster if I was out. That game was all part of the learning curve.”

His strike-rate remains a bone of contention, though.

And, with the introduction of two new balls, it has actually come down in the last year or so.

“There have been a few games – against Australia at Durham [64 in 102 balls] and South Africa at The Oval [71 in 125] – where my job has been to see the side home. The strike-rate wasn’t important; it was about winning. Maybe people want me to win games with a six, but I don’t care if it’s with a wide. Now, if you bat like that, you might nail your strike-rate. But I keep telling you I don’t care about that stuff. I care about the side winning.”

George Dobell is senior correspondent at ESPNcricinfo

This is definitely one of my favourite shots. Back in 1975, when fielding was a rather less athletic art form, hitting the stumps from side on was quite a rarity, so I was really pleased to have captured this moment. And it’s not any old player on any old occasion: it’s the mighty Viv Richards running out Alan Turner for 40 in the first World Cup final, when West Indies overcame Australia. The look of surprise on Deryck Murray’s face says it all!

But there’s another reason this photo is special. It was taken by remote control, which at the time was on the cutting edge of technology. In fact, I’m pretty sure there was no other cricket photographer who could use a camera at another part of the ground. Not that it was perfect.

You set things up for bright, cloudy conditions, and hoped the weather didn’t change too much – and you were limited to just 36 shots before having to traipse round and change the film.

I’d heard that Sports Illustrated in the States had experimented with cameras activated by radio, and I knew a chap here who was doing some experimental work for the UK government in a similar field. We struck an agreement: he would rig up a device that let me release the shutter on the remote camera simply by activating a transmitter – doubtless breaking the law in the process – while I let him put one of my cameras in his model aircraft. I suppose it was one of the first drones.

It worked, though the photographs of people’s back gardens weren’t exactly earth-shattering.

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Ah, this was a classic match, though sadly I never quite got the shot I wanted. It’s the Edgbaston semi-final of the 1999 World Cup between Australia and South Africa, one of the most exciting finishes in all one-day cricket. With three balls to go, nine down, and the scores level, South Africa needed a single to sneak in to the final; for Australia, a tie was enough, because of run-rate calculations. Famously, Lance Klusener and Allan Donald panicked. There’s movement all over the image – players certainly got in the way for the snappers down at ground level, where I was – so I had to rely on my other camera, mounted in the stands. Trouble was I knew I had a problem with it, and there was no time in a frantic World Cup schedule to get it fixed. Sometimes it would take five frames per second; sometimes it stopped after the first exposure. And that’s what happened here. The next frame would probably have been the one, with the ball visible rather than hidden behind Damien Fleming. Ah well, some you win, some you lose – as South Africa found to their cost…

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From the Archive

Wisden 2005

The final of the 2004 Champions Trophy pitted England, with home advantage but a poor record in global tournaments, against what seemed a weak West Indies side.

S. Rajesh watched the teams slug it out into the gloaming

An unequal battle Scorecard: click here

Champions Trophy final, England v West Indies, at The Oval, September 25, 2004.

West Indies won by two wickets. Toss: West Indies.

A tournament full of insipid, forgettable moments ended with one of the most memorable finals in recent years, as West Indies scripted a soul-stirring fightback to put paid to England’s hopes of winning their first one-day tournament of any significance. For a region devastated by various opponents on the cricket field, and

by Hurricanes Ivan and Jeanne off it, this was a victory to savour. The reactions of the players immediately after Bradshaw struck the winning boundary told the story – the entire West Indian party roared on to the field in semi-darkness, hugging, kissing, and screaming, ecstatic yet bewildered by their achievement.

None of those wild celebratory scenes looked even remotely possible when West Indies slumped to 147 for eight in their quest for 218. The top-order batsmen had all perished – Chanderpaul the last of them for a dogged 47 – and England moved in to finish off the formalities as Bradshaw joined Browne. About the only thing in the batsmen’s favour was the asking-rate, which was less than four and a half an over. Browne and Bradshaw – both from Barbados, although Browne was born just round the corner in Lambeth – capitalised on that, initially looking for no more than nudges and pushes. But a stand which started off as nothing more than irritant value for Vaughan slowly assumed more ominous proportions.

Sensing a shift in momentum, Vaughan turned to Harmison, his chief weapon through much of the summer. It seemed an unequal battle: Harmison hurtling down his deliveries at 96mph in dubious light against batsmen of little repute. Not only did they see him off – Browne even cracked a magnificent squaredrive in his penultimate over – they also quelled the venom of Flintoff, who had earlier ripped apart the heart of the West Indian middle order. The other bowler who might have been a force, Gough, had a strangely lacklustre day, and suddenly Vaughan had run out of attacking options. In cold and overcast conditions, he

had preferred seam to spin throughout, and as crunch time approached, he stuck to his guns, opting for Wharf over Giles, who did not bowl at all. Wharf went for only two in the 47th over. But with 12 needed from the last two, West Indies clinched it in style – Browne thumped Wharf over gully for four, before Bradshaw found the third-man fence to seal an unbelievable win.

The statistically minded in the England camp should have had a whiff of defeat the moment Trescothick struck his eighth one-day century – this was the fifth to end in a losing cause. Trescothick, though, was the only one among England’s specialist batsmen who solved the mystery of getting runs on an unusually bowler-friendly Oval pitch. Solanki and Vaughan were consumed early in the piece by Bradshaw, before West Indies found an unexpected hero in the middle overs. Exploiting the conditions to the hilt, Hinds kept a tight leash on the runs, and picked up three crucial middle-order wickets as well. Lara’s alacrity at short midwicket had a huge hand in two of those, though – a fierce pull by Flintoff was scooped up left-handed and inches from the ground to give Lara his 100th catch in one-day internationals, while Jones’s heave was intercepted with a perfectly timed leap. Trescothick stuck to his task, however, and with Giles chipping in with a valuable 31, England had put together a competitive total of 217.

That seemed more than sufficient when Harmison and Flintoff got in on the act with the ball. Solanki kept up the high level of fielding with a one-handed, leaping effort which took care of Hinds. A sharp return catch by Harmison dismissed Gayle, while Sarwan and Lara both perished off the outside edge. Chanderpaul offered stout resistance, but when he left, so did many West Indian supporters, believing the game to be over. Little did they realise that they would be missing the best part.

Man of the Match: I. D. R. Bradshaw. Attendance: 18,600.

Player of the Tournament: R. R. Sarwan.

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Fifty-over cricket is under threat like never before, says Mike Selvey.

