Cricket's 2005 best-ofs

It's that time of year again. All the news agencies are starting to roll out their best-ofs for 2005, and I have a chuckle this morning as U3 (Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, and Bono) are named Time Magazine's People of the Year.

One of the popular form of lists that is put out by the wire services is the "top 10 stories of the year". Unfortunately, because of deadlines and stuff, most of these are issued in mid-December, thus missing any big events at the end of the year (watch and see how they deal with the 26 December 2004 tsunami).

Inspired by these lists, I've been doing, on-and-off, the "top 10 cricket stories" since 1996, though trying as much as possible to hold off the list until the very end of the year - you never know what a Boxing Day Test may bring! I'll do it again this year, and will make my first announcement of the list in a podcast just before NYE.

I have the 1996 and 1997 list archived somewhere and it will take me a while to find just which CD-ROM they are on. I called for submissions for a 1998 list but didn't get around to collating them. I did one for 2003, which I do have online. (You might like to take a look at the end-of-year reviews I put together for CricInfo365 at the end of 1999 and 2000 - Update 10.12.09: All CricInfo365 archives appear to have been removed from the web by ESPN Cricinfo. I am looking into this further.).

Anyway, to start scratching together a list of 2005's biggest cricket stories. Off the top of my head, here are a dozen. If you have any suggestions, please comment below. My final list will be out on NYE. (NB: I'm preparing two podcasts at the moment - one before Christmas and one at year's end, so I might be quiet on the blogs, where I spent most of my spare time last week writing about the race riots in Sydney.)

• The Ashes
• Greg Chappell v Saurav Ganguly
• Lara's World Record
• The Tsunami Appeal
• Warnie
• Zimbabwe
• TV rights
• The supersub and the powerplay
• West Indies contractual disputes
• The defeat of Dalmiya
• Victories for Bangladesh
• Tendulkar
• New South Wales' stunning comeback to win the Pura Cup (sorry I just had to chuck that one in)