2009

The first Wisden under the new ownership of A&C Black (who also publish Who's Who and Whitaker's Almanack) reported on the explosion of Twenty20 cricket around the world, especially in India. Scyld Berry's Notes by the Editor deal with this "Twenty20 stampede" at length, and he also looks at the saga of the England captaincy (further explored later in the book with articles by Mike Atherton, Simon Barnes and Michael Vaughan), and suggests a novel way of speeding up over-rates. Berry also explains why, for the first time, one of Wisden's Five Cricketers of the Year is a woman: Claire Taylor, the prolific batter who helped England win the women's Ashes in 2008, and also the World Cup shortly before the 2009 Almanack was published. For the first time, Wisden selects its Test XI for the year, while David Frith assesses "Ashes Masters" from England and Australia, and Nasser Hussain looks at the parallel careers of Graeme Hick and Mark Ramprakash - two giants of county cricket who found it hard to reproduce their best form at Test level.

Editor Scyld Berry
Pages 1680
Price £45

Almanack essays

A particularly Australian mongrel

Ricky Ponting

Captain, Kolpak, Colt

The County Cricketers' Year

It's Wednesday, it must be....dunno

The English Cricket Season

Losing the X factor

The England Captaincy (2)

Notes by the Editor

The annual overview of world cricket

The Ashes Masters

The best from England and Australia

The Wisden Test XI

The best Test team of 2008

Virender Sehwag

Wisden's Leading Cricketer in the World, 2008