ACS Overseas First-Class Annual 2011

Preface This, the third edition of the ACS Overseas First-Class Annual , like its predecessors contains the full score of every first-class match played anywhere in the world during the year under review, with the exception of matches played in England and Wales, for which the reader is referred to Wisden . Accordingly, the annual includes all the 608 first-class matches played in the 2010/11 season, together with 26 matches played in the 2010 season. The total of 634 is a slight reduction from 643 last year. The qualification for inclusion in the annual is strictly geographical. Thus, matches played in England and Wales are not included even if they are between overseas teams. There were four such first-class matches in 2010: two Tests between Australia and Pakistan and two matches between India A and West Indies A. Full scores of all these matches are in Wisden 2011. Likewise, the match between MCC and the defending County Champions, which is normally regarded as part of the English cricket programme, last season was played at Abu Dhabi and consequently it is included. One modest change in this year’s annual concerns the treatment of full substitutes: that is, a substitute player who, unlike an orthodox fielding substitute, is permitted to bat and bowl. A full substitution is, in the editor’s opinion, entirely contrary to the spirit of eleven-against-eleven cricket; nevertheless the practice is widely permitted so that players required for international duty can leave or rejoin a match. To make such a substitution more obvious, in this year’s annual it is indicated in the actual scorecard rather than just in a footnote as in previous years. It will also be noted that this year the introduction to each section is somewhat expanded, with a fuller account of the season and a note of outstanding performances. Of these, pride of place must surely go to England’s unique achievement of three innings victories in the 3-1 defeat of Australia in the Ashes series. Only in this annual are these historic games presented in the context of full scores from the wider Australian first-class season of which they were the centrepiece. The annual also records the achievement of Afghanistan in emerging, at the first attempt, as convincing and deserved winners of the Intercontinental Cup, the premier first-class competition for non-Test nations. At domestic level, the South Africa section records the first instance for over fifty years of a first-class match completed on the first day; while New Zealand witnessed the unique feat of Neil Wagner in recording the only quintuple-wicket maiden in first-class history. Also giving joy to bowlers is the equalling of the lowest ever total (a paltry 21) in the long history of Indian first-class cricket, which is another highlight covered by the annual this year – or perhaps this is a lowlight from the Hyderabad point of view. The ACS Overseas First-Class Annual thus maintains its aim of ensuring that printed scores of first-class matches are more readily accessible than ever before. And the operative word here is ‘printed’. For in recent years, scores have appeared in profusion in electronic format – a concept that would have been alien to earlier generations of followers of the game. The total amount of documentary information available on the CricketArchive site alone far eclipses anything anyone could ever have hoped to publish in print form. Indeed, the 5