Notes By The Editors: 120 Years of Wisden Opinion

By Kyle Mills

When Wisden Cricketers' Almanack was first published in 1864, it included no comments or opinions at all. As the editors explained, they “carefully avoided making any remarks upon the play or players, as the purport of this little work is to record the scores of the matches”.

But by the turn of the century, things had changed, and since the first set of “Notes By The Editor” appeared in Wisden in 1901, the editor's opinions have become a feature of the Almanack, the first pages that readers turn to, to see what bees are in the editorial bonnet this year.

In this collection, Notes by the Editors reproduces many of the most memorable editor opinions expressed over the 120 years since they first appeared. Wisden's views on all the great topics (and some of the smaller ones) are included – throwing, bodyline, Packer, the d'Oliveira Affair, not to mention ball tampering and the development of The Hundred. And the weather, always the weather.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Nov 12, 2020
• ISBN: 9781472975621

Book preview

Contents

Introduction

1 Laws

2 Tests

3 The County Championship

4 Players

5 Business

6 Politics

7 White Ball

8 Wickets

9 Throwing

10 Weather

11 War

12 Odds and Ends

Acknowledgments

Introduction

When I was asked to review an edition of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, in the mid-1990s, I was told that my review had to start with my thoughts on the Notes by the Editor, as they were the pages that were likely to be most controversial and newsworthy. This advice rather played down the excitement that the rest of the Almanack always gives rise to in the breast of the true cricket lover, but there is no doubt that Wisden’s editorial column has become the heart of the book, and perhaps the most important commentary on the cricket of the previous 12 months. On the editor’s words might hang careers, laws and bank balances. I duly complied, but would not have needed much persuading anyway. Wisden is read for its comments as much as its historical record, comments which have always ranged from the trenchant to the bland, from the serious to the comical, and from the controversial to the conservative.

Yet when John Wisden first produced his Almanack in 1864, comment was something he and his compilers, W. H. Knight and W. H. Crockford, were at pains to avoid. In introducing the scores of the great matches of the age, which they gave in detail, they wrote that we of course make no comments upon the matches, leaving the cricketer to form his own opinion with regards to the merits of the men, since a great many of our readers are at least equal, if not superior, to ourselves in arriving at a right judgment of the play. A little later in the book, they vary their reason for making no comment by saying that we have abstained from making any remarks concerning the individual play of any man, since, where all are so good, it would, perhaps, be invidious to single out anyone as being superior to those with whom he has played so often with varied success. Whichever way you look at it, the editor was not going to make any comments about the cricket that was being faithfully and extremely accurately recorded for the readership.

Whether that was a decision made by the proprietor, John Wisden, or whether it was a decision of the editors is impossible to say, but it took some time to change. John Wisden died in 1884, but while he was still alive and still taking a close interest in his publication, comments about the play and the state of cricket had begun to creep into the Almanack under the editorship of W. H. Knight, who edited the annual from the start until he died in 1880, and his successor, George West, who was only 28 years old when he took on the editorship. Knight was responsible for the first article to appear in Wisden, when he included three pages of Notes by the Way in the 1869 Almanack. This was not a true editorial piece, in that it was more a prototype for the Records section, listing many feats of high scoring, but it perhaps gave Knight, and his readership, a taste for comment on the games so dutifully recorded. The next year, 1870, Wisden included comments with the scorecards of matches for the first time.

West remained editor until 1886, when he handed over to Charles Pardon, who in turn only edited the Almanack for three years. On his early death in 1890, the reins were taken up by his brother Sydney, who was the man who changed Wisden from a comparatively small (but perfectly formed) publication into the authoritative Almanack we know today. He was the man who introduced the Notes by the Editor. And so the tradition was born of the editor of Wisden condemning what he thought was wrong with the game, and praising what he thought was right, and all without being disagreeable.

