ACCORDING to the sports writer of the year, cricket is ``dying on its backside.'' Such uncharacteristic balderdash will be contested when the season in England starts in its usual pleasantly low-key manner and I have been able to debate the matter with Michael Parkinson, our distinguished columnist, over half a pint of bitter - oh, alright, a pint - on some semi-deserted and equally pleasant county ground.
The game has been dying on its feet, according to some, since Wisden Cricketer's Almanack first appeared 135 years ago. For the moment let me cite as one small item for the defence the evidence that the Almanack sells more copies every year it publishes.
It appears again this morning, subtly updated and professionally marketed, as the game itself needs to be to maintain the fascination it loses only for the jaundiced or corrupted. But the product itself is essentially the same and the metaphor holds good: cricket will be corrupted if the best of its traditions are not maintained, just as surely as it will if it does not recognise its failings, fulfil its obligations to the young and adapt, within reason, to changing trends in society.
Wisden is in itself an amazing phenomenon of an apparent anachronism. How, for goodness sake, can a book of almost 1,500 tightly printed pages, only 11 of them with colour pictures, and sparse illustration elsewhere, go on selling in this visual, television dominated age? Because, of course, it maintains its quality and will not cheapen itself.
The errata page is evidence of that. It takes all of three-quarters of a page for Wisden to own up to past mistakes; no fewer than four of them last year including such howlers as T. B. Werapitiya playing for Trinity College, Kandy, not against them. And it really was time that it was admitted that Les Jackson's analysis in the second innings of the 1950 edition more accurately reflected his renowned skill: even an analysis of 12-0-45-0 takes some believing.
In general we may rely on the accuracy of the scores and records which the almanack so copiously records, a credit to an editorial team which loses the meticulous services of Christine Forrest next year after 20 seasons as production editor. It is the byways of the almanack, every bit as much as the editor's traditionally trenchant notes, or the feature articles, which make it so diverting.
Under the present editor the minutiae have been expanded. Cricket round the world includes an enlarged report on the game in Brunei Darussalam - why not, when the Sultan employs the greatest of modern batsmen in Viv Richards - and there is a section on cricket and the internet. But the coverage of schools and youth cricket in Britain is five pages briefer than last year. That is a shame and possibly shortsighted: the majority of bright young teenage cricketers do not get mentioned in the almanack more than once but once may be honour enough to hook them as readers for life; it is always fascinating to look for the very first mention of a D C S Compton or a G A Gooch.
Both are the subject of feature pieces, Compton because of his death on St George's Day - the charm of his cricket and his personality are felicitously remembered by Lord Cowdrey of Tonbridge and Frank Keating - and Gooch because Wisden has unearthed the extraordinarily well-kept secret that he had scored more runs in professional cricket than any player who has ever lived by the time of his retirement last July.
There is wisdom in Wisden, as well as substance. Andrew Longmore's observations on chivalry in cricket, particularly school cricket, end with a profound truth (England did not lose to Australia because they were too well-mannered - far from it, actually) and Geoffrey Moorhouse's article to remember this year's 150th anniversary of W G's birthday reminds us that unyielding competitiveness has never been an Australian preserve. Not least, Matthew Engel reminds the International Cricket Council that Mr Dalmiya's assertion that the game has to spread to all corners of the earth to survive is nonsense. It merely has to maintain and improve the quality.
They have managed that in Australia, one reason why Glenn McGrath, Stuart Law and Matthew Elliott join Graham Thorpe and Matthew Maynard as the cricketers of the year.
Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 1998 is available for £27.50 post free from Telegraph Books Direct, 24 Seward Street, London, EC1V 3GB, or call 0541 557222, fax 0541 557225. Quote ref PA231.