But it remains a vital cog in the international game’s wheel

Let’s hear it for the ODI Many years ago, the English actor Stanley Holloway, famous for his monologues, performed one called “My Word You Do Look Queer”. It is the story of a fellow who has been ill but, now recovered and feeling fine, goes out for a walk – only to be told by various folk how seedy he looks. The more he hears this, the more depressed he becomes and the worse he feels. Until he meets Old Jenkins. “My word,” says Jenkins, “you do look well!” It is all about perception. Sometimes we get told things so often that, even if we don’t want to, we start to believe them.

When Bob Weston and Bert Lee wrote Holloway’s monologue, there was no such thing as a one-day international. Today, their work may even be seen as a metaphor for it. One-day cricket is being told so often that it is sick, most pertinently by those whose task it is to promote it, that we are all starting to believe it. We tinker with it, change the rules, change them back again, add overs, reduce overs, stick up floodlights, change the clothing and the colour of the ball, use more than one ball in an innings, and restrict the areas in which fielders can be placed. And all the while, we are telling one-day cricket how poorly it looks.

Much of this has to do with Twenty20, the brash, blingy upstart which has been shouting and holding its noisy parties for a decade now. T20 is immediate, rapid, quickfire, urgent and to a large extent another metaphor for the way many live their lives now: what some call bish-bash-bosh. It is revved up, sells brilliantly well at present and underpins cricket at both ends of the spectrum, for 20-overs-a-side cricket has been played at club level for decades.

What T20 lacks, though, is real narrative, of the kind one-day cricket possesses. Think of T20 as candyfloss: you bite it, taste it, like it and then suddenly it is gone.

Take another bite: it is exactly the same – and it goes just as fast. There is a sameness to T20 that does not translate historically. Statistically (and let us be honest about 8

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this: statistics are a vital component of how we perceive cricket) T20 lacks relevance, simply because there is not time to build figures of consequence. Truly memorable innings are a rarity and sixes so commonplace (helped by playing-areas the size of circus rings, a natural result of selling sixes to a sponsor who is hardly going to sanction bigger boundaries) that they are no longer an event. One day we may find extra runs awarded for distance the ball is hit.

This is, however, not meant to be a dig at T20 – a brilliant concept if not overdone – as much as a defence of the older brother. The upstart is pushing it into the background – and some would say to death’s door, its imminent demise leaving room at international level only for Test cricket at one extreme and T20 at the other.

We now embark on the final edition of the Champions Trophy, a competition generally regarded as a sort of World Cup Lite. This is a shame, for it puts into the shade the overblown, ponderous World Cup itself.

It is a firm personal belief that the one-day international remains relevant. As with all areas of the game, it has progressed, a long journey since that day, more than 42 years ago at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, when Geoffrey Boycott gave it the gentlest of births with a steadfast innings of eight from 37 balls (and no boundaries).

We have seen well over 3,000 matches now, in 463 of which Sachin Tendulkar has played. There have been ten World Cups. Shahid Afridi of Pakistan once made a century from 37 balls; and Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag have both made double-hundreds. These are the things that linger in the memory.

One-day cricket offers ebb and flow, a fightback, the chance for resurrection, form rediscovered, the devastating bowling spell, and the time to savour players at the peak of their form. We still talk of Clive Lloyd’s World Cup final century, those of Viv Richards, Ricky Ponting and Adam Gilchrist, and of M. S. Dhoni’s

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Late on an interrupted day, with Australia closing in on victory, the rain began to pour down at The Oval. It was the third and final match of the 1977 Prudential Trophy, which England had already sewn up, so there wasn’t much riding on the result. Perhaps that’s why everyone was determined to play on rather than come back next morning. But when the evening sun lit up each raindrop, the whole scene gained a magical air – something I’ve never seen as a backdrop to a game of cricket, before or since. The batsman is Greg Chappell, whose undefeated 125 was the match-winning innings, while at the other end Jeff Thomson was about to be run out. I really like the shadows in this image too, though I once had it rejected by someone complaining it was covered in muck!

winning six sailing into the black Mumbai night. Does anyone really think that Indians would trade either of their World Cup successes for that in the World T20 – even if it did kick-start the IPL? What one-day international cricket needs is less tinkering, fewer patches and tinctures and snake-oil panaceas, greater context and more self-belief. Over the years there have been too many meaningless series, some of dubious provenance. It has been squeezed almost

dry. So a balance is required. In New Zealand recently, England undertook a tour that offered an ideal balance for the modern cricket world: three Test matches, three ODIs and three T20s. It offered something for everyone without being overblown. Less really can be more.

Mike Selvey is cricket correspondent of The Guardian.

In 267 List A matches, he took 332 wickets at 22 each, with an economy rate of 3.47.

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The 1992 World Cup was one of those competitions in which Pakistan started slowly and got better and better, while England went off the boil. In an earlier match at Adelaide, England had dismissed them for 74, only to be denied victory by the rain.

Had Pakistan lost that, they almost certainly wouldn’t have qualified from the group stage. But in the final they were a different proposition. The majestic Imran Khan took the last wicket (Richard Illingworth), prompting Moin Khan to fall to his knees, either in prayer or celebration – perhaps both. Twenty or so years ago, it was a difficult business to use colour film under lights. It had to be 1600 ISO – the fastest available at the time – but the downside was that the photo had a grainy appearance by modern standards.

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The second semi-final of the 2004 Champions Trophy, held at the Rose Bowl, set up an intriguing contest.

Brian Lara was pretty much at the top of his game, while Pakistan’s Shoaib Akhtar would steam in over after over, always hunting for the 100mph delivery. Lara hadn’t looked in much trouble until he lost sight of one and was struck on the neck. He collapsed immediately, and the game was stopped for several minutes. He didn’t return to the crease, but by then West Indies were well on their way to victory.

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Speaking at Lord’s in April, at the dinner to celebrate the publication of the 150th edition of Wisden, Michael Palin recalls the Almanack’s curiously deep-seated influence on his Sheffield childhood

LBW – “Let’s Buy Wisden” I feel hugely honoured and drastically underqualified to be asked here tonight to celebrate one of the greatest moments in cricketing history since Yorkshire last won the County Championship – an event more likely to be found nowadays in Wisden’s Index of Unusual Occurrences, along with such gems as “Sandstorm stops county bowler in run-up” and “Umpire gives lbw after wicketkeeper hit on pads”.