Sydney Pardon remained in the editor’s chair until his death in 1925. His obituary noted that "despite his remarkable attainments in other directions, Sydney Pardon will be chiefly remembered for his writings upon cricket, and his long association with Wisden’s Almanack. Keen and accurate, well-balanced in his conclusions, and gifted with a particularly graceful form of expression, he rapidly built up a name for himself. Steadily his reputation grew until at length all leading cricketers were glad to have his opinions upon the big questions of the day". Alongside Pardon’s reputation, the reputation of Wisden grew at an equal rate. The little yellow book’s opinions, as expressed in Notes by the Editor, now really mattered.

Pardon was succeeded by his deputy and long-time associate, C. Stewart Caine. After Caine died in 1933, his Wisden obituary, written by Pelham Warner, made the point that "the Editor of Wisden is an important personage. It is he who decides the policy of ‘the Cricketers’ Bible’ and cricketers the world over look to him to give a lead on all controversial problems. His is, therefore, no easy task, but Wisden has been fortunate in its editors."

The good fortune perhaps stuttered a bit when Sydney Southerton died after only two years in charge. As his Wisden obituary pointed out, His end came even more suddenly than that of each of his predecessors. Sydney H. Pardon collapsed in his office and died the next morning, November 20, 1925; Charles Stewart Caine, after fighting the trouble of a weak heart for many months, went to sleep in his chair at home and did not wake again; Southerton, having proposed the toast of ‘Cricket’ at the dinner of the Ferrets Club at The Oval, sank down and a few minutes later his life ebbed away. He… died in circumstances such as he might have wished. Surrounded by cricketers, many of them close friends and leading players, he surrendered his innings when in the full glow of success.

Southerton was succeeded by Wilfrid H. Brookes, who oversaw the production of four editions. In that time the ownership of the Almanack passed to J. Whitaker and Sons, and the 1938 edition saw a major redesign: the famous Wisden woodcut appeared for the first time on the cover, the reports of the counties were arranged in alphabetical order rather than in the order they had finished in the previous year’s Championship, and there was a full index and more illustrations. There was even a reduction of sixpence in the price of the clothbound edition. Sales boomed, but then came the war.

For four editions, from 1940 until 1943, the Notes by the Editor were written not by the editor, Haddon Whitaker, but by the Oxford University and Somerset bowler-turned-journalist R. C. Robertson-Glasgow, who was generally and affectionately known as Crusoe. [His nickname came about when the Essex batsman Charlie McGahey was asked how he had just been dismissed against Oxford University in 1920. He replied, I was bowled by an old bugger I thought was dead two thousand years ago, called Robinson Crusoe.] These were the war years and there was not much opportunity for any editor to make profound comments on the state of cricket when there was very little cricket but a great deal of war going on. Even so, Crusoe produced several pithy comments on the state of the game.

From 1944 until 1980, the editor’s chair was occupied by the Prestons, father and son, Hubert (1944–51) and Norman (1952–80). They kept Wisden relevant and popular, although some of their opinions seem very old fashioned to 21st-century eyes. Norman Preston was succeeded by John Woodcock, the long-serving cricket correspondent of The Times, and in 1987 Woodcock’s long-serving deputy, the New Zealander Graeme Wright, took over. In 1993, Matthew Engel, then of The Guardian, became editor, until he went to live and work in the United States. Thus for the 2001 and 2002 editions, Graeme Wright took up the reins again, and in 2003 Tim de Lisle had one year in charge (in which he introduced photographs on the front cover), before Engel returned for four editions from 2004. Scyld Berry of the Telegraph was editor for the next four years, until he was succeeded by the current incumbent (as I write), the Daily Mail’s Lawrence Booth, in 2012. That’s 16 editors in total, of whom the first three did not write any Notes.

