The Final Word Cricket Podcast

Season 18, Episode 14: It's almost northern Test summer time, with Ben Stokes out of hibernation, Zimbabwe playing warm-ups, and the Australian and South African IPL players... heading back to India to finish the delayed season. Ah well. Meanwhile, Cam Green makes runs while Marnus doesn't, the South African squad is named, West Indies have a new captain, Middlesex is more into Virat Kohli than Ko...

It's Story Time, our walk through cricket history via your listener quiz challenges. This week, we discover a player who we should have known more about, with a bendy wrist and a knack for controversy. Also, Adam's loosest and last summer as a touring cricket fan, and a deeper look than ever at the immortal Thanks For Coming. Your Nerd Pledge numbers this week: 13.38 - Lucas Collie 5.49 - Sam Burt...

Season 18, Episode 13: To those who question Kohli's place as a Test great because he didn't average enough or quite make enough career runs, it is fair to say we do not agree. And his old teammate Rohit Sharma went alright too. After moving away from the retiring Indian pair, we stay in that part of the world to review about a wild week off the field before returning to England for Australia's WT...

Season 18, Episode 12: Why did one of South Africa’s best, Kyle Abbott, pack in international cricket at the peak of his powers at age 29 in favour of going full-time as a county cricketer? It’s a question the big quick he’s been asked many times since 2017 when he arrived at Hampshire, from that point going on to become one of the most consistently excellent players on the circuit. A terrific per...

It's Story Time, our walk through cricket history via your listener quiz challenges. This week, we find that sometimes when researching something else about cricket, the tangent becomes unstoppable. This is how we all come to learn about sugary butt juice. Let's go to school. Also this week, Adam retells a history that so many of us know but probably don't remember. Your Nerd Pledge numbers this w...

Book Club 10: Tim Wigmore - Test Cricket, A History Over the years, Tim Wigmore has penned several superb books, and this might be his best yet. Joining Daniel Norcross at lunch during a recent Surrey game, he sat down to discuss the book he wrote because it is the one he would like to read – always a good place to start. From Test cricket’s conception, he maps the lot: scarcity and status, empire...

Season 18, Episode 11: A charged political atmosphere this week, with Australia's election having just taken place, while the ECB fold to the current campaign to push transgender people to the margins of society. Meanwhile, India and Pakistan tensions reach their highest level in years, with cricket relations sure to be further affected. Otherwise, Kagiso Rabada is back after a spell on the Plum W...

It's Story Time, our walk through cricket history via your listener quiz challenges. This week, it's Daniel Norcross guest hosting, so he begins with a proverb to live by for running between the wickets. What exactly happened on Sandpaper Day? Adam tells the story from his vantage point in the radio box. Later, they move on to Steve Waugh's farewell, with Bharat slotting in to explain why it was s...

Season 18 Episode 10: A left-handed opener from Perth who grew up idolising Justin Langer, in Marcus Harris you have a player who was meant to fit a certain mould. But over his long professional career, which started in 2011 when he smashed a big ton as an 18-year-old in his third game for WA, the 32-year-old has been on a journey that has seen his game evolve into the finished product following s...

Season 18, Episode 9: With the power outage in Lisbon it’s Daniel Norcross stepping in this week as Adam returns to a familiar sofa under the Jardine portrait in Tooting. Fronting the agenda are off-field discussions following our Richard Gould interview, extending to how the English game might look after its latest review. The County Championship is never dull, with the Foxes of Leicestershire hu...

It's Story Time, our walk through cricket history via your listener quiz challenges. This week, there's only one thing on the menu at Diego's dinner, but would a modern-day Plum Warner have been on the gear? That aside, this is a wholesome family episodes with links through both pledges and answers, plus the history of Argentina and some myth investigation about the biggest name in wrestling. Your...

Season 18, Episode 8: We like forging traditions on the pod and one of those is speaking with Lawrence Booth, the editor of the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, at Lord's on the day the little yellow wonder is released each year. We go through the 162nd edition in the usual way, published at a moment when there is much up for grabs in the global game - documented with care and caution in the editors'...

