How Google is celebrating the inventor of cricket's bible
In 186 first-class matches, he averaged 14.12 - there were two centuries and nine half-centuries in there - but his real ability was with ball in hand. He picked up 1109 first-class wickets at an average of 6.66. His best bowling figures of 10 for 58 were all the more special because all ten dismissals were clean bowled.
- Wisden India Staff
- Updated: September 05, 2013 04:32 PM IST
Netizens woke up on Thursday (September 5) to find a rather quaint-looking, yellow-tinted Google doodle. It showcases the drawing of a well-built, bearded Victorian gentleman, wearing a Victorian top hat, holding a bat in front of a set of stumps. The batsman's stance looks somewhat ungainly, but a look at the wicketkeeper's crouch - also part of the drawing - makes the man in front of the wickets look positively graceful.
The man with the bat in hand is John Wisden. The doodle portrays him as a batsman, but it was his bowling more than his batting that made him a formidable cricketer in his era.
In 186 first-class matches, he averaged 14.12 - there were two centuries and nine half-centuries in there - but his real ability was with ball in hand. He picked up 1109 first-class wickets at an average of 6.66. His best bowling figures of 10 for 58 were all the more special because all ten dismissals were clean bowled.
He represented Kent, Middlesex and Sussex and, from various accounts, was a formidable cricketer, known in his day as the Little Wonder - a reference to his under-five-and-a-half-feet stature. In 1859, he was part of the England cricket team that sailed across the Atlantic on the world's first overseas cricket tour, and later played for the All England XI in its early years.
More than his cricketing abilities, John Wisden is remembered today, on his 187th birth anniversary, for the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack. An entrepreneur of promise, who set up a fairly prominent sports goods brand after his retirement from first-class cricket in 1863, Wisden published the first edition of the Almanack, a 112-page 'book', in 1864. The yellow book recorded scores of matches from the English cricket circuit and, to bulk up the volume, also included pieces about the big news headlines of the year gone by.
Since then, a fresh volume has been published every single year, with the edition published in 2013 being the 150th one. From being a strictly amateurish enterprise to start with, the Almanack started carrying advertisements in 1867, having become popular in the cricket circles of the time in England. It wasn't quite the 'Bible of Cricket' as it is called today but, in the time John Wisden published the Almanack, albeit not in a perfect yearly cycle at all times, it became a force to reckon with, something regular readers waited to lay their hands on at the end of each cricket season.
Wisden passed away in 1884, having overseen 20 editions of the Almanack. Since then, many, many people have 'taken over' the publication, editors have come and gone, but the Almanack has continued its annual appearance - the same yellow cover with the woodcut print of Victorian cricket added to the cover in 1938. From 112 pages in 1864, it is now a 1600-page tome, still looked forward to by cricket aficionados across the world. And the Wisden Cricketers of the Year selection has, over the years, become a one of the criteria for judging the merits of a cricketer.
In 2012, the first edition of the Wisden India Almanack was launched with Rahul Dravid and Virat Kohli on the cover. The Wisden India Almanack Cricketers of the Year for 2011 were Dravid, Kohli, Umesh Yadav, Kumar Sangakkara (Sri Lanka), Saeed Ajmal (Pakistan) and Shakib Al Hasan (Bangladesh).