In going through 120 or so sets of Notes, at a rough guess about half a million words, and being able to include no more than a small percentage of what has been written over the years, I have been struck by several things, and not just the editors’ preoccupation with the weather or Stewart Caine’s ability to put at the end of each sentence or clause the subject. There is a sense of unanimity about the things that really matter in the game – the spirit in which it is played, the need for the game to remain relevant and popular, the way it expresses our national psyche. Even in cricket’s darkest times, when dealing with throwing controversies, Bodyline, match-fixing or umpiring issues, the editors have retained a sense of optimism about the game, a fervent love for the game (not necessarily in all its formats) and an ability to say succinctly and stylishly what needs to be said. As John Woodcock wrote in his 1983 Notes, The game is never quite the same from one season to the next. As has been said before now, it never has been what it was. To those who love it, though, it remains, despite the politicians, an incomparable pastime.

In 2009, Scyld Berry called cricket an astonishing, unique, game in all its forms. Cricket has regenerated and grown, over the centuries, as no other sport has done.

The Notes by the Editor have also grown, and not just in length, to be themselves astonishing and unique. What’s more, they are never quite the same from one season to the next.

Jonathan Rice

May 2020

1

Laws

ALL FOR THE RIGOUR OF THE GAME

Many of cricket’s Laws have changed over the years, but almost always the Editor of Wisden was against any change. The lbw law has always been the most contentious, but other Laws – from no-balls to bouncers to reverse swing and the length of an over – have all been discussed in the Notes. In the words of Sydney Pardon in 1912, The game is as good as ever it was. It must not be tampered with to please people who vainly think that it can have the concentrated excitement of an hour-and-a-half’s football. Wise words that have disappeared from the corporate memory of cricket’s administrators a century on.

In 1904, Sydney Pardon was concerned about moves to change the size of the wicket. It was a rare occasion upon which he disagreed with the MCC committee:

"When the last few pages of Wisden’s Almanack for 1903 were going through the press the proposal by the county captains to widen the wicket from eight to nine inches had, without warning, been sprung upon the cricket world… The subcommittee of the MCC to whom the matter was first submitted and afterwards the full committee of the club approved of the alteration which, with all the weight of official support, was brought forward at Lord’s on the 7th of May, the annual meeting of the Club being made special to deal with the question. Mr A. G. Steel, the retiring president, made a strong appeal to the members to support the committee and was backed up by Lord Harris, but the proposition signally failed to obtain the two-thirds majority requisite to bring about a change in the Laws of Cricket, the numbers being, for the proposal 215, against it 199. Thus, there was only a bare majority of 16 votes, and the question fell through, not to be heard of again during the remainder of the year. I have the greatest possible respect for the committee of the MCC – a body composed exclusively of first-rate experts – but I cannot understand why they were so anxious to adopt the wider wicket without putting its value to any test or why, ignoring the very practical difficulty of getting a sufficient number of thicker stumps from the various manufacturers, they should have wished to bring the alteration into force during the season of 1903. As a rule they are – quite properly – much less hasty in attempting to alter the Laws of the game. For many reasons I think it is a good thing that the alteration was not carried… I have yet to be convinced that the alteration if carried would have had any effect in bringing about the result desired – the reduction of the present excessive scoring on hard wickets. Personally, though I think it would likely have helped the bowlers on bad wickets, when they need no assistance, I do not think it would have made any difference to them in fine weather. When batsmen of the class of Ranjitsinhji, C. B. Fry, MacLaren, and Victor Trumper – I mention only the most famous names among contemporary players – are making long scores the ball, unless intentionally let alone, so seldom passes the bat that I cannot believe the widening of the wicket by an inch would have any effect."

(Sydney Pardon, 1904)

In 1906, Pardon was concerned with the toss. We can guess his view on the visitors can choose to field first rule that was part of Championship cricket in the 2010s:

I hold strongly to the opinion that the toss, as an essential feature of cricket, should not be tampered with. Apart from all other considerations – such as the delightful uncertainty before a match begins as to which side will bat first – the toss for innings affords the best guarantee that wickets will in all cases be fairly and properly prepared. I would not for a moment suggest that in the case of out and home county matches the knowledge that the opposing team were going in first would in the ordinary way lead to any wrongdoing on the part of the ground-keepers. All the same there would be a danger which the Law in its present shape prevents. Very little extra water, or the difference of a few hours in the last time for watering, might make all the difference in the world to the side that had first innings, and even the suspicion of malpractices of this kind would cause great ill-feeling and might lead to an old-established county match being left out of the following season’s programme.

