https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2022/04/25/wisden-has-turned-depressingly-woke-political-pamphlet/

COMMENT
Wisden has been turned into a depressingly woke political pamphlet
The overkill on the race controversy represents a determination to instruct Wisden’s readers about their thought and their behaviour

SIMON HEFFER
25 April 2022 • 10:03am
Simon Heffer
Wisden has been turned into a depressingly woke political pamphlet
The 2022 Wisden is possibly the most depressing since the edition of 1917, which carried the list of cricketers who had died on the Somme, and in the other appalling battles of the previous year.

The misery the new edition inspires is twofold: the recognition of the truly dismal state of English cricket, and of the idiocy of many who run it; and the editor’s obsession with signalling the Wisden brand’s virtue about the offensive treatment of non-white people by some unpleasant white ones and, to a lesser extent, the profile of women in the game.

Lawrence Booth, Wisden’s editor, has form on political grandstanding. Last year he demonstrated poor judgment by endorsing the stunt of ‘taking the knee’ before matches. It was a misjudgment not because there is anything wrong-headed about abhorring racism; but it was naïve not to realise that Black Lives Matter, whose signature gesture is ‘taking the knee’, is in Britain a mainly anarchist organisation committed to the overthrow of capitalism. Manipulative (and often white) extremists exploit the vulnerability of ethnic minorities to make political points that, unlike anti-racism, are thoroughly offensive to most people. I deplore having to write about such things in a cricket column, but if Wisden must continue obsessing with politics, a cricket columnist cannot ignore the ramifications.

Read more at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2022/04/25/wisden-has-turned-depressingly-woke-political-pamphlet/
RH