While cricket remains a national game today, at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, it was THE national game. Cricketers were the sporting icons of their age, as footballers are today. When the call to arms was made in 1914 and the years of war that followed, it was answered in droves by young men including Test and First Class cricketers. The machine guns and gas of the Western Front and other theatres did not discriminate and many hundreds of these star performers perished alongside their lesser known comrades. The author has researched the lives and deaths of over 200 top class cricketers who made the ultimate sacrifice. He includes not just British players but those from the Empire. The enormity of the horror and wholesale loss of life during The Great War is well demonstrated by these moving biographies.
A definitive tome, essential to all cricket book collectors and Wisden readers. In the early 1980s Wisden published four anthologies that celebrated the best of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack stretching back to its first edition in 1864. Edited by the respected jazz musician, raconteur and cricket-lover, Benny Green, these volumes proved very popular. Wisden readers have long awaited a fifth, updated volume to cover the intervening period, marked by all-time greats like Viv Richards, Ian Botham, Richard Hadlee, Imran Khan, Sachin Tendulkar, Steve Waugh, Brian Lara and Shane Warne. The Wisden Anthology 1978-2006 meets this demand, though it does not follow the style of the Benny Green volumes. Rather than selecting random highlights, Stephen Moss has edited this anthology with the aim of painting a coherent picture of cricket's evolution over the past 30 years. Quite simply it is a story of revolution, beginning in Test cricket's centenary year when England regained the Ashes, Geoffrey Boycott scored his hundredth hundred, Ian Botham took five for 74 on debut, and Kerry Packer's millions ensured the era of deferential players earning a pittance was over for good. Thirty years on, for better or worse, cricket has changed radically. The top players form a highly paid elite who rarely venture beyond the international arena; television calls the tune; the political balance of power has shifted towards Asia; one-day cricket in coloured clothing is ubiquitous; and run-rates rise inexorably while batsmen tear bowlers to pieces as never before.To the gnarled old pros of the 1950s the game must be unrecognisable. A genuine revolution, charted in 40,000 Wisden pages over the past 30 years, is now distilled into a 1,280-page anthology that selects the matches, players, events and controversies which ushered the game into a brave new century.
The Shorter Wisden is a compelling distillation of what's best in its bigger brother – and the 2021 edition of Wisden is crammed, as ever, with the best writing in the game. Wisden's digital version includes the influential Notes by the Editor, and all the front-of-book articles. In an age of snap judgments, Wisden's authority and integrity are more important than ever. Yet again this year's edition is truly a “must-have” for every cricket fan. In essence, The Shorter Wisden is a glass of the finest champagne rather than the whole bottle. @WisdenAlmanack
The Shorter Wisden is a compelling distillation of what's best in its bigger brother. Available from all major eBook retailers, Wisden's digital version includes the influential Notes by the Editor, all the front-of-book articles, reviews, obituaries and all England's Tests from the 2014 season.