The only possible complaint I have with Wisden is that, like an elephant, it never forgets. Thanks to its trademark remorseless accuracy and punctilious historical research, I am reminded on an annual basis of the painful truth that, in the first 25 years of my life, Yorkshire were County Champions nine times; in the last 25 years, just once. But Yorkshire County Cricket Club share a 150th birthday with the great Wisden

Pic: Clare Skinner

Cricketers’ Almanack this year, and I can only hope that, like Wisden 2013, packed with no fewer than 1,584 pages, they too will rise to the occasion.

I was born, brought up and first had cricket instilled into me in Sheffield where, if you believe William White’s history of the city, the game of cricket was recorded as early as 1757 by Town Trustees – and here I quote – “attempting the abolition of brutal sports by paying 14s 6d to the cricket players on Shrove Tuesday to entertain the populace and prevent the infamous practice of throwing at cocks”. Imagine the late Brian Johnston having to explain that in the tea interval.

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the heartbeat of the game – a club so legendarily difficult to enter that aspiring members have themselves cryogenically frozen until the opportunity for admission arises. So you can imagine what an enormous privilege it is for this lifelong fan to be asked to speak here tonight in the most famous room in cricket.

For me many seventh heavens meet under this roof. One of my earliest heroes (in common, I’m sure, with many of my generation) was the swashbuckling Australian all-rounder Keith Miller. And just to be in the same room through which he must have strode after hitting seven sixes in one innings for the Dominions against England in 1945, one which lodged on the roof above us, is to have some kind of dream fulfilled.

To be at Lord’s at all is to feel the gloved hand of history upon the shoulder. One of the first proper books I was ever given was a venerable, beautifully produced, gold-leafed volume entitled Cricket at Lord’s, by Sir Pelham Warner. It was gifted to me with suitable gravity by a rather formidable elderly relation, and I was aware from his expression that this was something in a different league from Biggles or Dan Dare. I knew, as I opened its heavy green covers and turned its thick vellum pages with their beautifully reproduced watercolours, that in our great island story cricket and Lord’s were as intrinsically linked as Magna Carta and Runnymede. Or Morecambe and Wise.

And, as if being here in the Long Room at Lord’s weren’t enough, I find myself celebrating with some of the most eminent figures in the world of cricket 150 years of a publication for whom the word unique was surely invented. A lot of people liken Wisden to the Bible. But I think it’s better than the Bible. It’s less violent and doesn’t have St Paul. There are of course obvious similarities – long lists of names just crying out for numbers to go with them: Noah begat Shem 3, Shem begat Elam 88, and so on. There were a lot of tours of Egypt and some unforgettable characters like the Hittites, whom Keith Miller would surely have captained.

When I was growing up there was an annual for almost every sport, but Wisden was in a class of its own, its stocky shape impossible to disguise with Christmas wrapping. It was either a copy of Wisden under the tree, or a landmine. And the sheer bedazzling volume of information within was like breaking into a wonderfully overstocked attic or, in today’s terms, what we’d call a glorious search engine for the game of cricket, which lacks only the name of second cousins of reserve wicketkeepers who once played for the Netherlands. I’m sure they’ll be there next year.

My 1955 edition ran to over 1,000 pages, leaving room among the swirl of statistics for thoughtful articles. “South Africa Offer Serious Challenge” by Neville Cardus, and “Twilight Reflections” by none other than Sir Pelham Warner: “In the late evening of my life, when memory is a comfort and a companion, I cherish many delightful thoughts of the game with the beautiful name.”

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Interspersed with these sentiments were pictures of one’s heroes in advertising mode. Len Hutton, no less, sporting a toothy grin as he gave his blessing to the Litesome Supporter – “Man’s Essential Underwear”. I must say that, for a young schoolboy about to wrestle with the problems of puberty, this raised deep and disturbing questions. Was my underwear essential?

Should I ask my parents or just write to Wisden?

A few pages further on, the great Godfrey Evans crouched behind the stumps, taking a difficult catch, with not a hair out of place thanks to Brylcreem’s “Firm but Gentle Control”. Denis Compton famously favoured Brylcreem – in fact it was so clearly the lubricant of choice for England’s cricketers that I bought a pot or two hoping it might improve my own game. It didn’t – and it left stains on the pillow.

Then there were the adverts for Wisden’s own range of sporting products, displayed under the snappy strapline: “LBW – Let’s Buy Wisden”.

This was a reminder that the Almanack was only one product of a much larger sports-outfitting business.

Indeed, if you ever take a coffee at Caffè Nero in Cranbourn Street, opposite Leicester Square tube, and look across the road, you will see on the wall above a Japanese takeaway and, sculpted in liver-coloured tiling, a panel depicting a set of stumps, with cricket bats either side of them and the words “J. Wisden & Company, Number 21”. I can’t think of any other business to be accorded the distinction of being part of London Transport’s own decoration. And Robert Winder, in his new book The Little Wonder, confirms that this was indeed an honour accorded to Wisden alone.

Wisden’s Almanack made few concessions to the undecided reader. It was yellow long before Yellow Pages, but that’s about as far as it went in daring design concept, and to this day it eschews the glamourising commercial tricks that other publications might use to seduce the uncommitted punter. One can only surmise what might have been on the cover of today’s Wisden had the marketing boys had their way. Beyoncé choosing middle and leg. Sharon Stone sporting nonessential underwear.

Though I do note from a fascinating article in last Saturday’s Financial Times that Wisden does have form.

Ex-editor Matthew Engel reveals (if that’s the right word) the terrible saga of the Wisden Willie. The 2000 edition, unnoticed by the entire editorial staff, carried a photo of the Leicestershire county team, one of whom besmirched the good name of his club by exposing himself as the photo was taken. This could have meant the end of Wisden as a serious almanack, but as Engel memorably explains: “The Leicestershire squad was large. The page was small, and so was the appendage.”

Phew! Brylcreem all round.

One of the many great qualities of Wisden is that it embodies aspects of the game beyond the pure and simple techniques of play itself. There’s a lot of time to talk in cricket. It lends itself to discussion and analysis like no other sport. In many ways Wisden is not so much

Eagar’s Eye

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Once in a blue moon, all the variables in cricket photography work in your favour, and you get the sort of image you always hope you’ll get – and seldom do. This catch, by Rod Marsh to remove Tony Greig in the 1975 World Cup semi at Headingley, was an occasion when everything clicked. Ian Chappell, at a widish first slip, later told me it wasn’t the keeper’s catch, and I think he had a point… Gary Gilmour, the bowler, ended with figures of 12–6–14–6: you don’t often see that sort of performance in one-dayers. Australia needed just 94, but still lost six wickets getting there. On the technical front, it was probably on the dark side for shooting in Kodachrome, and the greens have run a bit, too. But all the same, the timing wasn’t bad.

about the player as about the scorer: more Bill Frindall than Ian Botham. It raises lists to an art form. The 1940s and ’50s were a golden age of lists. My mother made shopping lists, my father made lists of the number of rubber bands he had in each tin. We had after all won the war because we made better lists than the Germans.

