Ponting earns new Wisden accolade

Australia's captain, Ricky Ponting, has been named as the Leading Cricketer in the World by Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, whose 141st edition was published on Thursday, April 8.

Ponting is the first recipient of the new Wisden accolade, started as a counterpart to the traditional Five Cricketers of the Year award, which dates back to 1889. This year's Five Cricketers include two Englishmen - Andrew Flintoff of Lancashire and England, and Chris Adams, the Sussex captain - two South Africans - Graeme Smith and Gary Kirsten - and the Australian Ian Harvey.

No-one can be among the Five more than once and, with the arrival of the new honour, the Five are once again being chosen on the time-honoured criterion "influence on the English season".

But the Leading Cricketer award can be won an unlimited number of times. The almanack has also named The Wisden Forty, including Ponting and his 39 nearest rivals, based on their form in 2003. The list includes 14 Australians, seven South Africans, five Indians, four Pakistanis, three Englishmen - Flintoff, Marcus Trescothick and Michael Vaughan - three Sri Lankans, two New Zealanders and one each from West Indies (Brian Lara) and Zimbabwe (Heath Streak).

Ponting shares the cover with his predecessor as Australian captain, Steve Waugh. This follows Wisden's first-ever pictorial cover in 2003, which featured Michael Vaughan. This year, the front has been redesigned to re-incorporate the famous woodcut by Eric Ravilious. Readers who object to pictures on the cover (or to Australians) can write off to Wisden for a picture-free version.

Wisden's Notes by the Editor, cricket's traditional fire-and-brimstone annual sermon, breaks with precedent by praising the game's administrators. Matthew Engel - returning as editor after three years' absence, spent mainly in the US - says "the game has been better run for the past few years than at any time in history".

But Engel then attacks both the International Cricket Council (ICC) and the England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB) over the current crisis involving Zimbabwe and the Champions Trophy tournament, scheduled to be held in England in September.

Describing Zimbabwe as a "wretched tyranny", he says the majority of cricketing countries will earn "the contempt of thoughtful individuals across the globe" if sanctions are invoked against England for refusing to tour there. But he adds that the English position has been "incoherent and inconsistent" and says the ECB's plans for the Champions Trophy look like producing something "between a squandered opportunity and a total fiasco".

Engel points out that the competition is due to go on almost until October - far later than any major cricket has ever been staged in England - and that the final will be at The Oval rather than Lord's. Even The Oval will not be properly ready: it is being rebuilt for the 2005 Ashes. He adds that the England team will be "knackered" after a non-stop six-month programme, thus endangering any prospect of a home win to build popular support for the game.

Engel also criticises the ECB's domestic opponents, the Cricket Reform Group, headed by the former England captains Mike Atherton and Bob Willis. After analysing their manifesto, which proposes a greater emphasis on club rather than county cricket to produce England cricketers, he concludes: "I am gobsmacked that Mike and Bob expect English cricket to be more competitive by becoming more amateur."

The lead article of Wisden 2004 is a graceful tribute to Steve Waugh, the most successful Test captain of all time, by the former England captain Nasser Hussain. Another ex-captain, Mike Atherton, profiles Graeme Smith as one of the Cricketers of the Year.

The other articles all add to the long tradition of Wisden as a repository for some of the best writing in sport. They cover such subjects as the future of wicketkeeping, Over-Forties in Test cricket, the role of players' agents and a comparison of the lives of footballers and cricketers. ("I reckon the only advantage they have over us is that their game lasts 90 minutes not five days," says Graham Thorpe, the former England Schools midfielder and current Test batsman.)

There is a tribute to Sussex, the county champions, by their former captain, and trenchant journalist, Robin Marlar. The weatherman Philip Eden shows that 2003 was not quite such a long, hot summer as people believe. This year's book reviewer is Barry Norman, who chooses No Coward Soul, the biography of Bob Appleyard, by Stephen Chalke and Derek Hodgson, as his book of the year.

The Round the World section includes reports from inside one of Saddam Hussain's palaces on the Baghdad Ashes (four for the first landing of the marble staircase, six for the second landing), from the salt plains of East Timor and the lava fields of Rwanda, where the players learned about volcanic bounce the hard way. The Chronicle section reports on Darren Gough's debut in The Beano and on the player who missed most of the season after breaking his collarbone - in the fathers' sack race.

And Wisden also attempts to answer the one cricketing question the book has never tackled before: What is Cricket?