Mostly referred to as simply Wisden, The Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack is regarded as the bible of cricket. The cricket reference book is published annually in the United Kingdom and is considered the most famous sports reference book around the world. 
Instigation
John Wisden, an English cricketer who served as bowler to the England national squad is the founder of Wisden. As a pioneering cricketer, John was a fast bowler and nicknamed “The Wonder” for his exceptional form on-field. John started the publication in 1864 in competition to Fred Lillywhite’s The Guide to Cricketers. Lillywhite was a cricketing entrepreneur and a sports outfitter who had published a lot of reference books about cricket. Wisden is regarded as the longest running sports reference since it is continuously been published every year starting from the year of its initiation. When started by John, the original name for the publication was “The Cricketer’s Almanack”. From the sixth edition onwards, the name was changed to its current form.
Publications
Charles Pardon founded the Cricket Reporting Agency (CRA) along with George Kelly King in 1880. Pardon became the editor for Wisden in 1887 and ever since, the publication always had a CRA partner and until 1965, the CRA was responsible for the editorial production for the annual reference. From 1965, the editorial production was handled by the Press Association, an International news agency in UK and Ireland. Robert Maxwell’s publications company, Macdonald, in 1970. In 1993, Sir Paul Getty purchased the company John Wisden & Co. and sold it to A&C Black, owned by Bloomsbury in December 2008. As a celebration of publishing 100 editions, the company awarded the Wisden Trophy for the test match between West Indies and England in 1963.
The content
The Wisden Almanack is a small-paged thick book having approximately 1,500 pages in the last published edition. The book has a yellow front cover since its 75th edition in 1938. Annually the book is published in April just before the English domestic cricket season starts. The reference book is published with both hard and soft cover. A few readers suggested increasing the print size making it more comfortable to read and in response to that, since 2006, the book is printed in a larger format edition on a trial basis. Every edition contains sections namely contents, comments, awards, records, English cricket, overseas cricket, the Wisden review and The Almanack.
Wisden accepts contributions in a large number which include match reports from different fixtures, biographies, reviews and opinions. Many great cricketers have written for Wisden at some point of time along with all of the great cricket writers. Starting from 1902, Wisden honors 5 great cricketers yearly for their noteworthy contribution to cricket.
Michael Vaughan was the first cricketer to be honored with his real picture being published on the front page of Wisden. Wisden selects the Cricketer of the Year since 1889 with the condition that no player can be selected twice for this honor. This number was increased to 5 since 1927 with the exception in the war years, i.e. from 1941 till 1946 where no players were selected though the ‘Bible’ was regularly published. Throughout its journey of 146 years, Wisden has stayed away from any kind of cricket administration.