International cricket "stands at a precipice", according to the 149th edition of Wisden, which is published on Thursday. And only India have the power to pull it back from the brink.

That is the implication of remarks made by Lawrence Booth, formerly of the Guardian and now of the Daily Mail, and at 37 the youngest editor of the cricketers' almanack since Haddon Whitaker in 1940.

It is the profusion of Twenty20, "a Pandora's box masquerading as a panacea", that leaves the game so precariously placed, Booth writes. "Twenty20 is a vital part of a fragile ecosystem," he says. "But a playful scrap every few hours can grate, and some administrators appear to be awaiting the second Flood."

Citing the "prevalence of the two-match [Test] series", he says that "the administrators' insistence on Test cricket has been stated so often as to have lost any meaning". The decision-makers in South Africa, Australia and England receive a gentle poke for that, but it is India who are held most accountable. "Too often their game appears driven by the self-interest of the few," says Booth, who has seen enough of the Indian Premier League at first hand to speak from authority. "The disintegration of India's feted batting lineup has coincided with the rise of a Twenty20-based nationalism, the growth of private marketeers and high level conflicts of interest. It is a perfect storm. And the global game sits steadily in the eye. India, your sport needs you."

There are also barbs for Essex in particular, and the former players who have "reckoned, now you mentioned it, that they may have taken part in some match or other when someone had done something they really shouldn't have" – although there is more detailed treatment of the spot-fixing scandals that reached their climax in the winter of 2011-12 in a six-page account of the trial of the Pakistan trio Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir, plus their agent Mazhar Majeed, by RDJ Edwards, the former crime correspondent of the Daily Telegraph and London's Evening Standard who now works for the Cricketer.

This piece is as compelling as it is illuminating, for anyone who had not followed the trial as avidly as Edwards – who attended, blogged and tweeted at every day of the trial. "During breaks, Butt would politely ask reporters for the score from Pakistan's series against Sri Lanka," Edwards writes. "Asif, meanwhile, would take the first opportunity to rush outside for a cigarette, stopping briefly at a drinks stall. With a wink and a smile he would ask a journalist in the queue (invariably the female Sky Sports News reporter) to buy him a fresh orange juice, and hand over a pound coin; he never did seem to acknowledge the drink cost £1.15."

There are equally fascinating, but less easily accessible, views on depression in cricket by the former England captain Mike Brearley, and on the International Cricket Council by Gideon Haigh – which at 7,000 words is the longest in the comment section since the war, at least.

Booth's reference to "an uncomfortable feeling that England have prospered despite the domestic system" will ruffle a few feathers among those who have welcomed a new respect for the county game that nurtured the world's No1 Test team. But two of Wisden's Five Cricketers of the Year are recognised purely for their county contributions: Glen Chapple, who led Lancashire to their first outright Championship title since 1934; and Alan Richardson, the stalwart seamer from Staffordshire whose 73 wickets kept Worcestershire in Division One.

The others are Alastair Cook – who surprisingly had not been recognised before, and therefore completed a full England XI who have made the Five at Abu Dhabi in January (they were all out for 72); Tim Bresnan; and Kumar Sangakkara, who is also named the leading cricketer in the world for the calendar year of 2012. An edited version of his MCC Spirit of Cricket Cowdrey Lecture, in which Sangakkara raised the possibility of the ICC suspending his own Sri Lankan board, is also printed in the Almanack.

The Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, published by A&C Black, £45