Under pressure to produce the perfect Valentine night this weekend? Have no fear.

Here at TWC we haven’t heard of superstition, and never miss the chance to exploit an opportunity.

That’s why we’ve chosen this Friday – February 13 – to release the March edition of The Wisden Cricketer – in ample to time to make it the perfect Valentine gift for your loved one.

After all, why go out for an expensive meal when you can spend a night in front of the fire and the cricket with the World’s No.1 cricket magazine?

Your other-half might have no idea what FS Jackson’s win percentage was in 1905 but after reading Simon Wilde’s in-depth examination of the England captaincy they’ll be totally clued up as to why Andrew Strauss now has the impossible job.

One person guaranteed to be in a good mood on Saturday is Peter Moores. While his former charges struggle in the Caribbean, ‘Mooresy’ has just been handed the chance to rebuild his reputation at Lancashire. TWC.com favourite Lawrence Booth examines what went wrong with England.

There’s also a chance to get to know England new-boy Adil Rashid. He may be playing in Antigua, but if not, Andrew Collomosse tells you everything you need to know about the future of English legspin.

Fed up with England? Our county focus moves to the South East this month with the spotlight on Kent and Sussex, as Kent openers Rob Key and Joe Denly talk about their hopes of forcing their way into England’s misfiring top-six. Oops. More England.

Duncan Hamilton wrote an unforgettable memoir about life as a reporter covering Brian Clough and now he has written for TWC about his favourite cricketer – another Nottingham sporting icon – the West Indian legend Sir Garfield Sobers.

If you’re the type of couple that need an argument to get you going, then read on as English and Australian writers go head to head about the Marmite Man – Matty Hayden.

And don’t worry – if you’re single and like to dwell on past failures then you can then relive England’s capitulation in Trinidad in 1993-94 in our Eyewitness Feature.

The Wisden Cricketer – buy it, you might like it.

In shops this Friday.

Every Friday we’ll be picking a classic cricket book that has been reviewed in TWC to help you pass the weekend. Make your recommendations in the comments below.

What is it?
Netherland by Joseph O’Neill

What’s it all about then?
A remarkable novel of cricket in post 9/11 New York.

What did we give it?
4/5

What did we say?
“You want a taste of how it feels to be a black man in this country? Put on the white clothes of the cricketer. Put on white to feel black.”
Hans van den Broek is that white man in whites, a wealthy financial analyst cast adrift in post-September 11 New York City. Unconsciously traumatised by the experience, he has allowed his marriage to go into meltdown and his ambition to haemorrhage. Cricket is the childhood comfort upon which he accidentally stumbles and which anchors him in his hour of need.

New York cricket, however, is far removed from the genteel Anglophile pastime Hans knew growing up in his native Holland: here it is a seedy subculture played exclusively by outsiders on rough-hewn park wastelands. The straight-batted approach has no place in a society such as this, leaving Hans – an aesthetic moralist of a cricketer, who detests the notion of hitting the ball in the air – lost even as he believes he has been found.

Joseph O’Neill’s remarkable book, Netherland, was described in the New York Times as “the wittiest, angriest and most desolate work of fiction” to have emerged since the collapse of the Twin Towers, yet first and foremost it is a cricket novel, something that an American audience could not normally be relied upon to absorb.

The common theme throughout is Van den Broek’s passive acceptance of the hand that life has dealt him. Like the cricketer he reverts to being, he muses on the missed opportunities that have brought him to this point but he accepts the umpire’s decisions without question or complaint.

And the umpire, it just so happens, is also the tale’s most vivid character. Chuck Ramkissoon is a larger-than-life Trinidadian of Indian extraction, whose motto is “think fantastic” and whose dream is to build a world-class cricket stadium right in the heart of New York City. The first time we encounter him he is staring down a gunman after a disputed decision in the park but by then we already know he is dead – his remains are fished out of the Gowanus Canal on the third page of the book.

Who put him there is less important than the journey that took him there, and it is the same journey that Van den Broek finds himself taking as he tours through New York’s immigrant underbelly in futile search of new meaning to his life. Ramkissoon’s idealism comes across as first infectious but ultimately absurd, as Van den Broek realises the gulf in social strata that is destined to deny his friend his ambitions. “There’s a limit to what Americans understand,” he concedes. “The limit is cricket.”
Andrew Miller, August 2008

What did they say?
‘Despite cricket’s seeming irrelevance to America, the game makes O’Neill’s exquisitely written novel “Netherland” a large fictional achievement, and one of the most remarkable post-colonial books I have ever read.’ James Wood, The New Yorker

Someone must have hated it?
‘The biggest problem is Hans himself. In addition to being much less interesting than Chuck, he tells the story in a determinedly overambitious style. In spite of some fine passages, his elaborate syntax and vigorously yet fitfully Americanised vocabulary finally seem more like a literary contrivance than a plausible human voice.

