I knew about Wisden from a fairly early age, and for a long time I harboured a suppressed ambition to see my name appear in it.  Unlike one or two school and university friends, I wasn’t a good enough player – and I didn’t go to the right type of school – to appear in the school averages.  I was going to have to do it by writing something.

In truth, by the time 2012 came around, if I thought about it at all, I regarded it as just another of life’s many unfulfilled aims, but then Wisden included a writing competition for the first time.  I entered it and won.

I didn’t necessarily think that it would lead to anything more than a single appearance in the Almanack and an invitation to the annual launch dinner, which takes place at Lord’s each April, but in 2014 Lawrence Booth asked me if I would be interested in taking over the review of cricket blogs which appeared in Wisden each year.

Between 2015 and 2024 I wrote about blogs for each edition of the Almanack, and every piece is reproduced here, along with South African Time, which was my winning entry in the inaugural writing competition.