FOUR days from now the 2006 edition of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack will be published, the 143rd. It will report, as it has not done since edition No 125, how England won the Ashes. And it will announce, as it has done every peacetime year since No 26 (1889), the names of the Cricketers of the Year.

“The Five” constitutes one of the best loved and most durable traditions in cricket. I think this is partly because the 537 men (it was not always five a year) chosen over the past 117 years are not necessarily the best cricketers. Successive editors have cut themselves enough slack to pick players who just happen to appeal to them. It has always been accepted that there is room for whimsy, idiosyncrasy or downright eccentricity. Cricket followers like that.

The choice is based on their influence on the English season and custom dictates that no one can be chosen twice. The Five have never been the world’s top five. But the game needed an award that did try to identify the best: globally, covering a calendar year, without any bar on repeat winners and with class the criterion. So we invented the concept of the Leading Cricketer in the World.

The first year — Wisden 2004, covering 2003 — was easy: Ricky Ponting’s weight of runs was overwhelming. Year two was tougher: it had to be an Australian, surely, but which one? Eventually, we opted for Shane Warne.

This time? We consulted dozens of cricket writers and commentators round the world and the same two names came up over and over again. (Clue: look at the cover.) But who, in 2005, was the greater — and the greatest? All will be revealed . . .