So no wonder we loved Wisden. It is the War and Peace of lists. A forensic masterpiece that puts cricket under the microscope. And indeed to this day it helps to have a microscope to read it.

Of course there are people in dim, benighted countries who may regard all this as a colossal waste

of time. Sad people who aren’t interested in when Somerset took the new ball at Weston-super-Mare on August 4, 1951. There are those, among them our closest allies, who simply cannot believe that we can play a game for five days and still not come up with a winner. That batsmen can come in determined not to hit the ball at all. There’s a Monty Python sketch, dating from 1970, which addresses this conundrum.

I hope you’ll forgive me if I just read an extract from the script: continued overleaf WisdenEXTRA • Champions Trophy

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Cut to three TV commentators in modern box, with sliding window open. They are surrounded by bottles.

Jim [John Cleese]: Good afternoon and welcome to Lord’s on the second day of the First Test. So far today we’ve had five hours batting from England and already they’re nought for nought. Cowdrey is not out nought. Naughton is not in. Knott is in and is nought not out. Naughton of Northants got a nasty knock on the nut in the nets last night but it’s nothing of note. Next in is Nat Newton of Notts.

Not Nutting – Nutting’s at nine, er, Nutting knocked neatie nighty knock knock… [another commentator nudges him]… Anyway, England have played extremely well for nothing, not a sausage, in reply to Iceland’s first-innings total of 722 for two declared, scored yesterday disappointingly fast in only 21 overs with lots of wild slogging and boundaries and all sorts of rubbishy things. But the main thing is that England have made an absolutely outstanding start so far, Peter?

Peter [Graham Chapman]: Splendid. Just listen to those thighs. And now it’s the North East’s turn with the Samba. Back to you Jim. Jim: And now Bo Wildeburg is running up to bowl to Cowdrey. He runs up, bowls to Cowdrey…

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Cut to fast bowler. He bowls the ball but the batsman makes no move whatsoever. The balls passes the off stump.

Jim: … and no shot at all. Extremely well not played there.

Peter: Yes, beautifully not done anything about.

Brian [Eric Idle]: A superb shot of no kind whatsoever. And that’s the end of the over, and drinks.

Peter: Gin and tonic please.

Jim: No, no – the players are having drinks.

Actually, the common misconception that nothing happens in cricket matches doesn’t really bear scrutiny.

If you consider that in, say, a 90-over day, there will be 540 separate contests between batsman and bowler, cricket compares more than favourably with, say, Premier League football, where there are, on average, just under 12 shots at goal per team per game.

But I’m not trying to make excuses, for part of the attraction of cricket – for me, at any rate – is that it can be perversely slow; that it can, like a long symphony, take its time to develop. Cricket turns the breathless, soundbite world in which we live on its head.

Cricket celebrates unfashionable virtues like patience, doggedness, craft and guile.

As a boy growing up in Sheffield in the 1950s, without a television, let alone a mobile phone or a games console, when a social network was church on Sunday mornings – and “five of us lived in’t shoe box in’t middle o’t road” – I used to find great solace (and here’s a sad admission) in staging entire cricket matches, on my own, in our back garden. These were no ten-minute diversions. They were five-day games, played in real time.

Our kitchen was the Long Room from which I would emerge, via the back door, as whoever the current top opening batsman might be. If it was, say, 1955, I would be Hanif Mohammad of Pakistan or David Sheppard or Len Hutton for England. I would acknowledge the applause as I made my way slowly round the hedge, past the dustbins, to take up my position in front of the drainpipe beside the dining-room window. I’d take my time, checking my guard, adjusting my essential underwear, narrowing my eyes as I scanned an imaginary field, taking a deliberately long time before letting my gaze finally come to rest on the brooding black eyes and thunderous brow of an imaginary Fred Trueman, tossing the ball from hand to hand, up by the garage door.

His first ball pitches short, I swing, connect and it bounces unstoppably to the boundary. I barely need to run further than the dustbins before strolling back to the drainpipe, knowing that the fury I’d unleashed was going to make for a very exciting morning indeed.

Of course there could be frustrating moments. I might be Johnny Wardle, two runs off a whirlwind fifty, facing a rampant Fazal Mahmood, when my mother comes up the drive with her shopping and walks right across the pitch.

“What are you doing dear?”

“Nothing!”

How could I explain what it was like to be Johnny Wardle at that moment? To have taken eight for 42 in the Pakistan second innings, and to be two short of a match-winning half-century with the light fading fast?

“Have you done your maths homework?”

Looking back now I take comfort from the fact that my imaginary cricket matches did more for my later career than any maths homework ever did. In what seemed the desperately ordinary world of Sheffield, cricket fed my hungry imagination, kept me in touch with a glamorous world I knew I’d never be part of. In the same way I could read The Old Man and The Sea, knowing there was precious little chance of wrestling an 18ft marlin in the River Don, or feast my eyes on Gina Lollobrigida, knowing that she would almost certainly never come north of Nottingham, I could, with the help of a stocky yellow Almanack, recreate Lord’s in my back garden.

Wisden helped at school as well. Even if you couldn’t play cricket very well, Wisden meant that we could talk cricket very well. If we couldn’t bat or bowl, we could still bat statistics back and forth, bowl each other

questions, set up arguments, recite names. As I’ve said, cricket, like no other game, offers so much more than just what happens on the pitch. Describing and discussing it has bred a distinguished and abundant literary heritage. Not just the Neville Carduses and the John Arlotts, but those who have to describe the game to the listening public – who have to keep up five days of information, speculation and explanation; often not about the cricket at all, but about cake and buses and the size of the clouds and the comings and goings of pigeons and the great age of the groundsman’s mother. It’s all part of that elusive, indefinable appeal of cricket, which in a Margaret Thatcherish kind of way inspires devotion or rejection, with little else in between.

I personally hope that the three-, four- and fiveday games will remain at the heart of cricket and that the demands for the quick-hit, quick-result, instantgratification matches, played in lurid colours under artificial light, will never replace the careful celebration of time passing. I’m aware of the advantages of the fast game – particularly financial, but in my humble experience of the entertainment business, trouble always follows the money. The more you have to make a film, the more people will want their say and their share and their credit and their cut. I hope that cricket will be enjoyed, not for how much it earns, but for how well it is played. And for me it is the long game that is the best test of what one might call cricketing values.

