Six and Out - Some Serious Cricket

Wisden almanack editorial madness - stop the tattoos

by SixandOut on March 27th, 2007

Who the heck edits the Wisden almanack? Matthew Engel, that’s who. The almanack is something of a legendary book in cricketing terms. It’s a bit like the cricketing bible. Except a new version is released every year. Anyway, the latest (144th) edition was published today. The almanack traditionally announces such important things as the five cricketers of the year and the recently inaugurated “cricketer of the world”. This year, it was Murali. A fair enough choice and one that is long overdue.

As editor, Engel exerts his editorial liberty in one main direction in calling for the end of Fletcher’s reign as coach of England, with specific reference to the catastrophic tour of Australia and England’s abject failure. Fair enough. It is time for change in the England camp. In fact, the coach of England is a very important issue, as is, apparently, cricketers with tattoos. According to a review in Cricinfo:

Aside from Fletcher and the Ashes, Engel also criticises that most modern of “self-mutilating” arts: the tattoo, attacking Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff for displaying theirs so obviously. “I think that if sporting heroes wish to indulge in this form of self-mutilation, they should have the decency not to advertise the fact.”

Now, I don’t want to seem overly-sensitive here, but one wonders from exactly where such pomposity is derived and whether Mr Engel fancies joining us in the 21st century. Players should have the decency to not express themselves? Surely such behaviour is absolutely responsible for the remarkable change that has been evident in the game in the last 5 years as the very players he mentioned, KP and Flintoff, have taken grasp of the game and taken it in a new and exciting direction? Such closed-mindedness is bad for the game.

That Mr Engel is deluded, however, is not up for question. After all, there were 3 Englishmen in the 5 players of the year:

• Mahela Jayawardene
• Monty Panesar
• Mark Ramprakash
• Mohammad Yousuf
• Paul Collingwood

I didn’t realise that the peeps at Wisden were such avid fans of dancing.

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