Welcome to The Periodic Table of Cricket. Here you'll find the essential elements - batsmen and bowlers past and present - that have left a lasting legacy on this great sport. As with chemical elements, these international personalities have been arranged based on their characteristics in and out of play. Instead of metals and non-metals, here we have patient and determined defensive players, from Jack Hobbs to Hanif Mohammad and Alastair Cook transitioning to fast-paced and attacking players including Shane Warne, Fred Trueman and 'white lightning' Allan Donald with a whole host of others in between. See how the best international players stack up against each other in this original guide to cricket.

The 150 editions of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack have contained a total of more than 133,000 pages since the first edition was published in 1864. Over the years the Almanack - published every year without fail - has charted the highs and lows of the game, giving its authoritative opinion on the players, the matches and the pressing issues of the day. The Essential Wisden provides the highlights of all 150 years for the first time. From the forthright Editor's Notes by the likes of Sydney Pardon, Norman Preston, John Woodcock and Matthew Engel, through reports on key matches around the world, and features on the game's top players, to the renowned obituaries of people in and around the game, and a range of cricket's idiosyncratic "Unusual Occurrences", John Stern and Marcus Williams distil the Almanack's most significant and fascinating writing into one anthology. With the pick of a century and a half of the best cricket writing from leading writers on the game, including John Arlott, Mike Atherton, Neville Cardus, Gideon Haigh, Christopher Martin-Jenkins and E. W. Swanton, and famous players such as Don Bradman, Denis Compton, Learie Constantine, Fred Spofforth, Mike Brearley and Michael Vaughan, The Essential Wisden provides a fascinating lens through which to view the evolution of the game.