YEAR by year, by imperceptible degrees, Wisden becomes a little more a book to read, a little less an almanack to consult. To that extent, the latest eye-catching change, following a picture on the cover in 2003 and the introduction of two further categories of “cricketers of the year” in 2004, is apt.

The “special edition” in larger format is available at a price that is twice that of Steve Waugh’s equally bulky, about-to-be published autobiography. Exceptionally good as Waugh’s book seems on first perusal, it is less than half as valuable as Wisden. The magnified format, more for the armchair than the train, merely makes more obvious the wealth of scholarship within.

The new version may or may not be a one-off, but I bet it is not. Five thousand copies have been printed, plus an undisclosed number of the traditional compact version that, after the extraordinary summer of 2005, will no doubt sell better than ever.

There are some evocative photographs, including one to spark a future quiz question — why was Lilia Kopylova pictured in the 2006 Wisden? — but it remains a book for the adult and sophisticated follower, the lover of Tests rather than Twenty20. Not that both do not get their due, the latter covered by three witty pieces from Francis Wheen, Sir Clement Freud (at what he should have called the Old Beer Park) and Michael Goldfarb.

Under the present enlightened editorial command, Wisden has achieved an astute mix of outstanding writing, a remarkable fact while reliably recording the main events in all strands of the game.

The right balance, too, is being struck between the game in Britain and the world beyond. It was making England look a very small place indeed until the emergence of the team who finally won back the Ashes last year.

Matthew Engel’s notes, argued as usual with the combination of lucidity and erudition that would have made him a famous barrister had he plumped for the law rather than the fourth estate, pose interesting questions about how wide and deep the world of cricket should become. Once we just called it a “family”. The ICC is berated for wanting more — a policy of global expansion — but in this volume we read that the number of indigenous Indonesian cricketers has grown from ten to 8,000 in the past five years, which cannot be a bad thing.

It begins to look, too, as though the ICC will be able to balance its indefensible policy of appeasement in Zimbabwe with some pride in the pace of improvement in Bangladesh. The real issue is whether the overloaded programme of international cricket can be justified by the money raised for development of the game outside the mainstream.

Global policies create jobs for more coaches, biomechanics experts and more and more administrators, but the basic burden is borne by much the same number of outstanding players, leading to one battle merely hinted at in the notes — that between ICC and the still not fully representative Federation of International Cricketers’ Associations.

The nub of it is that the game is in hock to television, like nearly all the other professional sports. At the domestic level, as Stephen Fay notes in the comment section, it is manifested in the squabbles over the financial stability of the first-class counties. Those without Test grounds are in danger of becoming like the Oldhams and Tranmeres of football. But, as we know, cricket is the new football.

The inspiring series for the Ashes was responsible for that. Andrew Flintoff is the leading cricketer of the year, rightly, but Shane Warne was, on figures, the outstanding all-rounder. The five cricketers of last season were all participants, three from England, two Australians.

Paul Hayward writes brilliantly of Kevin Pietersen as “the first man in flannels who chose to be famous” and of the “billboard competing with the scoreboard”. The late Bruce Wilson contributed a shrewd final piece on Ricky Ponting.

It is the final test of any book that it will be read again and again, witness the simultaneous publication of the latest of the reprints of Wisdens of the 1920s by the Willows Publishing Company. Inside its immaculate facsimiles of the 1922 almanack is a piece by Charles Toppin, Cambridge and Worcestershire fast bowler and renowned coach at Malvern, on “Modern Batting”.

Writing after two defeats for England by Australia, he deplores the cramped style that has developed to counteract the new googly bowling and advocates a return to the upright attacking stance, “the old glorious off-drives and the slashes past cover”.

Eighty-four years on, Flintoff, Vaughan and company proved that some things about cricket never change.