Self-indulgence Special: What Writing For Wisden Means To Me

As I write this my tux is hanging up in the spare room, all dry-cleaned and spruce. It takes a lot to get me into a tux (and from trying it on I can safely say there’s also now a lot of me to get into a tux) but tomorrow night I’ll be in London wearing the soup and fish on one of the proudest days of my life.

On the bookshelves behind me are three rows of little yellow books. All have the same spine; the only difference is that the year and the edition number rise as you browse from left to right.

I received my first Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack on my thirteenth birthday: on the day I became a teenager I took ownership of my first Wisden. For a cricket mad kid it was like being admitted to the best club in the world. My cricketing exploits would never make its pages - on the not unreasonable grounds that I was crap - but owning a Wisden made you feel like you really belonged to something; that you had a stake in the game.

Wisden is the world’s most famous sports book. Since 1864 it has been the main resource for cricket statistics and the source of some of the best cricket writing around. While moving with the times – Wisden is even on Twitter now – the little yellow book has always stuck to its founding principles and maintained a gravitas and respect that are rare in the modern world.

My Wisden collection now parallels my life: I have one for every year since I was born. The steady progress of yellow spines along the shelves is a useful reminder of one’s mortality; the yellow brick road of existence creeping slowly and inexorably along the shelf of life. Or, you know, something.

There’s currently a space next to the 2010 edition because this year’s Wisden is not published until tomorrow. This is always a time of great anticipation for the cricket fan, but for me the most notable aspect of the 2011 Wisden is that I’ll be in it.

Me.

In Wisden.

At the end of last year the editor Scyld Berry e-mailed me out of the blue and asked me to write a piece for the 2011 Almanack. I’ve written a lot of stuff over the years for all sorts of publications and formats and have loved pretty much all of it, but this invitation knocked me, well, for six (apologies, I’m still too overawed to weed out clichés however appropriate they might be).

I replied to Scyld saying yes within around a quarter of a second of his e-mail hitting my inbox, gave out an almost canine yelp of delight, ran to my shelves, started pulling out random editions and leafed frantically through them, briefly examining Sheffield Shield matches from the late seventies and obituaries of men whose entire lives are summed up in a single sentence detailing their three appearances for Northamptonshire in 1954 in which they scored 21 runs and took two catches, and thinking I’m going to be in there, me, I’m going to be in Wisden, until I was sitting cross-legged on the floor surrounded by thick little yellow bricks as if a small yellow house had just collapsed around me.

I can safely say that writing for Wisden is by far the proudest achievement of what I laughably call my career. It doesn’t get better than this. Part of me won’t believe the piece is actually in there until I see it for myself (and even then I still might take a bit of convincing) but tomorrow night I’ll be asphyxiating slowly in a bow tie, spilling gravy down my dress shirt and using all the wrong cutlery at the publication dinner in the legendary Long Room at Lord’s Cricket Ground. The bible of cricket, the holy of cricketing holies and, well, me.

I am not a religious man, but there’s every chance you’ll catch me tomorrow night genuflecting in front of the bust of W.G. Grace.

Why?

Because I have a piece in Wisden.