Wisden Cricketers Almanack 1997 - Rated 
The bible of Cricket,featuring match reports from the County
championship, Sunday league, Benson and hedges cup and Natwest
trophy. Also includes five Cricketers of the year, Other English
matches,the World cup, Overseas test series and One-day
Tournaments and overseas first-class and one-day competitions.
The most detailed annual guide to cricket there is. - Rated
The 1997 Wisden is the fifth under the editorship of Matthew Engel, who continues to leave a growing imprint on the book, this time introducing a register of nearly 1000 current players giving full names with dates and places of birth. He also causes, in his own words, an "affront to tradition" by choosing a player who did not appear in the previous English season as a Cricketer of the Year - Sanath Jayasuriya. Other choices are Mushtaq Ahmed, Saeed Anwar, Phil Simmons and Sachin Tendulkar. The main problems facing the compilers appear to be demands on space and ICC efforts at tinkering with the past via retroactive edicts concerning the status of certain matches. Page 326, below the heading "Results Summary of all Limited-Overs Internationals" informs us there were 1116 such contests from 1970-71 to 23 September 1996, though the matches actually summarised (here and in another table on page 325) amount to 1119, the three extra ones being fixtures not originally considered official, but which have now become so according to the ICC. In its first-class records, Wisden ignores retroactive ICC edicts regarding certain matches in South Africa. The same attitude to Limited-Overs Internationals would make for a consistent approach and, for the same reasons that retrospective legislation is not permissible in law, a more practical one. With the demands on space, nearly all scorecards of overseas domestic matches follow the recent trend of appearing in abbreviated form so as to accommodate the large international programme. This year sees coverage of the 1996 World Cup, a theme also taken up in two articles about Sri Lanka, a feature on press coverage of the tournament, and Mihir Bose's "A Wind Blows from the East". There are also the thoughts of Ashley Mallett on spin bowling, post-war reflections on the Sheffield Shield and Tony Lewis' appreciation of Dickie Bird, while Martin Johnson writes on county champions, Leicestershire, and Lord MacLaurin outlines his manifesto for English cricket. One might wish for full scorecards of more overseas domestic matches, but worldwide coverage of the game, established features such as editor's notes, births and deaths, records, administration and law, book reviews and obituaries, together with articles touching on various other topics, make Wisden the most detailed annual guide to cricket there is.
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