Cricket title looks forward to a winning partnership

John Stern, deputy editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly, has been appointed editor of new magazine The Wisden Cricketer.

The title is due to launch in the autumn following the merger between The Cricketer International and Wisden Cricket Monthly.

It is expected to have a bigger pagination than either of the merged magazines. John Wisden and chairman Sir Paul Getty are the majority shareholders and the non-executive chairman of the new company is John Brown, chairman of John Brown Citrus Publishing. Matthew Engel is editor-in-chief. Stern, pictured right, has previously written for The Times, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph, and was a contributor to The Cricketer before joining Wisden Cricket Monthly in 2001.

He said his aim was to produce a title with the breadth and tradition of The Cricketer and the more irreverent style of Wisden Cricket Monthly. “My aim is a magazine that is independent, inclusive and intelligent: a glossy, authoritative publication that will set the agenda,” he said.

The merger follows tough market conditions stretching back to the Eighties, following a string of England losses on the field.

“In a way, the merger is a sad moment,” said Engel, “but it gives us a remarkable opportunity to produce something of very high quality. We will be able to have more pages than either magazine has managed in the past, and we hope to have something that cricket lovers really cannot be without.”