Engel under fire

For such a reasonable chap, Matthew Engel certainly attracts his critics. Indeed today Derek Pringle, who is one of my favourite writers, mentions Matthew's "legendary ire" in his review of this year's yellow bible, which is a perfectly apt phrase considering the backlash of comments since the launch.

In my interview with him, the Scotsman picked up on the quotes about Scotland. Here're my questions (bold) and Matthew's answers:

What of the World Cup then? Has the continued inclusion of developing nations reached its limit?
Well, the top two countries to qualify were Ireland and Scotland, which doesn't represent any kind of expansion or any kind of promise for the game. These countries are never going to beat teams consistently: they simply don't have the potential to become major cricketing powers. We're just pretending.

What then is the future for these countries? Scotland received £317,000 for development at the start of this month.
Scotland will continue to be Scotland. They will be a team somewhat too weak to play in the County Championship. The best hope for them would be to compete regularly with counties, but they aren't yet a match for any county. And to extend the World Cup from its natural length of three weeks to seven, just to accommodate these developing nations, is absurd. There will be a lot of very bored people in the West Indies.

And Peter Drinnen responded with:

"Let's judge the ICC over this in four or five years' time. We need to be playing in this environment for that amount of time before anyone can make any conclusions."

It hasn't stopped there either. Dougie Brown, the Warwickshire and Scotland all-rounder, has teed off in magnificent style:

"This is a very blinkered view. And how can he not say the game is global? Of course it's global. Does that mean we are not allowed, in Scotland or Holland or Namibia, to play cricket? Who does he think he is? It's a disgraceful article, and there will be egg on a few faces next time a small nation upsets a big one. It'll be fantastic."

Just goes to show how revered the Wisden brand is, and how the Editor's Notes are taken very seriously by anyone involved in the game. I'll leave the final words to Christopher Martin-Jenkins:

YEAR by year, by imperceptible degrees, Wisden becomes a little more a book to read, a little less an almanack to consult