Ahead of Wednesday's launch of the 143rd Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, its Editor, Matthew Engel, provides another sneak-preview of the decisions behind choosing the five Cricketers of the Year in today's Times.
FOUR days from now the 2006 edition of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack will be published, the 143rd. It will report, as it has not done since edition No 125, how England won the Ashes. And it will announce, as it has done every peacetime year since No 26 (1889), the names of the Cricketers of the Year.
“The Five” constitutes one of the best loved and most durable traditions in cricket. I think this is partly because the 537 men (it was not always five a year) chosen over the past 117 years are not necessarily the best cricketers. Successive editors have cut themselves enough slack to pick players who just happen to appeal to them. It has always been accepted that there is room for whimsy, idiosyncrasy or downright eccentricity. Cricket followers like that.
Indeed, all will be revealed here at Cricinfo in just a few days' time...
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