(Sydney Pardon, 1906)

Cricket is perhaps the only sport which includes mealtimes within its regulations:

"On two points the Advisory Committee at their second meeting departed from the rules they had previously laid down, allowing Saturday starts, which they had abolished, to be made optional, and consenting to the retention of the tea interval. On the question of the tea interval I can never manage to get up any strong feeling one way or another. Far too much fuss has been made about a very ordinary matter. If play is to go on until half past seven it is surely not unreasonable, when there is no prospect of an innings ending, for the fielding side to ask for a little break in a very long afternoon.

Personally I always preferred, for the reason that it avoided having the ground cleared, the plan followed at The Oval, when I was a boy, of sending refreshments out to the players on the field, but in those far-off days the habit of taking tea at cricket matches was almost unknown. As I understand the arrangement, the tea interval this year will, as before, be dispensed with when, after four o’clock, the end of an innings seems to be in sight.

(Sydney Pardon, 1919)

After the First World War, Pardon was astonished at some of the ideas proposed to save cricket from extinction:

By some evil chance, cricket, alone among our games and pastimes, has since the signing of the Armistice been signalled out for adverse criticism. Racing men, rowing men, golfers, and lawn tennis players were eager to get back as soon as possible to things as they were before the War, but it occurred to some peculiar people that cricket stood in need of drastic alterations. Personally I could not find any sound basis for their arguments. So far as I know the game was flourishing, when in August 1914 the world was suddenly turned upside down. Be this as it may, the resumption of first-class matches was no sooner announced than all the faddists in Great Britain began to fill the newspapers with their ideas of what they were pleased to call reform or reconstruction. Some of the suggestions, such as the penalising of the batting side for every maiden over played, were too preposterous to be worth a moment’s consideration. Still, even the most fatuous proposals found supporters. We were advised to play by the clock and, regardless of weather and wicket, to rule a batsman out unless runs came at a certain fixed rate per hour. Then followed a determined agitation to get the boundaries shortened. I confess I was astonished to find among the advocates of this most mischievous proposition the name of F. S. Jackson. Short boundaries are open to three fatal objections. They would inevitably lead to higher scoring, the batsman’s task being rendered still easier than it is today; they would kill slow bowling, and they would practically destroy fine outfielding, the ball getting to the ring too quickly for mortal man to cross it. As a rule the best cricket I ever see is at The Oval, the reason being that the boundaries are deep enough to make the hits worth the value placed on them. Many people seem to regard cricket purely as a spectacle, never giving a thought to the game itself. They need to be reminded that boundaries are quite outside cricket, being only rendered necessary by the presence of the crowd of spectators. When as a small boy I first went to The Oval, and for years afterwards, the only boundaries were the Pavilion and the refreshment tent. Fieldsmen used to jump over the single row of seats and return the ball from beyond the ring. Batsmen could get five, six, or in rare cases, seven runs for a big drive, but they paid the price in hard running between the wickets.

(Sydney Pardon, 1919)

As for the lbw law…

"Of all the things said about cricket within the last few months, by far the most significant, to my mind, was Tom Hayward’s admission, in an interview, that during his career his legs had saved his wicket hundreds of times. Such a confession on the part of one of the greatest of batsmen is enough to prove that the existing Law as to leg before wicket is not fair to the bowler, and that those who plead for change have a good case. In the earliest published Laws of Cricket the batsman was out, who with design stopped the ball with his legs and prevented it hitting the wicket. The umpires in those primitive days, when of course only underhand bowling was known, had to decide the question of the batsman’s intention. Could modern umpires be safely entrusted with