There is a sense of deja-vu reading this year’s Wisden.

Kevin Pietersen continues to attract scrutiny. As he tries to find a way back into the England fold, a review of his autobiography shows how many bridges he’s burned — former England coach, Andrew Flower for example, is mentioned on no fewer than 112 of 315 pages.

Simon Hughes lauds Pietersen’s batting, declaring that “it was always memorable,” before pondering why KP felt less inclined to focus on his obvious abilities in his book.

There is the sense though that Pietersen doesn’t fit the bill as an English cricketer.

England captain Alastair Cook, on the other hand, has been cast by his employers as a “latter-day saint to Pietersen’s fallen angel.”

England Cricket Board (ECB) chairman Giles Clarke even proclaimed the Cooks as “very much the sort of people we want the England captain and his family to be.”

The number of people playing recreational cricket has fallen by 7 per cent to 844,000 (192,000 of which were classed as “cameo” players) and 30 per cent of those club players are from ethnic minorities.

Yet at first-class level their numbers decline to around 6 per cent. Wisden editor Lawrence Booth suggests that there is a perception that the best young South Asian cricketers are not wanted.

One of those who made it, Moeen, Ali graces the front of this year’s publication and is one of the prestigious Cricketers of the Year.

Dismissed at the start of the 2014 season as a part-time spinner, Ali captured 19 Indian wickets in the Test series — only Ray Illingworth has taken more as a spinner in a home series against India. However Ali’s successful year was marred by jeers in his home town and a death threat — that mentioned Israel — attributed to his wristbands that bore the slogans “Free Palestine” and “Save Gaza.”

One English-born India fan justifies his booing on the basis of seeing English-born Ali as “Pakistani opposition.”

Another admitted that some of the “abuse directed at Ali was at times malicious and could be described as racist.”
George Dobell notes importantly that “Ali provides a reminder that the England team does not just represent a society that is white, middle-class and privately educated.”

There is further desperation at the extension of the Sky TV deal. “The ECB chased the money and have cut their cloth accordingly,” states the Editor’s Notes.

“To hear them scaremonger about the financial cost of a return to the BBC or Channel 4 is to wonder how cricket ever got by in the first place.”

Peter Hayter, the chief writer for The Cricket Paper recalls an ECB media officer telling him that he would not be allowed access to any England cricketer unless the piece was arranged in conjunction with a sponsor.

Money, as in most sports today, is the force driving the game, regardless of its detrimental impact. The World Cup is a case in point, having been designed in the interests of the media and advertisers, not the greater good of the global sport.

Nowhere is the worship of mammon more acute than in India. Recently the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) threatened to sue the West Indies Cricket Board for £27 million and cancel bilateral commitments as a consequence of the West Indies abandoning their tour of the subcontinent.

This despite the BCCI unilaterally shortening their visit to South Africa in 2013 on the basis of a tour schedule that didn’t have requisite Indian board approval. The much poorer South African board lost an estimated £11.5m.

Power is a self-serving beast.

An ethics officer on the International Cricket Council (ICC) executive board reminded delegates that they were obliged to act in the best interests of cricket. Narayanaswami Srinivasan, then president of the BCCI, “explained that he did not agree with that principle, and that … he was representing the BCCI.”

The same man was informed by India’s Supreme Court that he had to step down as president of the BCCI while investigations continued into the 2013 Indian Premier League spot-fixing scandal.

Then he became president of the ICC, putting him in charge of the ICC’s anti-corruption operation!

Meanwhile, India slipped to seventh in the Test rankings. That this was barely noticed highlights the soap opera of Indian cricket, where the headlines too often relate to those who run the sport rather than those who play it.

Ed Hawkins criticises the ICC for failing to deal with corruption in cricket. Since 2011, 19 players have been banned for corruption, yet the ICC’s Anti-Corruption and Security Unit can claim credit for only two of those convictions.

Australian Ed Cowan’s essay on life as an opening batter sits ideally beside Simon Barnes’s take on the frustrating last-wicket stand. Cowan sees in his partner a mentor, a mentee, a psychologist and video analyst.

Whilst these are age-old traits, Barnes notes that the advent of one-day cricket has seen the emergence of expectation on all to contribute to the score. This, coupled with the advances in bat technology, has led to higher contributions from numbers 10 and 11.

Though for Barnes, this represents a further shift in the balance between bat and ball. “The proliferation of huge last-wicket stands indicates that something has gone seriously amiss,” he says.

That these same issues seem to appear more regularly in recent editions shows their importance today, but then hasn’t Wisden always been concerned with gambling, declining public support, maverick individuals and the balance between bat and ball?

Stephen Chalke’s article on 125 years of the County Championship reminds us that criticism of the number of teams and fear of declining attendances have run throughout most of its 125 years history.

In a nod to tradition, there are articles on WG Grace and Victor Trumper, reference to the 1,788 cricketers who appeared in the Almanack’s obituary pages during the Great War and moments of poetic prose, like Rob Smyth on Kumar Sangakkara’s cover-drive “so harmonious it could help facilitate world peace.”

There are also moving tributes to the Australian Phillip Hughes, who died last November when struck on the back of the neck by a bouncer.

His national captain Michael Clarke spoke emotionally at the funeral of how Hughes’s spirit “will act as a custodian of the sport we all love. We must listen to it. We must cherish it. We must learn from it.”

It was recalled, though, that only one member of Australia’s slips checked on Indian Murali Vijay following a blow into the helmet at the Boxing Day Test. “Within a month,” noted Andrew Ramsey, “the notion that international cricket’s nature would be indelibly changed was exposed as naive.”

All the best intentions, but some things are reluctant to change — a theme that will no doubt be discussed in future editions.