For all these Neanderthal prejudices and opinions I owe a huge debt of thanks to the consistent good form of the stout, stocky handbook that was first started as a sports almanack by the short, skilful John Wisden himself 150 years ago. So we’re here tonight to celebrate two Little Wonders and also to acknowledge our debt to all those who have kept Wisden in print for what is now its 150th uninterrupted year of publication.

One of those on the roll of honour is a man who was once my occasional acquaintance, Sir Paul Getty, who loved cricket and who, in 1993, bought Wisden and ensured its survival. From time to time Paul invited me to partake of his remarkable generosity in his box at Lord’s. It was here, thanks to Paul, that one day I met my hero, Keith Miller. He was walking on two sticks but still had the liveliest, wickedest look in his eyes as he took in the waitresses first and his fellow cricketers second. It turned out, astonishingly, that he loved Monty Python as much as I loved the way he played cricket, and we corresponded with each other until the end of his life.

So thank you, Wisden, for all the pleasure you have given me, and for the sense of purpose and direction that you have given to the game of cricket. Some have likened the Almanack to a brick. So I would conclude with the convoluted but devout hope that this particular yellow brick’s road stretches far into the future. Let our cry be “LBW! Let’s Buy Wisden!” © Michael Palin 2013.

Michael Palin delivered this speech at Lord’s on April 10.

It is reproduced with his kind permission.

WisdenEXTRA • Champions Trophy

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The Champions Trophy has included 85 matches across seven tournaments and 15 years. Benedict Bermange strolls down some statistical backstreets

Whippersnapper skippers and ageing Americans There have been 37 centuries in the Champions Trophy.

The first was Alistair Campbell’s 100 for Zimbabwe v New Zealand at Dhaka in 1998. The fastest hundred came from 77 balls, by India’s Virender Sehwag against England at Colombo in 2002. Sehwag’s eventual 126 contained a competition-record 90 runs from boundaries. Elton Chigumbura’s innings of 27 for Zimbabwe v Bangladesh at Jaipur in 2006 is the highest without either four or six.

The USA team which took the field against Australia at Southampton in 2004 had an average age of 35 years 245 days – the oldest in one-day international history. Uniquely, Graeme Smith captained South Africa against New Zealand in 2006 while being the youngest player in the side, aged 25. At 16, the Bangladeshi pair of Talha Jubair and Nazmul Hossain are the youngest players to participate in the tournament.

The highest scores have been Nathan Astle’s unbeaten 145 for New Zealand against the USA at The Oval in 2004, and Andy Flower’s 145 for Zimbabwe against India in Colombo in 2002. Only one player has been dismissed for 99 – West Indian opener Chris Gayle, against Bangladesh at Southampton in 2004. The lowest individual score never achieved by any batsman is 88.

Three times the side batting second have won off the last ball. In 1998 at Dhaka, New Zealand’s Chris Harris hit a boundary with three runs needed to beat Zimbabwe. In Colombo in 2002, South Africa also needed three to beat West Indies: Merv Dillon bowled two wides, before Alan Dawson hit a four. And at Centurion in 2009, Australia needed one run to beat Pakistan – and scrambled a bye.

Muttiah Muralithan bowled ten overs for only nine runs, with four maidens, against West Indies at Nairobi in 2000 – the tightest ten-over analysis in the tournament’s history. The most expensive was by Zimbabwe’s Tinashe Panyangara, who leaked 86 runs against England at Edgbaston in 2004. There have been eight five-fors, plus Farveez Maharoof ’s six for 14, for Sri Lanka against West Indies at Mumbai in 2006.

In the 85 matches, 44 captains have chosen to bat, 41 to bowl. The chasing side have won 48 matches; the side setting a target 34; there have been three no-results.

There were a record 42 Extras in Kenya’s innings against India at Southampton in 2004: b10, lb9, w19, nb4. Extras top-scored for the Netherlands with 33 in their total of 136 against Pakistan at Colombo in 2002 – the only time this has happened in the tournament.

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At the other end of the scale, New Zealand beat the USA by 210 runs at The Oval in 2004, while West Indies recorded the only ten-wicket win in the competition’s history, against Bangladesh at Jaipur in 2006. Australia chased down their target of 66 against the USA in 2004 in just 47 deliveries and for the loss of only one wicket.

Only one bowler has taken a hat-trick – Jerome Taylor, for West Indies against Australia at Mumbai in 2006 when he dismissed Mike Hussey, Brett Lee and Brad Hogg.

Clayton Lambert has played for two different teams: West Indies in 1998 and the USA in 2004.

Benedict Bermange is the cricket statistician for Sky Sports

Whoa! Viv! This was a monster performance – an absolute one-man show. At Old Trafford in 1984, Viv Richards played perhaps the most one-sided innings in the history of international cricket. One-sided because no one came near him – neither his fellow batsmen nor the England bowlers.

In a West Indies total of 272, he made an unbeaten 189.

The next-highest score was Eldine Baptiste’s 26, while Viv added 106 in an unbroken tenth-wicket partnership with Michael Holding (12 not out). There’s definitely something of the trademark Viv swagger in this image.

And his presence was such that he imposed himself not just on the bowlers, but on the fielders, umpires, writers, photographers – even his team-mates. Easily the coolest guy I ever photographed.

Eagar’s Eye

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WisdenEXTRA • Champions Trophy

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My First Test In the first of a new series, Graeme Wright recalls his first taste of Test cricket – in the summer of Bev Congdon and a near-miss for New Zealand

Better late than never Scorecard: click here

Hard to believe my first Test was 40 years ago: England v New Zealand at Lord’s in late June 1973. Harder, even, to realise I was 30 at the time.

True, living in New Zealand until my early twenties I’d had few opportunities of Test cricket. What with residence, distance and playing, there were probably four possibilities in all. Besides which, the rite of passage was rugby tests: I’d served my time on the heaving terraces of Carisbrook and Lancaster Park, but not for cricket.

That’s not to say I watched no international cricket.

There were days at unofficial Tests against Dennis Silk’s MCC tourists in 1961, and Australia’s 2nd XI (the 1sts were in South Africa) in 1967, the year I set sail for England. I saw Paul Sheahan, only 20, make an elegant, stroke-filled hundred for the Australians at Christchurch, and the following year I went to The Oval one Saturday hoping to see him bat again. Just my luck, Surrey batted first.

