New Zealand Cricket Almanack is the most respected Almanack after Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, the cricketing bible.

This splendid publication has earned many friends over the years and Cricket's library has been enriched by the appearance of this Almanack and will assuredly continue to do so. Every cricket lover will relish the arrival of this latest edition. The 78th edition of the New Zealand Cricket Almanack is the 43rd under the current editors - Francis Payne and Ian Smith.

2025 New Zealand Cricket Almanack is a quality product from Upstart Press Ltd., deserving 100% marks for production, designing, formatting and lay-out of scorecards apart from extraordinary black and white pictures.

Matt Henry and Mitchell Santner have been named as Players of the year by the 2025 New Zealand Cricket Almanack while Curtis Heaphy, Rhys Mariu and Mohammad Abbas have been named as Promising players.

As in the previous years, an absorbing compilation of the season's happenings, is the highlight of this Almanack. The statistical highlights, covered in this section, are not to be seen in any other cricket publication and website. Some of the interesting Happenings covered in this Almanack are:

• Kane Williamson has been on the winning side in Test cricket on 44 occasions and in those matches have averaged 82.44. Only Don Bradman (130.08) has a higher average of players who participated in at least 15 test wins. Inzamam-ul-Haq (49 wins) averaged 78.16 while Garry Sobers (31 wins) had an average of 77.42.
• The first Test between New Zealand and England, played in November/December 2024 was notable for the fact that both captains were born in the city where the game was taking place. Tom Latham (April 2, 1992) and Ben Stokes (June 4, 1991) were both born in Christchurch. They had previously been opposing captains in a Test at Nottingham in 2022.
• Tim Southee was the last of New Zealand's great bowling trio to retire from Test cricket. The contribution that he, Trent Boult and Neil Wagner made in Test matches, winning 24 of the 40 Tests trio played together - the break-up of wickets in wins being Southee (119), Trent Boult (125) and Wagner (111).
• Suzie Bates reached two momentous landmarks in December 2024. In the second one-day game against Australia at Wellington, she reached a total of exactly 25,000 career runs (12410 List A & 12590 Twenty20). She was the first female cricketer to reach this milestone.
• Muhammad Abbas took just 24 balls to reach fifty in his one-day international debut against Pakistan at Napier on March 29, 2025. This was the fastest fifty on debut by any player surpassing the 26-ball fifties by Krunal Pandya for India against England in 2021 and by Alic Athanaze for West Indies against United Arab Emirates in 2023.
• Gus Atkinson's hat-trick for England against New Zealand at Wellington in December 2024 was the 50th instance in New Zealand's first-class cricket, achieved by 50 different players. No one has accomplished the feat more than once since Isaac Salmon took the first hat-trick for Wellington against Nelson (also at Basin Reserve) in March, 1874.

Robert Anderson, Brian Hastings, Ann McKenna and David Trist figure in the Obituaries' section.

Dedicated cricket enthusiasts will be particularly fascinated by the detailed statistical sections, covering New Zealand's Tests, ODIs, T20Is and First-class cricket apart from New Zealand limited-overs records. Women's Cricket section is always exhaustive.

Domestic cricket featured the Plunket Shield, the Ford Trophy and Dream11 Super Smash Twent20 competition, the Hallyburton Johnstone Shield and the women's Twenty20 competition. Besides, there is also coverage of Hawke Cup.

The 2025 Almanack consists of 610 pages, packed with match reports, scorecards, statistics and photographs. Pleasantly packaged and liberally illustrated, it is a massive source of reference pertaining to New Zealand cricket, worth its weight in gold, which wets the appetite for further exploration. The Almanack deserves to be bought, read and pondered.

As one would expect from Fancis Payne and Ian Smith, there is a wealth of information covering both team and individual achievements that makes the work an essential purchase for anyone interested in New Zealand cricket or statistics in general. Highly recommended Almanack.