/ 25 February 2000

WISDEN EDITOR QUITS

WISDEN editor Matthew Engel said on Thursday he is quitting the job at the cricket almanack for at least a year because he is tired of having to write about England’s “relentless failures.” “I have been obliged to edit Wisden against a background of failure. This is not failure on the part of the almanack itself but of English cricket,” Engel wrote in The Guardian. Engel, also a former Guardian cricket correspondent, has been Wisden editor for eight years during which England have lost 12 test series, drawn four and won just four — against New Zealand twice, India and South Africa. “Sydney Pardon, the greatest and longest-serving of all Wisden editors (1891-1925) did not have to report and explain defeats against New Zealand,” Engel said.

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