But I hadn’t come to England to watch cricket.

There were plays and gigs and, in summer, travelling.

As I began editing sports books in the 1970s, however, cricket featured larger. Indeed, before that first Test at Lord’s, I’d been there a month earlier to discuss a book with Bill Frindall while the New Zealanders were playing MCC. It rained, but not before Glenn Turner hit his third hundred of the tour en route to 1,000 runs by the end of May – the first to achieve this since Don Bradman and Bill Edrich in 1938.

The rain, however, provided a chance to catch up with fast bowler Bruce Taylor. We’d played together in Under-20 representative games, one of them mostly memorable for kicking my heels into the midnight hour before “Tayls” extracted himself from a card school (I was driving). Around six three and rangy, he’d filled out some 20

WisdenEXTRA • Champions Trophy

since then. Against England in 1969, West Indies in 1971-72 and Pakistan in 1972-73, he’d been New Zealand’s leading wicket-taker. His 27 at 17 in four Caribbean Tests had included seven for 74 at Bridgetown.

This 1973 tour of England was his swan song.

The last time I’d seen him we’d been on opposing sides in a club championship decider on a pitch rolled out on a rugby ground. I came in to face him with 20-odd needed and a wicket or two in hand. The keeper chirruped me every ball, and most of them flew over my shoulder. A yorker would probably have done the job; instead we got the runs without further loss and took the title.

A year later, against India at Eden Gardens, Bruce was making his maiden first-class hundred – in only his fifth game – and taking five wickets in his debut Test.

I was picking tobacco, spending Saturdays on the beach, and trying to write short stories. The nearest town, Motueka, was described in the 1974 Wisden as “a sun-drenched, soporific spot in New Zealand’s tobacco empire”. Why? Because it was the home town of Kiwi captain Bevan Congdon, one of the Almanack’s Five Cricketers on account of his 362 runs at 72 in the three-game 1973 series.

At Trent Bridge he’d made 176 as New Zealand chipped away at a target of 479 and lost by 38 runs (at the time, their 440 was the highest fourth-innings total by a losing side). And on the Saturday of the Lord’s Test, with Kiwis tumbling from St John’s Wood station, Congdon was set to resume on 100 not out, already the first New Zealander to hit three centuries against England. The previous day, replying to England’s firstinnings 253, he and Brian Hastings had added 190 for the third wicket.

“You had to take a good look at them to know just how well [they] were playing,” John Woodcock wrote in The Times. “Between five and six o’clock they scored at a run a minute, without suggesting that they were doing so.” They batted, said Woodcock, “with a self-effacement not uncommon in the cricketers of their country”.

Self-effacement was less evident that Saturday, both at the crease and in front of the old Tavern, where as many Kiwis as possible soaked up the sun, the ale and the runs as their countrymen heaped up what was then their highest total against England (492 for six by stumps). Where I was, tucked away in the Grand Stand, surrounded by England supporters, the atmosphere became more subdued by the hour. Only three wickets fell all day. Congdon batted with precision to 175 – the wags discerned his weakness in the 170s – Mark Burgess stroked a more carefree 105 and Vic Pollard, also a centurion at Trent Bridge, ended the day 77 not out. Come Monday morning, he’d emulate his skipper with a second successive Test hundred.

Having waited 30 years for my first Test match I couldn’t have chosen a better one to break my duck.

A belter of a pitch, a belter of a day. Nor was that the end of it. With England beginning the last day 74 behind with eight wickets in hand, there remained the possibility of New Zealand’s maiden win over them in 44 Tests. My boss, a sports-mad Yorkshireman, said

I should be at Lord’s, and I arrived after lunch. The atmosphere now was tension.

Keith Fletcher, not out overnight, was still there, aided for nearly two hours by his captain, Ray Illingworth. Then, in 40 delirious minutes before tea, Illingworth, Alan Knott, Chris Old and John Snow fell to the classical left-arm spin of Hedley Howarth and Pollard’s darting off-breaks. It should have been five – hell, it should have been five – but keeper Ken Wadsworth spilled Geoff Arnold’s low nick third ball off Pollard, and that was it for New Zealand. Fletcher went after Pollard, hitting him for a four and two sixes in one over; Arnold was unflappable as they put on 92. When Fletcher finally went for 178, England were 162 ahead and the match was safe.

John Arlott, in The Guardian, wondered if the New Zealanders, “unaccustomed to beating England”, were “over-intense at the prospect”. It would be another decade before they at last won a Test in England, at Headingley in 1983. I could have been there – I’d seen plenty of Tests in the interim – but I wasn’t. I’m not superstitious but there’s only so much tempting that fate will take.

Graeme Wright edited eight editions of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, from 1987 to 1992, and from 2001 to 2002. His New Zealand novel, Mackie’s Law, is available as an ebook on Amazon.

READ A SAMPLE HERE

The Great Tamasha Cricket, Corruption and the Turbulent Rise of Modern India James Astill The story of modern India told through the glitzy, scandalous and mind-blowingly lucrative Twenty20 cricket tournament, the Indian Premier League. The IPL – merging the three forces of politics, business and Bollywood – has transformed cricket and transfixed India like nothing before it.

PUBLISHING 4TH JULY 2013

WisdenEXTRA • Champions Trophy

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Contested by the eight strongest one-day teams in world cricket, the final edition of the Champions Trophy has the potential to be a cracker.

Tim Wigmore casts his eye over the runners and riders

Last-chance saloon?

GROUP A Australia • Competition history Emphatic winners of the last two tournaments.

• Chances? Desperate to avoid awkwardly hanging around for the Ashes, as they did after their early 2009 World T20 exit. How David Warner and Shane Watson fare in English conditions will be critical.

• Point to prove Ditched as Australia’s Test keeper, Matthew Wade retains the one-day gloves, despite struggling in England last year.

• Match-winner With bounce and a lethal yorker, left-arm seamer Mitchell Starc has claimed six fourfors in 18 games.

• Achilles heel There is an un-Australian sense of bits and pieces about the squad – plus, in Xavier Doherty, a spinner who toiled in England in 2012.

England • Competition history Should have won as hosts in 2004. The shock that greeted their semi-final appearance in 2009 was a reflection of the low expectations they have traditionally generated.

• Chances? Unbeaten in eight home ODI series before they lost to New Zealand – a result that has called into question their status as bookies’ favourites.

• Point to prove Mind the Buttler when Jos is scooping over fine leg and clean-blazing down the ground. But England in June will test his technique against the moving ball either side of the stumps.

