To inform the future, look at the past…

The Ashes is underway. By the time you read this at

The Debate

Can you compare players from difierent eras?

The flashing blade

England captain Joe Root could be wielding a lightsaber

Licence to thrill

ECB have grand plans for the 2019 World Cup, with 007

Australia’s Irish Ashes fix

Warm-up Test could avoid England’s fate, reports Huw

Lumb’s retirement warning to players

Former England opener talks to Sam Morshead about life

Glistening new stadium opens in Rwanda

Rain relents in time for Vaughan, Gibbs and Billings

Bat presented to the Pope, but his side lose

Kennedy scores hundred as Archbishop of Canterbury’s

Extras and sundries

Giles Clarke could be required to step down from the

News agenda

The countdown is on. It’s T-minus 18 months until the

Facing up

Many say Jackie Hendriks was the greatest wicketkeeper West Indies ever produced, and he managed the great teams led by Clive Lloyd and Viv Richards

What if…

England’s 2007 World Cup is better remembered for Andrew Flintoff’s drunken adventure on a pedalo in St Lucia than the on-field setbacks. Richard Hobson thinks results might have been different had he not sailed to sea

The backstop

Last summer my two sons, aged 12 and 10, came back

The Inside track

The summer before last I emerged from a lengthy retirement

The Bouncer

They’re off to Australia again, and it’s not the same.

Partnerships

Somerset have bucked recent history and put faith in spinners Jack Leach and Dom Bess to bowl in tandem

Six of the best

Innuendo, Freudian slips, and the perils of live broadcasting. Cricket commentary’s biggest faux pas by Jacob Savill

The XI

Save Our Series – players parachuted in to a tour

Freddie’s back

Flintoff takes to the stage in Fat Friends

My Favourite

Peter Cobb was at Lord’s in 1963 to see late-blooming recognition for Hampshire’s great seamer Derek Shackleton

Why I love cricket

Leicester and England full-back Dusty Hare scored a world-record 7,337 first-class points, but left school at 16 to play cricket for Nottinghamshire

The Window

Walter Hammond is the subject of one of cricket’s most

ENGLAND’S

We asked a panel of 27 experts, including five former England captains, to pick their top five… and you can also have your say. By Simon Hughes

GREATEST BAT SMAN

Given that Jack Hobbs scored more firstclass runs (61

So how did we do it?

The Cricketer asked many of the leading observers of the game – newspaper correspondents, commentators, ex-players and statisticians – to name their top five England batsmen of all time. We collated the results and have come up with the following order of merit…

Those who missed out

James Coyne picks out a few of the great batsmen who

England 2017 summer review

When they were good, they were very, very good, but when they were bad they were horrid…

In a good place

Home is where the heart is for Australia, and with Steve Smith and a maturing David Warner on board, England have their work cut out, reckons Jarrod Kimber

A little light reading

Concerned traditionalist David Townsend investigates a day/night Test at the shiny new Adelaide Oval…

The man who put Imran in reverse gear

For our new book, The Cricketer Anthology of the Ashes, editor Simon Hughes picked an all-time XI from the time the magazine was launched in 1921. His pick to open the bowling (and bat at No.10) was the incomparable Dennis Lillee

From The Cricketer Archive

Tony Lewis singles out Dennis Lillee: Lillee is a man

Family feud

There will be a new captain and coach at Hove next year, but how do Sussex become more ruthless on the field without sacrificing the club ethos? Bruce Talbot reports

No case of whispering Bob

Bob Willis was a genuine quick bowler – exactly the kind you need in Australia. He reminisces about Ashes tours good and bad, reports James Coyne

THE COUNTY GAME

100 objects p 82 MCC in County Set p 84 Paul Nixon interview p 88 Alex Gidman on retiring p 90

County cricket in 100 objects

It was telling that when the Brighton paper, The Argus

The county set

Marylebone Cricket Club are effectively the 19th county. The world’s most famous cricket club is profiled by Huw Turbervill

The Badger is_back

Paul Nixon has returned to Leicestershire as head coach, and is promising to take them out of the doldrums

The writing was on the wall

Former Gloucestershire captain Alex Gidman on realising the end of his career was nigh, and how chronicling his feelings helped him cope with the sense of loss

The Internati onal game

World stats p 95 Zimbabwe v West Indies p 96 Women’s Ashes p 97

World stats

Test report

Tactics backfire as West Indies raise their game to

Women’s cricket

Women’s Ashes Test

Letters

The Cricketer, 120 New Cavendish Street, London, W1W 6XX email: magazine@thecricketer.com

Social club

Tweet @TheCricketerMag

Club scene

Email your news to magazine@thecricketer.com

The Analyst

Mitchell Starc can do deadly damage with the old ball, especially against England’s tail. This is how…

How to…

Coach cricket to girls by Lydia Greenway

Reviews

Richard Whitehead finds an imbalance of routine match

Obituaries

Mike Vimpany remembers the man who oversaw Hampshire’s

From the archive

Hobbs’ record hundred The Cricketer, Vol VI, No.16 (Aug 1925) and No.18 (Sep 1925)

The global game

Relief for refugees in Sicily but sad news for the Milanese. Tweet @CoyneJames with your stories

Christmas gift guide

This superb anthology showcases a century of peerless

The Googly

Huw Turbervill @huwzat

Tea Break

1 English artist, JMW Turner and Warwickshire’s 17

Whatever happened to…

Fred Rumsey was a left-arm fast bowler who gained five