A Subtle Knife

We don't dish out too much advice here at the Balls. It just isn't our thing to tell you what you should do or think.

However, if you are thinking that you might like a career that involves any kind of writing, you need to read this piece by Scyld Berry, the former editor of Wisden.

Berry isn't alone in having had the boot from a job he loved. It's happened to me, certainly. I just lacked the skill to write about it in such a brilliantly destructive way.

Just about every word is a knife to the body of Wisden's owners – but a knife so subtle they won't notice until their flesh starts dropping off like sliced salami.

There's the reference to the man who sacked him no longer being with the company, coupled with the veiled suggestion that they should have asked him to come back when the guy left.

Then there's the line about friendship seldom generating such warmth, a very clever way of saying he feels shafted by people he regarded as mates which only becomes apparent when you read it in context and realise that it is complete bollocks.

The biggest cut of all – a slash through the ribcage with a rapier thin blade – is the mention of the years he had been in the business when he became editor just about qualifying him to choose the cricketers of the year. At the time, he had been a cricket writer for 30 years. At that point, the new editor was only 32 years old.

In short, it is a superbly written, magnificently bitter, assault on his former employers. Whatever you might think about the way that Berry edited Wisden over the past four years, this proves that the man has lost none of his powers as a writer.

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