Roger Alton Roger Alton

Cricket’s glorious dead

This year: Richard Attenborough, Clarissa Dickson Wright, and a late appearance for opening batsman Bobby Moore

Kevin Pietersen receives a commemorative bat from ECB Chairman Giles Clarke after becoming England's leading run-scorer in International Cricket in 2013 (Photo: Getty) 
issue 18 April 2015

He’s a tall man, Kevin Pietersen, and he casts a long shadow. It loomed large over the Long Room at Lord’s last week where the great, the good, and the not very good at all of the cricket world had gathered for the annual Wisden dinner, one of the most enjoyable events in the life of man. For starters, indeed only a few minutes before we did get stuck into our starters, the hapless Paul Downton had been suddenly sacked as managing director of English cricket.

It seems nonsense to blame Downton for all the failures of the England team, but he was the main man in the room for the botched firing of Pietersen last year. Rather than just drop him for cricketing reasons, Downton made much of KP’s general ‘attitude’, as if he was a naughty schoolboy rather than someone who had scored more than 8,000 Test runs.

In his editor’s notes to the 2015 Wisden, the admirable Lawrence Booth gave the ECB a deserved kicking for the KP shenanigans, not to mention the dropping of Cook, the World Cup catastrophe, and a ‘nexus of self-preservation’ led by the outgoing ECB chairman, Giles Clarke. Spot on, Lawrence, but not surprisingly Clarke, a guest at the dinner, didn’t take it well. There was much furious finger-wagging aimed at Booth by Clarke, who eventually stormed out. This all took place in front of distinguished guests including the schoolboy winner of the Wisden young cricketer of the year.

Ah, the timeless values of cricket. But if you need reminding what those values are, it’s always good to turn inside the golden covers of the Almanack. This year’s obituaries section is, as always, a haven of peace in a wicked world. It includes great sportsmen as well as those in for quirkier reasons.

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