EDITOR’S LETTER WISDEN CRICKET MONTHLY
HOLDING ON TO CRICKET’S SOCIAL CONTRACT
by Phil Walker
PHIL WALKER EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
@Phil_Wisden
Last issue, on page 10, we ran the first four scorecards from the England-India Test series alongside a photo of a jubilant India team. Next to the entry for the fifth Test at Old Trafford, we’d written ‘Yet to be played at the time of print’.
The effect of that line – the impact, reading it now, of this accidental joke turned black – is to tear down the numbers and names listed above it. There will always be a big fat asterisk slapped on that series. It died before its time. Here was a great story turned in on itself, a classic novel with the last chapter ripped out, A Day in the Life without Paul’s bit – and yet it dropped with minimal moral fallout, all the hastilyassembled rationales and counter-claims shruggingly subsumed to the strangeness of the day.
It’s hard to imagine a functioning administration enacting a more craven act of moral cowardice, and this is conference season
Following a little cursory hand-wringing and a few half-arsed attempts at diplomatic oneupmanship, everyone fell in line, packed their bags and moved along.