TWO Yorkshire players have been named among the Wisden Cricketers Almanack's five Cricketers of the Year.

Batsmen Gary Ballance and Adam Lyth join Moeen Ali, Sri Lanka's Angelo Mathews and New Zealand's Jeetan Patel.

Ballance began last summer with a century in his first home Test – against Sri Lanka at Lord’s – and followed up with two more against India – at Lord’s and Southampton. By the end of the season he boasted a Test average of over 60.

Opening batsman Lyth was the leading run-scorer in the County Championship, with 1,489 runs at an average of 67 and six hundreds, and was one of the pillars of Yorkshire's triumph in that competition. He was rewarded with a place on England’s tour of the Caribbean in April 2015.

England’s search for a spin bowler to replace Graeme Swann was thought to be doomed – until Ali lit up the summer with 12 wickets in the Southampton and Manchester Tests against India.

He finished the series with 19 at 23 apiece. Earlier in the season he had almost saved the Headingley Test against Sri Lanka, batting for all bar one ball of the final day.

And, when he was promoted to open for the one-day side, he scored the third-fastest hundred by an England batsman, from 72 balls against Sri Lanka in Colombo.

Mathews was the inspiration behind Sri Lanka’s first Test series victory in England.

After helping to save the first Test at Lord’s with a century, he made 160 – and took four wickets – as Sri Lanka came from behind to win in Leeds. Mathews also led his team to wins in the one-day series and the one-off Twenty20 international.

Off-spinner Patel was central to Warwickshire’s success across all three formats.

He claimed 107 victims in total, more than anyone in the country, and his 25 wickets in the NatWest T20 Blast – the most in the competition – helped his side lift the trophy on home turf at Edgbaston.

The Five Cricketers of the Year are chosen by the editor of Wisden, and represent a tradition that dates back to 1889, making this the oldest individual award in cricket.

Excellence in, or influence on, the previous English summer are the major criteria for inclusion as a Cricketer of the Year. No one can be chosen more than once.

Meanwhile, English cricket receives stinging criticism, and Sri Lanka great Kumar Sangakkara the highest of praise, in the 'cricketer's bible'.

Editor Lawrence Booth reserves withering words to depict the England and Wales Cricket Board's (ECB) "mishandling of the Kevin Pietersen affair".

Contrasting accolades are accorded to the increasingly prolific Sangakkara as Wisden's Leading Cricketer in the World - in the 152nd edition, published today - making him just the second player to regain that annual status.

Sangakkara, set to complete his international retirement when he plays his final Test this year, has raised even his own wonderful standards in a record-breaking run of form.

Wisden grants its global number one position for the previous year to Sangakkara - only India batsman Virender Sehwag has previously been named twice - after he made an all-time record 2,868 international runs in 2014, including a triple-century.

Breaking new ground in 2015 by announcing its first Leading Woman Cricketer in the World - Australia's Meg Lanning - Wisden also notes Sangakkara's man-of-the-match performance as Sri Lanka beat India in last year's ICC World Twenty20 final, and four successive hundreds at the recently-concluded World Cup.

Sangakkara also had a significant impact on the last English season, with his first Test hundred at Lord's.

In an appreciation of veteran Sangakkara, Booth said: "Choosing [him] just felt natural. And his four consecutive hundreds at the World Cup confirmed we'd chosen the right man.
"We'll miss him when he's gone."

Rob Smyth writes in Wisden of Sangakkara's "year of fulfilment - one which ensured, in sporting terms, he could die happy".

He adds: "You don't know what you've got until it's about to go, and this was the year in which Sangakkara was finally recognised as one of the all-time greats."

Lanning, who at 21 became the youngest person ever to captain Australia, led her country to the World Twenty20 title and finished 2014 at the top of both the women's Twenty20 and ODI batting rankings.

Her status as Wisden's inaugural No 1 player headlines an expanded women's section which contains reports of every international match played last year.

Elsewhere in the almanack's 1,520 pages, the editor and other contributors turn their attention to the many topics prevalent in their sport.

Booth is scathing in his assessment of much in the ECB's policies, tracing a year in which it lost touch "with the basic idea that the national team belongs to us all".

He adds to his critique alarm at the decline in the population of those playing recreational cricket.
"A few wins might have deflected attention from a charge sheet that would include the mishandling of the Kevin Pietersen affair, worrying Test attendances outside London, a head-in-the-sand attitude to the one-day team, and - not yet a decade after the 2005 Ashes had presented English cricket with a golden chance to attract a new generation to the sport - a fall in the number of recreational players.

"National selector James Whitaker had called Cook 'our exceptional leader'; Paul Downton, the ECB's new managing director, hailed [Peter] Moores as the 'outstanding coach of his generation'; chairman Giles Clarke trumpeted Downton as a 'man of great judgment'. It was a nexus of self-preservation - yet, as the wagons circled, the wheels kept threatening to come off."

* Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 2015 is published today by John Wisden & Co, priced £50