{"id":529966,"date":"2026-04-14T08:22:06","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T08:22:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/529966\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T08:22:06","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T08:22:06","slug":"wisden-calls-out-indias-orwellian-dominance-of-cricket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/529966\/","title":{"rendered":"Wisden calls out India\u2019s \u2018Orwellian\u2019 dominance of cricket"},"content":{"rendered":"

This led to Bangladesh\u2019s removal from this year\u2019s T20 World Cup<\/a>, 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<\/a> from the T20 World Cup, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone breathed a sigh of relief when Pakistan eventually agreed to play the game, but their brinkmanship had exposed the fragility of cricket\u2019s finances,\u201d Booth writes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sport\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wisden also takes aim at Australia\u2019s decision to mark Test cricket\u2019s 150th anniversary with a pink-ball match at the MCG next year, describing it as a \u201cstinker\u201d that takes \u201cfans for fools\u201d.<\/p>\n

There is also criticism for England\u2019s approach to \u201cthe-wing-and-a-prayer Ashes\u201d<\/a>. Booth writes: \u201cIn the game\u2019s long history, it is hard to think of a privilege so carelessly squandered, a chance so blithely spurned.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indian players dominate Wisden\u2019s 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\u2019s cricketer in the world was Mitchell Starc, the leading women\u2019s cricketer was India\u2019s Deepti Sharma, while the leading T20 cricketer was India\u2019s Abhishek Sharma.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This led to Bangladesh\u2019s removal from this year\u2019s T20 World Cup, after their government refused to sanction them…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":529967,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[76821,1721,7681,9981,160075,21236,217,101,5438,26317,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-529966","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-bangladesh-cricket-team","9":"tag-cricket","10":"tag-england-cricket-team","11":"tag-india-cricket-team","12":"tag-live-priority","13":"tag-pakistan-cricket-team","14":"tag-sport","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-standard","17":"tag-the-ashes","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom","20":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}