Dimensions
152 x 227 x 44mm
It is well known that the publication of the first edition of the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack was more than the minting of a distinguished imprint; it manifested the emergence of a record-keeping instinct in the game, now taken for granted, but intrinsic to its senses of continuity and context.
'Endless Summer' concerns itself with how Wisden has, distantly but diligently, followed and featured Australian cricket over the last 140 years. It also contains subtler traces of another story, of how the coverage of Australian cricket has both reflected and contributed to Wisden's fortunes in that time. Australian cricket and cricketers infiltrated the early
almanacks stealthily: the first game in Australian that Wisden reported was the initial Melbourne engagement of HH Stephenson's trail-blazing Englishmen with a Victorian Eighteen on the first three days of 1862. We are reminded that the first Australians to arrive at Lord's in May 1878 did so 'in such a quiet and unpretentious' way so as to pass unrecognised. The mistake was not repeated as they left that evening, having routed MCC and Ground, WG Grace and all, by nine wickets.
Welcome to a world in which English fielders at the Sydney Cricket Ground are distracted by the blue of the Australian skies; in which an English captain maims himself in a shipboard tug-o-war; a Middlesex supporter dies while spectating; and where a match at the Oval must be stopped to allow photographs to be taken. Welcome to the 'Endless Summer' of Wisden in Australia.
