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Reading my Telegraph Sport colleague Tim Wigmore’s new and authoritative book Test Cricket: A History was an ideal psychological preparation for the new Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack.
He stresses that there have always been unsavoury aspects to what he several times calls the “brutal” game of Test cricket. They were there right from the late Victorian period: cheating, gamesmanship, financial greed, racism, classism and, where some of the poor professionals were concerned, a philosophy of the devil taking the hindmost.
A few Test cricketers became, and remain, legendary, and reaped the profits of that even in eras before the modern obsession with money: Hobbs, Sutcliffe, Bradman, Compton, Sobers and Gavaskar. Many others wound down their lives in obscurity, relentless toil and an overdose of memories, and some ends were tragic.
These themes are all too visible in the 2025 Wisden, especially when one reads memories of poor Graham Thorpe; though the accusations of sharp practice these days are more focused on the people who run the game rather than those who play it.
Wigmore refers candidly to the main commercial developments in world cricket that have pushed the once-dominant form of the game increasingly to the margins, but avoids extremes of optimism or pessimism.
Lawrence Booth, Wisden’s editor, does not equivocate, and as such reminds us that someone trying to write a history of Test cricket in a quarter-century’s time may merely have to write a sad concluding chapter to Wigmore’s book.
Booth refers to the recent translation of Jay Shah from running the BCCI – India’s national governing body – to running the ICC as demonstrating that “cricket gave up any claim to being properly administered” when it happened.
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At 36, Jay Shah has gone from secretary for the BCCI to chairman of the International Cricket Council - Getty Images/Noah Seelam
Some of us have been highlighting cricket’s moral decline for years, and it may be too late to reverse it now. Modern cricket, thanks to the dominant influence of T20 and its ruthless projection and promotion by commercial forces in India, now works relentlessly against the interests of Test cricket.
This could not matter less to those to whom cricket is plainly and simply a means of generating wealth. And those people, as Booth points out, now run world cricket, and run it to serve their interests. And for the moment, that means responding to an insatiable demand for T20, whatever the side effects.
Wigmore tells the story of a game that for most of its history was run by white men, many of them public school and Oxbridge-educated, and members of MCC. He sensibly avoids the absurdities of what twisted academics call “decolonising” the subject of Test cricket.
In the 1870s the societies in which first-class cricket – the natural breeding-ground for Test cricketers – had been developed were England and Australia, their cultural affinities taking them in lock-step. It was natural that they should lead the development of the game; and natural that another territory with a large community of people of British heritage, what became the Union of South Africa, should become the third partner in international contests.
Along the way there was evidence of racism; indigenous Australians, however good they were, were not picked for their country; Lord Harris may or may not have been responsible for stopping Ranjitsinhji from playing for England sooner than he did; no black man captained the West Indies until Frank Worrell in 1960, more than 30 years after they joined the Test circuit; and of course much of world cricket, including MCC, tolerated the Apartheid policies of South Africa until the break finally came in the 1970s.
Now, the boot is on the other foot: the old imperial masters are out, and those from the jewel in the crown of the former empire now dictate terms. Jay Shah’s father, Booth notes, is “the second most powerful politician in India”, which helps explain much about the motive forces behind cricket not just in that country, but, now, around a world where India runs the game.
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The construction of the gargantuan Narendra Modi Stadium was overseen by Jay Shah - Reuters/Adnan Abidi
Booth derides the ICC as having become merely “an events company”, with a “craven” attitude to international fixtures arranged entirely to suit India. He calls the World Test Championship “a shambles masquerading as a showpiece”. Its next final is to be played at Lord’s in June, between South Africa and Australia, and the shambles element concerns the unequal paths the two sides have taken to Lord’s. Australia have played tough opponents in long series; South Africa easier ones in shorter series, while many of its players have pursued the numerous T20 franchises around the world that are India’s gift to the modern game.
Wisden takes a remarkably charitable view of another franchise that, incomprehensibly, businessmen seem hungry to invest in: The Hundred. Has anyone outside Britain shown the slightest interest in buying a Hundred franchise for their country? No, because they already have T20, and dozens of them. Happily, it is nobody’s problem but the England and Wales Cricket Board’s. They are welcome to it.
Booth is right to turn a fierce spotlight on Shah. He could redistribute money to poorer countries struggling to stay in Test cricket, but without a coherent international marketing plan, and the revival of first-class cricket in those countries, it will not work. But what will especially make it fail is those controlling international cricket allowing T20 to dominate schedules and have first call on the pool of top players. As some of us have written until we are blue in the face, this will never be resolved until T20 is entirely separated from first-class cricket, and Test cricket.
If Shah does not grasp that problem there will be no need for any more histories of Test cricket, and the next few Wisdens will have plenty more to object to. Meanwhile, the main cricket authorities in this country seem oblivious to the horrors they are condoning.
They will one day learn, the hard way, that in a business – as opposed to a game – the complicity of stupid people seldom brings rewards.
Test Cricket: A History (Quercus, £30) and the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack (Bloomsbury, £60) are both available from all good bookshops.
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