Wisden Cricket Monthly
Encyclopedia
Wisden Cricket Monthly was a cricket
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

 magazine that ran from June 1979 to September 2003.

The driving force behind the creation of WCM was its first editor, David Frith
David Frith
David Edward John Frith is a leading cricket writer and historian. Cricinfo describes him as "an author, historian, and founding editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly".-Life and career:...

, formerly an editor of its rival, The Cricketer
The Cricketer
The Cricketer was an English cricket magazine published between 1921 and 2003 when it was merged with Wisden Cricket Monthly and relaunched as The Wisden Cricketer....

. At first, it operated under the Wisden
Wisden
The Wisden Group was a group of companies formed by John Wisden & Co Ltd, publishers of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack. As well as John Wisden & Co, the group included the The Wisden Cricketer magazine, Cricinfo – the world's highest traffic cricket website – and the Hawk-Eye computerised...

 name using license from John Wisden & Co; Wisden later bought a controlling interest.

Frith's tenure saw two major controversies involving WCM. In 1987, Surrey
Surrey County Cricket Club
Surrey County Cricket Club is one of the 18 professional county clubs which make up the English and Welsh domestic cricket structure, representing the historic county of Surrey. Its limited overs team is called the Surrey Lions...

 banned an issue from the bookstalls at the Oval
The Oval
The Kia Oval, still commonly referred to by its original name of The Oval, is an international cricket ground in Kennington, in the London Borough of Lambeth. In the past it was also sometimes called the Kennington Oval...

, because of the frontpage headline Bloodbath in Birmingham referring to the crowd trouble in the one day match between England and Pakistan. In the July 1995 issue, WCM published an article titled Is it in the blood by Robert Henderson, which questioned the commitment of foreign born players to English cricket. The cricketers' associations condemned the article while Phillip DeFreitas
Phillip DeFreitas
Phillip Anthony Jason "Daffy" DeFreitas is a retired English cricketer. He played county cricket for Leicestershire, Lancashire and Derbyshire, as well as appearing in forty four Test matches and 103 ODIs...

 and Devon Malcolm
Devon Malcolm
Devon Malcolm is a former English cricketer.Malcolm was one of England's few genuinely fast bowlers of the 1990s. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, he settled in England, making his first-class debut for Derbyshire in 1984, and qualifying to play for England in 1987...

 filed defamation suits.

After 202 editions, David Frith gave way to Tim de Lisle
Tim de Lisle
Timothy John March Phillipps de Lisle is a British writer and editor who is a feature writer for The Guardian, focusing on cricket and rock music. He is the editor of the magazine Intelligent Life, is the rock critic at The Mail on Sunday and also edited the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack in...

 after the issue in March 1996, and Stephen Fay took over from de Lisle after he moved to Wisden's online venture. The last issue, in September 2003, coincided with Stephen Fay's 65th birthday and his retirement.

From October 2003, WCM merged with The Cricketer
The Cricketer
The Cricketer was an English cricket magazine published between 1921 and 2003 when it was merged with Wisden Cricket Monthly and relaunched as The Wisden Cricketer....

 to form The Wisden Cricketer
The Wisden Cricketer
The Wisden Cricketer is the world's best-selling monthly cricket magazine.It was created in 2003 by a merger between The Cricketer magazine and Wisden Cricket Monthly....

. John Stern, who had been Fay's deputy, became its first editor.

In December 2010, a private equity company called Test Match Extra Ltd - who
owned and ran a cricket website of the same name - bought The Wisden Cricketer
The Wisden Cricketer
The Wisden Cricketer is the world's best-selling monthly cricket magazine.It was created in 2003 by a merger between The Cricketer magazine and Wisden Cricket Monthly....

 from the then owners BSkyB.

In May 2011, the magazine dropped the 'Wisden
Wisden
The Wisden Group was a group of companies formed by John Wisden & Co Ltd, publishers of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack. As well as John Wisden & Co, the group included the The Wisden Cricketer magazine, Cricinfo – the world's highest traffic cricket website – and the Hawk-Eye computerised...

' from the masthead and became
The Cricketer
The Cricketer
The Cricketer was an English cricket magazine published between 1921 and 2003 when it was merged with Wisden Cricket Monthly and relaunched as The Wisden Cricketer....

 (in association with Wisden
Wisden
The Wisden Group was a group of companies formed by John Wisden & Co Ltd, publishers of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack. As well as John Wisden & Co, the group included the The Wisden Cricketer magazine, Cricinfo – the world's highest traffic cricket website – and the Hawk-Eye computerised...

). John Stern left as editor later
that month.
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