Wikipedia:Today's featured list/January 18, 2016
The Wisden Leading Cricketer in the World is an annual cricket award selected by Wisden Cricketers' Almanack. It was established in 2004, to select the best cricketer based upon their performances anywhere in the world in the previous calendar year. Since 1889, Wisden has published a list of Cricketers of the Year, typically selecting five cricketers that had the greatest impact during the previous English cricket season. Between 2000 and 2003, the scope was widened to include performances anywhere in the world, but in 2004 it reverted to being based on the English season, and a Leading Cricketer in the World was also selected. An Australian, Ricky Ponting was chosen as the first winner of the award. In the 2007 edition of Wisden, a notional list of previous winners, spanning from 1900 to 2002, was published. A sixteen-person panel helped to select the winners, which the editor Matthew Engel described as the cricketer that "would have been the first name down in the World XI to play Mars". (Full list...)