Clarke named as Wisden’s cricketer of the year

Top of his game: Michael Clarke has become the first Australian to win the Wisden award since Shane Warne in 2004.

By Andy Wilson/London

Michael Clarke has received a pre-Ashes boost from Wisden that could be seen as either fair-minded or unpatriotic, with his selection as the world’s outstanding cricketer in 2012.

Clarke has still not won universal acceptance in Australia as the national captain, provoking controversy most recently with his key role in the decision to discipline four players including his vice-captain, Shane Watson, for failing to obey the management on the disastrous Test tour of India, during which he suffered the recurrence of a back problem that raised questions over his fitness this summer.

He has also been in hospital with gastroenteritis since returning home to Sydney. So becoming the first Australian to win the Wisden award since Shane Warne in 2004 might give Clarke, who turned 32 last week, a timely lift.

South Africa’s domination of Test cricket, and specifically of the 2012 summer when they displaced England from the top of the official world rankings, is recognised with the selection of three of their players Hashim Amla, Dale Steyn and Jacques Kallis among Wisden’s Five Cricketers of the Year.

Amla is top of the official world Test batting rankings, Steyn has long reigned as the best bowler and the only surprise about Kallis’s selection is that he has not been one of the Five before. He is now 37 and made his Test debut way back in 1995, as noted in the poignant essay that marks his achievement in the 150th edition of the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack (published on Thursday) which was one of the last pieces written by Christopher Martin-Jenkins.

But Clarke, who is fifth in the official batting list, is rated ahead of them all for his 2012 performances, which included four double-centuries “a feat not achieved even by Don Bradman”, as Greg Baum writes and in which he scored 1,595 runs at an average of 106.

The Five are completed by Marlon Samuels after a year in which he evolved “from troubled underachiever to elite performer” according to Tony Cozier, the veteran West Indies journalist and broadcaster who reflects elsewhere on the 50th anniversary of his first tour of England and Nick Compton, whose willingness to graft for Somerset in the difficult batting conditions at the start of the summer earned him a Test debut in India in November at the age of 29. — Guardian News and Service

Wisden describes Pietersen as ‘arrogant’ and ‘self-pitying’

London: Kevin Pietersen may not be inclined to join the celebrations for the 150th edition of Wisden that is published on Thursday. Reflecting on a turbulent 2012 in which Pietersen was dropped and then reintegrated by England, Lawrence Booth, the Almanack’s 17th editor, describes the behaviour that triggered the events as “arrogant” and “self-pitying”.

Booth, who, in his other role writing for the Daily Mail, broke the story that Pietersen had been sending texts to members of South Africa’s team, has also commissioned a reflection on “The KP Summer” by Patrick Collins, the Mail on Sunday’s much decorated sportswriting veteran, entitled “It’s tough being Kevin”.

“Affection continues to elude him,” writes Collins. “There are reasons for this, and most of them involve self-absorption, self-promotion and a distressing absence of self-awareness.”