Old Boy

For a 147 year-old, the Wisden Almanack is a forward-thinker, the anachronistic [who else is putting out 1700 page books in 2010?] but glorious oldest swinger in town. It's an adopter of that trending religion Sehwagology, having [rightly] voted the great yet humble one World Player of the Year for the second time running. It even contains its first recorded swearword - courtesy of an Australian, natch. Under Scyld Berry, it's a thunderer, too, taking righteous aim at the guilty.

Which makes its selection of Five Cricketers Of The Year not so much disappointing as uninspiring. Stuart Broad, Graham Onions, Graeme Swann, Matt Prior and Michael Clarke - well, to use another modernism - it's all a bit meh isn't it. It's also centered deeply around the Ashes and dismissive of T20 cricket.

The award needs a little decoding. Since the Almanack began, the selection of the five has been based on play in the English summer. That lasted until 1997 when, progressively, the editors wanted to recognise the way that Sanath Jayasuriya and Sri Lanka had reinvented the game at the 50-over World Cup. That in turn remained until 2004 and the introduction of the World Player of the Year and the Test Team of the Year, when the selection reverted to the English season.

That again feels outmoded. The world has changed since 2004. The last English summer included the T20 World Cup, which featured giant contributions from Tillakaratne Dilshan, Umar Gul, Abdul Razzak, Chris Gayle and Shahid Afridi. Dilshan's impact on batting was arguably as electric as Jayasuriya's back in '96 - he even coined a new shot. The tournament was a triumph, for the hosts, for Pakistan and for cricket. It, and they, deserved recognition.

It would be churlish to decry the players who did get the award. All of them, especially Clarke and Swann, illuminated a fine series that suffered only in comparison to its 2005 predecessor. But Wisden looked forward in every aspect except this one, and they missed a trick when they did.