If English cricket and the ECB are not at this time in the best of circumstances, many have made note of the reasons for this, and Scyld Berry, in the editor’s notes of the Wisden Almanac has pointed out several faults, which is his view are present with the ECB’s system of working. The criticism of the ECB stems from the way that the revenue generated by the international cricket team is used to subsidise county cricket and paying the salaries of foreign players.

The fact that no cricket telecast in England is free to air will ultimately make it a niche sport for the “white and Asian middle class” contends Berry. The ECB also, in order to generate more and more revenue, schedules too much cricket to be played, thereby overcrowding the cricket schedule of the team and putting undue pressure on the team and its captain. According to Berry "the captaincy becomes an unsustainable burden and at least one player has a nervous breakdown" and this overcrowding of the team’s schedule is translates into an England side that "plays all the time and never peaks or consistently wins".

There is praise for the way that the ECB’s Managing Director handled the team after the Mumbai terror strikes however censure for the selection of Darren Pattison. There is also a positive mention of the Indian Premier League which is described as "single biggest change in cricket" since the invention of Test matches in the 19th century, and welcomed as "radiating hope" for a game that has "regenerated and grown over the centuries as no other sport has done".

Berry does however urge for there to be a balance between lucrative cricket and good cricket. The Almanac is a considerable work and it commentates on many aspects of the game; not merely restricting itself to criticism of the ECB.  It talks of many other things connected to the game of cricket, which the cricket lover would enjoy reading about, including some obscure references to cricket in Taiwan, which is described as "ambling along like the Formosan black bear, the country's largest mammal". Even if one does not want to know about the state of cricket in Taiwan, there is much to rivet the keen follower of the game of international cricket in the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanac.

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3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."

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