• Match-winner Since his game unravelled in the UAE last year, Eoin Morgan’s status has been less hallowed. But a KP-sized hole in the batting line-up makes Morgan’s calculating elan critical.

• Achilles heel England hope they have home one-dayers sussed, but their five-bowler strategy risks overexposing Tim Bresnan and Stuart Broad at Nos 7 and 8.

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New Zealand • Competition history Chris Cairns’s tsunami accounted for India in the 2000 final in Nairobi. Lost to Australia in the last final.

•C hances? Well-balanced – especially in bowling – and they possess the capacity to cause a surprise after preparing with a series in England.

•P oint to prove Luke Ronchi is into his second international career. If his buccaneering spirit is to have Australia wishing he could still be one of theirs, Ronchi will need to be less loose against the moving ball than he was last week against Jimmy Anderson.

•M atch-winner Ross Taylor – even stripped of the captaincy – has the ideal game for England: an inningsbuilding technique allied to a licence to thrill.

• Achilles heel The batting looks too reliant on Taylor, Brendon McCullum and Kane Williamson.

Sri Lanka • Competition history The monsoon season led to them sharing the 2002 title with India.

Poor since.

•C hances? Maybe the weakest side in the group, with doubts over their bowling in English conditions.

Can Thisara Perera – no previous ODIs in England – match his career strike-rate of 28?

•P oint to prove After Lasith Malinga’s virility was challenged by Marlon Samuels’s five sixes in last year’s World T20 final, he must remind everyone of his stump-destroying yorker.

• Match-winner Take your pick from Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene – but Sri Lanka seem over-dependent on their graceful class.

• Achilles heel While Angelo Mathews is the tournament’s youngest captain (he turned 26 shortly before it began), there are one or two old lags: as well as Sangakkara and Jayawardene, Tillekeratne Dilshan and Rangana Herath are above 35.

GROUP B Pakistan

India • Competition history Twice finalists but, like Sri Lanka, they haven’t progressed to the second stage of the last three events.

• Chances? The selectors have, belatedly, moved on from the 2011 World Cup triumph. Yet the newfound fielding sprightliness may not remedy a lack of nous in English conditions.

• Point to prove Shikhar Dhawan can show his audacious 187 on Test debut against Australia in March was no one-off.

• Match-winner Virat Kohli’s dazzling strokeplay was almost overlooked in India’s World Cup-winning side, but 13 hundreds in 95 one-day innings make him the batting fulcrum.

• Achilles heel The bowling attack is probably better suited to Asia, although Bhuvneshwar Kumar’s late movement could prove the exception.

South Africa • Competition history Their 1998 triumph remains the one international tournament South Africa have won.

• Chances? It depends on whether Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel can replicate their red-ball potency.

But, lacking Jacques Kallis, their fifth bowling option could prove tricky.

• Point to prove For all his IPL pyrotechnics, David Miller is not yet a one-day wonder. The flair and boundary-clearing power are there, but is the temperament to build an innings?

• Match-winner Fusing the art and science of batting, Hashim Amla averages 57. He shares the status as the world’s top ODI batsman with his captain, A. B. de Villiers. But J-P. Duminy is the next highest man in the squad – at No 25.

• Achilles heel Cho… no, let’s not. Besides, South Africa have another problem: they are missing Kallis and Graeme Smith, two players with very nearly as much experience as the rest of the squad put together.

• Competition history Distinctly underwhelming: the only team among the eight never to have reached the final.

•C hances? With a balanced squad and four games in Scotland and Ireland to acclimatise, they can improve their record. But where are the runs coming from?

•P oint to prove Mohammad Irfan is worthy of hype for more than just height. Only three sides in the tournament have faced this 7ft 1in left-armer before.

•M atch-winner Saeed Ajmal is the world’s best spinner, and his non-involvement in the IPL helps preserve his mystique. A bowling average of 18 against India bodes well.

• Achilles heel Whether aggressive opener Nasir Jamshed can be disciplined may be decisive: he averages 45 in 25 ODIs but, before Pakistan’s European tour, had played only three outside Asia.

West Indies • Competition history Ian Bradshaw and Courtney Browne – remember them? – won West Indies the only previous tournament played in England, in 2004. No side has reached more than their three finals.

•C hances? For all Sunil Narine’s exoticism and the squad’s six-hitting abilities, more prosaic qualities are key: the ability of the top order – Ramnaresh Sarwan will be crucial – to survive the two new balls; and the length the quicks bowl.

•P oint to prove Dwayne Bravo’s perky batting and bustling seam have long been attractive, though it is as if his career has been on loop for nine years.

•M atch-winner Despite Gayle Force, Marlon Samuels is West Indies’ most potent weapon – as his pulsating World T20 assault proved.

• Achilles heel If cricketing talent comes in many forms, their potential flaw is a lack of discipline.

Champions Trophy winners 1998-99 2000-01 2002-03 2004 2006-07 2009-10

‡South Africa beat West Indies by four wickets at Dhaka ‡New Zealand beat India by four wickets at Nairobi ‡Sri Lanka and India and shared the trophy, at Colombo (RPS) ‡West Indies beat England by two wickets at The Oval Australia beat ‡West Indies by eight wickets (D/L) at Mumbai (Brabourne) Australia beat ‡New Zealand by six wickets at Centurion

‡ won toss.

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Champions Trophy QUIZ 1

The first Champions Trophy – then called the ICC Knock-Out – was held in Bangladesh in 1998. Who beat West Indies in the final?

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England played only one match in that first tournament, and lost – even though their captain scored 83 not out. Who was he?

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The first tournament called the Champions Trophy was played in Colombo in September 2002 – but it didn’t have a champion. Which two sides shared the honours when the final was washed out?

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New Zealand won the second tournament, in October 2000. In which non-Test country was it held?

England batsmen have scored only three centuries in the Champions Trophy. Who made two of them?

By Steven Lynch

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Nathan Astle’s 145 not out at The Oval in 2004 is the highest score in the Champions Trophy – who was he playing against?

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Who scored three centuries – and 474 runs in all – during the 2006-07 tournament, at a strike-rate of 92?

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Which man, born round the corner in Lambeth, was one of West Indies’ tail-end batting heroes when they won the 2004 final against England at The Oval?

Australia won the tournament for the first time in 2006-07. Where was it staged?

When Australia retained the Champions Trophy in 2009-10, which batsman scored undefeated centuries in both the semi-final and final?