At times it’s hard not to wonder whether O’Neill, who’s the author of an admired memoir as well as being a long-term member of the Staten Island Cricket Club, might not have done better to write a memoir-essay on New York cricket.’
Christopher Taylor, The Guardian

Why not tell us what your favourite cricket book is, or which book you’d like to see in ‘The weekend read’ in the comments below …

If you don’t subscribe to our weekly newsletter, you bloody well should. Why? See for yourself…

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The Wisden Cricketer

Newsletter. Issue No.22. December 11

A defiant Ricky Ponting will never let Australia’s world championship crown slip. Not so long as he’s got mathematics on his side:

“If South Africa beat us 3-0 I don’t know if that gives them enough points to get over us. But if they won the series 1-0 or 2-1, I don’t think that would mean that they deserve to take over that mantle. It’s a bit the same with India last series. Just because they beat us, the No.1 team, doesn’t necessarily mean they go from No.4 or No.5 in the world to No.1 in the world because it’s something that’s accrued over a long period of time.”

Emphatic.

This week’s…

Sentiment “The best thing that I could give to India at this juncture is a good game of cricket.” Mahendra Singh Dhoni

Comeback Chris Lewis was arrested and charged with drug smuggling when he came back from St Lucia. Around £200,000 worth of cocaine secreted in fruit tins had been uncovered in baggage.

Fast bowlers’ graveyard “In the sub-continent it is easy to bowl if you know reverse swing,” says Ishant Sharma

Partnership “I am definitely not the cuddling type. I probably haven’t shown him enough love yet. That’s not to say that I don’t like the big fella, but I prefer to keep things a bit more macho.” Simon Katich doesn’t intend to give Matthew Hayden a Justin-Langer style cuddle if they make 100 for the first wicket.

Pecking order “The one thing this experience has made me realise is that there is no pecking order in cricket.” Nathan Hauritz after his unexpected promotion to the Australian Test side and subsequent dropping.

Low ebb “He has been shaping up really well in the net sessions,” says Dhoni about Rahul Dravid. You know things are bad when a team-mate compliments your net form.

Website www.thewisdencricketer.com. Have you ever known another website offer the chance to win an artificial cricket pitch? No? You know why? It’s because they’re not good enough. Offering cricket pitches as prizes is a skill – a skill other websites don’t have.

Smoother and shinier than a well-buffed cricket ball

Ever woken up screaming after dreaming of Shane Watson casually tensing his muscles clad only in a towel? Then the Men of Cricket calendar is perhaps not for you. If that image of Watson is too much for you, you’ll never withstand the waxed assault from the likes of Mitchell Johnson and Shaun Marsh.

As Mr February, Simon Katich, says: “I think you will see I am the only guy there with some hair on my chest. Unfortunately the rest of my team are all metrosexuals.”

The Men of Cricket calendar will raise funds for the McGrath Foundation, which was set up by Glenn McGrath and his late wife Jane with the aim of providing funding for breast cancer nurses in Australia.

Exclusive: Unconfirmed report of Chris Smith dressing smart-casual to visit the bank

Steve writes: “I moved to Southampton in ‘87, and I guess it must have been not long after that I’d popped into Winchester to get a present for my wife. I went to cross Southgate Street at the pedestrian lights and Chris Smith of Hampshire and England came out of the bank. Far as I recall it was a nice day – quite sunny indeed. I really can’t remember what he was wearing – smart casual would probably sum it up.”

Steve adds: “Actually, I have just remembered that at about the same time, I took a cat in for re-homing from Peter Sainsbury, the old Hampshire tweaker, when he left Hampshire and went (I believe) to South Africa for a while. He had a sports shop in Shirley High Street at the time. Nice chap.”

Have you spotted a cricketer doing something not all that significant? Maybe you’ve seen Graeme Fowler buying sweets or maybe you’ve seen Graham Dilley in the park on the swings. Whatever it is, we desperately want to hear from you. Email twc@wisdencricketer.com and spare no mundane detail.

Surrey remains make a Grizzly scene

If Chris Adams does become Surrey’s new cricket manager, you can count on one thing: Chris Lewis and Shoaib Akhtar probably won’t feature after their woeful contributions last season.

So where will he turn for an ageing fast bowler smeared by drug allegations? No team is complete without one.

In this month’s issue of The Wisden Cricketer, Lawrence Booth charts Surrey’s woeful 2008.

Subscribe to The Wisden Cricketer – smoother, slicker, shinier and smarter than an Australian cricketer

You can tell the cricket’s boring in Antigua: tongues are wagging about the Wags. Given Sir Allen Stanford’s penchant for self-publicity, could it be that he decided to distract attention from the worrying absence of hit-and-giggle on the field with a spot of slap-and-tickle off it? Maybe not, but the very essence of the Super Series encourages cynicism and it’s hard to escape its pull.

