Rite of spring celebrated with critical examination

“Twenty-over cricket is shifting the tectonic plates of the professional game as never before,” writes Berry.

“Until now, the best cricketers have earned most of the money by representing their country, whether in an official eleven or a rebel team in World Series or apartheid South Africa.

“This period in the game’s history, of representing countries, seems to be ending, suddenly.”

“The day has lurched closer when England’s best cricketers, in addition to representing England, will play for an English region in the 20-over competition in mid-summer and for an Indian city. County cricket will then become a relic at amateur level, like the county championship of English rugby.”

Berry regards Twenty20 cricket as an inevitable and necessary consequence of an age when the public wants sport packaged into three hours.

He also unequivocally condemns what he views as an alarming increase in deliberate physical contact on the field with batsmen and bowlers barging into each other in ostensible pursuit of the ball.

“We live in a world of chaos and a cricket match is one of our attempts to impose human organisation upon nature, order upon chaos. It takes much to create and, when angry emotions take over, is so easy to destroy,” he writes.

In a telephone interview with Reuters, Berry said cricket must not follow the route of other televised sports.

“Anything goes. The value system of chivalry is being worn ever thinner,” he said. “That’s the way the whole culture of our times is going. The pressure on cricket is that it should not become a contact sport.”

Wisden’s genius has been to evolve in harmony with the game and Berry has produced a masterstroke by turning the births and deaths section of test cricketers on its side on the page. He is thereby able to include their career figures, a source of endless fascination to devotees of a game rivalled by baseball only in its obsession with statistics.

Berry also pays homage to quintets who have never been honoured among Wisden’s five cricketers of the year. They are Wes Hall and Jeff Thomson, two bowlers of raw, uncomplicated pace, Bishen Bedi and Abdul Qadir, a spin duo of sophisticated subtlety, and the gifted, generously proportioned Pakistani batsman Inzamam-ul-Haq.

This year’s cricketers of the year are England’s Ian Bell and Ryan Sidebottom, England bowling coach Ottis Gibson, an inspiration for his county Durham, West Indies’ left-hand batsman Shivnarine Chanderpaul and India’s left-arm pace bowler Zaheer Khan. Finally, Berry has placed the emphasis on experts to appraise cricketers exiting the stage in 2007.

England opener Andrew Strauss gives an insider’s view of coach Duncan Fletcher and Australian Ian Healy supplies a fascinating glimpse of the technique involved in the wicketkeepers’ art during a generous appraisal of his successor Adam Gilchrist.

Then from beyond the boundary, Professor Carl Bridge from Kings College in London, demonstrates why sport is such a significant strand of social history.

Bridge places Don Bradman, Wisden’s greatest cricketer of the 20th century, in the context of his times and his country in an essay that strips away easy assumptions about Australia and Australians. The outcome is a minor masterpiece that gives added insight into the supreme exponent of an endlessly fascinating game.