Australia's blot on the landscape

There are fine cricket writers in Australia but their work is rarely to be found in the daily newspapers. The inexhaustible torrent of contentious analysis from Peter Roebuck of the Sydney Morning Herald is the exception not the rule. The newspaper cricket writers have a rich vein of chauvinism in common with their rugby colleagues, and it does grate. They occasionally find fault with their heroes, but they make their run of victories sound like an imperial progress, and they regularly patronise their opponents, perhaps instinctively. To discover that there are flaws in the crystal of Australian cricket, you need to turn to Wisden Australia 2003-04.

Wisden in Britain and Wisden Australia have in common a compulsion to seek out good writing and a preference for controversial, even awkward, opinions. Although our Wisden may once have had an establishment flavour, that is now much diluted. Wisden Australia was never burdened. The flavour of the sixth edition is richly contrary.

The most uncompromising contribution comes, not surprisingly, from Chris Ryan (Warwick Franks's successor as editor). In a piece titled, "When will we see c Nguyen b Yunupingu", Ryan berates Australian cricket and cricketers for an uncaring, sometimes contemptuous, attitude towards Aboriginals and immigrants from south-east Asia. One in 10 of top-flight Australian Rules football players is Aboriginal, but less than 1% of first-class cricketers. Jason Gillespie right, whose great grandfather was a Kamilaroi warrior, is the first person of Aboriginal blood to play for Australia, but he is, so it seems, a reluctant role model. (David Frith in his Ashes report remarks that Gillespie looks more like a French aristocrat.)

Ryan's conclusion is stunning: "Unless Australian cricket diversifies in tune with the population it risks becoming ghettoised, irrelevant: an historical anachronism played out by a shrinking number of white men before a dwindling handful of white spectators."

Aboriginal communities - "stifled by joblessness and alcoholism, petrol sniffing and mind-twisting boredom" - have plenty to gain from cricket, but those few who have put a toe in the water have usually been confronted by a barrage of racist sledging. Darren Lehmann's assault on the Sri Lankans ("black c***s") gives us the tone of it. Jimmy Maher, of Queensland and Glamorgan, commented that Lehmann calls a spade a spade - "which is not necessarily a bad thing." You see what Ryan means.

Mark Ray doesn't exactly spring to Shane Warne's defence, but he does ask if he is not more sinned against than sinning. Ray's Warne is trapped in a perverse celebrity culture in which film stars and actors get away with 57 varieties of bad behaviour while sportsmen are judged by much narrower social standards. Ray is sympathetic towards Warne, a vain and naïve man, who discovered too late that being the best wrist-spinner in history is no defence against gold-diggers and opportunists. "In the lead up to the 2003-04 season there were rumblings that Warne's team-mates might prefer to carry on without him," he says. "Warne's career, one that had reached the highest peaks while dabbling in farce, was threatening to end as a sporting tragedy."

Gideon Haigh asks what the ICC is for and can't come up with a satisfactory answer, partly because the ICC itself has not done so. Why are they there? What outcomes are they seeking? How will they decide if they have succeeded? Haigh says that, unless they come up with some answers, they will have their work cut out averting failure. John Benaud is shrewd, informative and admiring of Mark Waugh.

Wisden Australia does not compete with the yellow Almanack. The focus is on Australian cricketers. Ricky Ponting is Cricketer of the Year. Wade Seccombe, the Queensland keeper, is the Pura Cup's top man. The 2003 World Cup winning team is judged to be the best of the three Australian teams that have won the World Cup, though to anyone who watched the astonishing recovery of Steve Waugh's 1999 team which had to win seven straight games to survive and win, that seems harsh.

The editor's notes identify Michael Clarke as the coming man in Australian cricket, and he also found room for the Laws of Cricket, for which, thanks.