Emily Prior may know the feeling. The instant reaction at Wisden Towers when pictures of the England wicketkeeper’s wife bouncing on Sir Allen’s knee flashed across the screen was “Indecent Proposal”, the film where the old rich bloke played by Robert Redford offers the husband of the nubile young woman played by Demi Moore $1m to sleep with her. OK, so the analogy lacks some crucial details but the essentially mercenary nature of everything that is happening in Antigua did not make the comparison as far-fetched as it seems.

No one emerges from – oh, go on then – Wag-gate with much credit. The England players seem to have over-reacted to what may have been nothing more than a gauche piece of bonhomie from a man who doesn’t do subtle. The wives and girlfriends in question could have exerted their status as equal members of the human race and refused to be patronised. And Stanford really should have shown better judgement, regardless of whether ownership of a cricket ground and vast chunks of a Caribbean idyll might do funny things to a bloke’s sense of self-entitlement.

But, oh, the money! This is why Wag-gate palls. Kevin Pietersen claims his team are only in Antigua because they are employed by the ECB, who want them there. (Look out for more orders being followed without demur when Peter Moores cautions against too much time at next year’s Indian Premier League.) But their pact with Stanford automatically surrenders the moral high ground. It’s no good bleating about flashy behaviour now.

In that respect, the Wags may be less innocent than they seem. Flirting with the spouse’s boss is a tactic rather older than reverse-swing and twice as effective. But the episode arguably enters the realms of the seedy if the ladies felt they had no choice but to flirt with a figure who could boost their husbands’ bank balances beyond recognition. And this is where Wag-gate transcends tabloid tittle-tattle and becomes a metaphor for the entire week.

If Stanford was overplaying his hand because of who he is, and if Emily and Co felt obliged to smile along for the cameras just in case, then Wag-gate counts as a contrivance that fits all too snugly into Stanford’s tasteless world of helicopter landings, Perspex crates, cricket grounds whose superficial beauty is not matched by the conditions and proud former West Indian players paid off as brand ambassadors yet looking as if they would be rather be anywhere else.

Like everything else in the Super Series, what some may dismiss as a bit of fun may turn out to be far more than that.

Lawrence Booth writes on cricket for the Guardian. His third book, Cricket, Lovely Cricket? An Addict’s Guide to the World’s Most Exasperating Game is out now published by Yellow Jersey

Sussex allrounder Robin Martin-Jenkins kicks off his series of blogs about life in the county game with a first-hand account of facing a very fast Andrew Flintoff.

The last three and a half days have been the longest and most painful of Sussex’s season so far. In what is turning out as something of an annus horribilis for us, that’s saying something. In being beaten by Lancashire, we were thoroughly out-bowled on a placid pitch by a strong Lancashire seam attack which could have probably given some international batting line-ups a run for their money (or no runs). But of course all the attention was on Andrew Flintoff and it was just our luck that we should have to face him in his first game back from injury. The Sky Sports cameras were with us too and if he needed any more motivation to bowl well and fast then there was the small matter of the first Test match team selection only a few days away.

Not that it seems Fred needs any motivation to play for Lancashire. Despite all he has achieved in the game so far he loves playing for his county and certainly gives his all for them. Not for him the Prima Donna approach to county cricket that appears to surface when some other England stars make rare appearances for their county.

And yet despite this, he went wicketless in the game. Most of the wickets fell to the hard-working and skilfull Glen Chapple, and the much-improved Saj Mahmood. All of our batsmen reported that Fred was consistently hitting the bat harder than anyone they have faced this year, however. If anyone has ever wondered what it means when cricketers talk about bowling a ‘heavy ball’ then have a look at Flintoff slamming the ball into the pitch from nearly seven foot tall and watch closely how the batsman plays him compared with the other bowlers. When you face him the ball literally feels heavier on the bat. Mahmood probably bowled as quickly as Flintoff this week according to Sky’s speed guns but there is no doubt that Flintoff seemed the quicker to face.

And so the inevitable question arises. Were the England selectors right in overlooking Fred for the first Test? Given Geoff Miller’s job I’m sure the majority of people could not resist picking him and I have no doubt that he would be able to perform well for England. But I’m in agreement with the selectors about Lord’s and would give him one more game for Lancashire first. He’s had precious little cricket in the last year and when your body isn’t used to bowling long spells in highly pressurised situations, it’s likely to protest. England need to ensure he is ready to last not just the first Test, but the rest of the summer and the winter tour that follows. And only then will they also have a chance of repeating Ashes glory in 2009.

2008 is Robin Martin-Jenkins’ benefit year, visit www.rmj2008.co.uk for further details.