This led to Bangladesh’s removal from this year’s T20 World Cup, after their government refused to sanction them travelling to India, which Pakistan had already refused to do (after India refused to travel to Pakistan for the Champions Trophy). There were brief fears Pakistan could withdraw from the T20 World Cup, too.
“Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when Pakistan eventually agreed to play the game, but their brinkmanship had exposed the fragility of cricket’s finances,” Booth writes.
“The sport’s governance grows ever more Orwellian, pretending that Indian exceptionalism comes without consequence, and blaming those lower down the food chain for lashing out. Predictably, almost no prominent voices in the Indian game addressed the root cause of the carnage: the politicisation of a sport that, whatever Naqvi may say, has never been untouched by the real world, yet never more poisoned by it either.”
Wisden also takes aim at Australia’s decision to mark Test cricket’s 150th anniversary with a pink-ball match at the MCG next year, describing it as a “stinker” that takes “fans for fools”.
There is also criticism for England’s approach to “the-wing-and-a-prayer Ashes”. Booth writes: “In the game’s long history, it is hard to think of a privilege so carelessly squandered, a chance so blithely spurned.”
Indian players dominate Wisden’s annual awards, with four members of the Test team who drew 2-2 with England last summer named among the five cricketers of the year, an award each player can win only once. Shubman Gill, Rishabh Pant, Ravindra Jadeja and Mohammed Siraj were among the five, along with the title-winning Nottinghamshire captain Haseeb Hameed. The leading men’s cricketer in the world was Mitchell Starc, the leading women’s cricketer was India’s Deepti Sharma, while the leading T20 cricketer was India’s Abhishek Sharma.