Answers on page 29

n a m h c t a w t h Nig

THE

AR TE RLY CR IC KE T QU TH E W IS DE N

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CONTRIBUTORS TO ISSUE 2 INCLUDE:

M arc u s B e rk m a n n , R a h u l B h at t a c h a r ya , L aw re n ce B o o t h , E m m a J o h n , D av i d Fo o t , G i d e o n H a i g h , Ne i l M a n t h o r p, S a a d S h a fq at , S h a rd a U g ra , M i rz a Wa h e e d , J o n ath a n Wi l s o n , A n d y Z a l t z m a n

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WisdenEXTRA • Champions Trophy

I don’t think anyone knows quite what happened here, though the net result was that David Gower – he’s in the shot somewhere, honest! – survived, despite Yashpal Sharma and the wicketkeeper Syed Kirmani uprooting all three stumps. I think Sharma has the ball, though whether it came into contact with the wicket is another matter altogether.

This sort of pile-up can make a strong image, though they don’t come along too often.

The photo, from The Oval in 1982, was taken on Kodachrome and, while it is sharp enough, it hasn’t handled the extreme lighting contrasts you find in cricket very well.

Gower went on to 76 before Sharma eventually got his man, but England ran out comfortable winners.

Eagar’s Eye

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Eagar’s Eye

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What a day this was! It was the semi-final of the 1996 World Cup between India and Sri Lanka, in Kolkata, and there’s no doubt it was the hottest and most uncomfortable day I’ve ever spent photographing cricket. I bought four litres of bottled water before the 2.30 start and had drunk the lot by five o’clock. For the Sri Lankan innings, I broiled at ground level, but retreated to the shade for the Indian reply. They made a hash of it, and at 120 for eight in response to 251, India were going out – much to the fans’ disgust. As well as throwing bottles and fruit at the fielders, they set light to one of the stands. Clive Lloyd, the match referee, had no option but to award the match to the Sri Lankans. Not a good day for anyone, though I did grab a memorable image.

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WisdenEXTRA • Champions Trophy

Howell Lovell pops into a Coventry car boot sale – and ends up reminiscing about his cricketing youth.

The Courtaulds echo…

They don’t play cricket at the Coventry Courtaulds ground any more, and haven’t done for over a quarter of a century. Now a derelict piece of wasteland, its only use is as a venue for a weekly car boot sale, held where the nets once were.

I went with some friends recently on a lovely spring morning: perfect weather for an early-season game.

I wandered around looking at the bric-a-brac, then found myself gravitating away from the crowd to where the square once was. This shell of a ground holds many ghosts for me. It was the first place I watched and played cricket regularly; a significant part of my childhood is embedded here, buried under the crumbling concrete and abandoned square.

I had first played here some 30 years ago, going to junior cricket nets run by my old headmaster and an ex-professional, whom I only ever heard called “Pro” but who was, almost certainly, the Warwickshire opener Fred Gardner.

In keeping with the rest of the ground, the nets were immaculate. You practised your batting on a surface truer than the playing wicket of most grounds, against bowlers who marked their run-up with a white disc to avoid making even the smallest of scuff marks on an outfield so pristine it could have been a bowling green.

Even at the age of 13, playing at Courtaulds was a serious business. To get on to the outfield, you descended past row upon row of wooden benches, your boots beating out the gentle tattoo of stud on concrete.

At the bottom, a white wicket gate was the entrance to

the field of play. Each time I passed through it, I never got over the feeling I was transgressing, that I didn’t really belong. Cricket immortals had played here: Graveney, Cowdrey, Trueman, Greenidge, and Sobers, too.

It was impossible not to feel something intangible, but somehow weighty, when you took the field – whether or not you knew the club’s history. Yet it was the antithesis of the cricket ground of popular imagination, with no obvious charm, no lime tree growing in the outfield, no river running alongside. It was proudly urban, set firmly down right in the middle of unlovely, industrial, north Coventry.

I left the car boot sale and walked around the surrounding streets. Not much has changed: still the same rows of terraced houses, the same predominantly Asian population. As I was wandering down a backstreet, I noticed a group of Asian kids playing cricket with a makeshift bat and tennis ball. They played the game with more enthusiasm than skill. I stopped to watch, taken by the irony: though the ground had been silent and unused for many years, in the backstreets surrounding it the game was alive and flourishing.

I realised even when Courtaulds was at its height, it was no more than a conduit, a staging place. The essence of the game was right here in front of me.

Howell Lovell’s article was the runner-up in Wisden 2013’s Writing Competition. For details about how to enter this year, please click here.

WisdenEXTRA • Champions Trophy

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Champions Trophy Top Trumps Sport’s most romantic and storied tournament is upon us!

Previous attempts to market the ICC Champions Trophy (or I-Triple-C-T, as the kids are all calling it) have included the campaigns ‘Underdog-Free: No Upsets Guaranteed’, ‘If you like football’s Capital One Cup, you’ll love this’ and ‘At least it’s over quicker than the ICC World Cup’. For some reason, these have enjoyed only limited success.

But that’s all about to change, thanks to the new Top Trumps craze that is sweeping the cricketing world.

With this fun game, available for just £99.99 in the Lord’s food court, you can liven up even England’s most nuggety period of middle-overs consolidation. (And look out for the limited special offer: buy ten packets and receive 15% off a steak sandwich.)

Just deal out the cards among your friends and take turns to pick a category. Be sure to follow the advice of top cricketers worldwide and keep your selections in the right areas, because if you score less than an opponent, he gets to keep your card. Oh no! You have failed to execute your skill set and must now focus on the positives.

Also available: IPL edition, where some players know the results of the game before it happens, and England team edition, where you can dispossess a South African opponent of his best cards at any time you wish.

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WisdenEXTRA • Champions Trophy

10 Eagar’s Eye This was taken the last time the Champions Trophy was held in England, in late September 2004. The England players knew they should have beaten a weak West Indies side in the final, but Courtney Browne and Ian Bradshaw added 71 for the ninth wicket in failing light, and denied England their first global trophy. I don’t often use fill-in flash, but on this occasion it worked, and the image is well balanced. The lights in the background make clear it’s really dark – there’s never been an international later in the summer than this, which took place on September 25 – but the flash allows you to see the disappointment etched on the England players’ faces.

QUIZ Answers See page 24 1 South Africa 2 Adam Hollioake 3 Kenya 4 Sri Lanka and India 5 Marcus Trescothick (Andrew Flintoff scored the other one)

6 USA 7 Courtney Browne 8 Chris Gayle 9 India 10 Shane Watson

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