Cricket's Historians

Chapter 16 A Rival for The Cricketer While the brief life of Cricket News flickered and died, there were quite substantial changes among larger English commercial cricket publications. The 1979 Wisden announced on its title page, ‘Published for the proprietors John Wisden and Co Ltd by the Queen Anne Press Division, MacDonald and Jane’s Publishers Ltd, Paulton House, 8, Shepherdess Walk, London N1 7LW.’ Since 1938 the almanack had been published by Sporting Handbooks Ltd, a part of J.Whitakers of Bedford Square, London W1. The new publishers retained Norman Preston as the Editor, but brought in Gordon Ross as Associate Editor and Graeme Wright as House Editor. Preston describes Ross as his old friend and his pedigree has previously been detailed. Graeme Wright has been mentioned in passing as an editor of the John Player Cricket Yearbook (another work published by Queen Anne Press), he originally trained as a banker in his native New Zealand, but arrived in England in 1968. The author of a number of general sports books, mainly related to football, but also the Olympic Games, he ghosted several biographies of sportsmen. Later he was appointed Deputy Editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly , but retired after nine months and somewhat later moved back to the Wisden Almanack as Editor. Aside from the minor changes of personnel, the one alteration which readers noticed when the 1979 Wisden appeared was the disappearance of John Arlott as book reviewer, replaced by Gordon Ross. Whilst Arlott had commented on all the books which were sent for review, Ross surveyed a 231