Season 18, Episode 7: Call it a mutual admiration society: given the way we respect Wisden, it's nice to get an observation back. More importantly this week, the kind of wild net-run-rate ending that we've been anticipating for some time came to pass in the women's World Cup qualifiers. The new English women's domestic system got started, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh played a stunner in their Test seri...

Season 18, Episode 6: Richard Gould has always been up for a lively chat over the years, whether that was in his previous gig as the boss at Surrey or since taking over England cricket's top administrative job in 2022 and this is no different. Here, two years after our previous visit to his office, the chief executive at ECB towers talks through what is shaping up as a vital period ahead both at h...

Season 18, Episode 5: It’s official: Dan Worrall is one of the five cricketers of the year in the 2025 Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, following a third dominant season as Surrey completed a county threepeat. From a lower-grade club spinner in Melbourne to the South Australian Shield team to the Aussie one-day team to going full-time in England, he’s the definition of a modern journeyman. Now the 33-...

It's Story Time, our walk through cricket history via your listener quiz challenges. This week, a wild tale from early colonial history about Australia's first political assassination, and how it links to the first Test match in 1877. Also, a heatwave with an Arctic deviation, the masters of so near and yet so far, and a tribute to the influence of Shannon Doherty and Tori Spelling. Your Nerd Pled...

Season 18, Episode 4: Over the years, we’ve had the company of many people for whom cricket is not their day job, but none with as many letters after their name. Mervyn King’s life in economics involved teaching at some of the finest universities, going on to become the long-standing governor of the Bank of England. That term included the 2008 Great Financial Crisis, as one of the world’s most imp...

Season 18, Episode 3: Great news this week that after years of campaigning, the ICC board has agreed to support Afghanistan’s women cricketers in exile. Details aren’t yet clear but the principle is. Also this week, more Olympic news, James Anderson is made a knight, a hefty county round includes some sizzling finishes, and there was an even better one in the unofficial Australia-England Test star...

That's right, we've been kindly offered the chance to play on Wormsley, one of the most beautiful cricket grounds in the world, with The Final Word XI set to take on our mates at Zero Ducks Given on Monday the 18th of August. It's a superb opportunity for us to raise money for The Lord's Taverners, the charity close to both podcasts, so we came together for this chat (a collaboration, if you will)...

It's Story Time, our walk through cricket history via your listener quiz challenges. This week, Adam and Geoff reunite from The Oval in London, and as luck would have it, this show includes two separate stories featuring a great Oval moment and a great Oval player. It also, rather less expectedly, includes the story of the Australian Shahid Afridi, who did so many miles from Traralgon to Doncaster...

Season 18, Episode 2: It can’t be easy putting red-ball cricket first as a modern West Indian cricketer, but that’s exactly what Kemar Roach has done. Throughout a long and winding international career the start in 2008, and is still going strong 17 years later, the quick from Barbados has always given complete commitment across 85 Test Matches. Back in London for his fifth stint with Surrey, afte...

Season 18, Episode 1: The new season begins! It begins with a triple century in the county championship, among a slate of brilliant finishes. It also begins with a sad formal farewell to the sport from Will Pucovski. And as tends to be the way, our episode finds its way through governance changes and scheduling questions into some peak 90s light entertainment. Settle in for Season 18: we can vote,...

It's Story Time, our walk through cricket history via your listener quiz challenges. This week, Daniel Norcross is back with Geoff for a short and sweet Story Time that somehow turned into this. It begins with Jeremy Coney's preferred method of staving off hyenas, and goes on through pondering who is Daddy, why we remember certain names, who was on the verge of weeping through his entire long care...

Season 17, Episode 35: Welcome to episode three in our series of interviews with county cricketers at the top of their games. It’s opening day today with Lancashire visiting Lord’s. After being relegated at the end of 2024, the job for the men representing the Red Rose is obvious – to bounce straight back up. And when it comes to posting their runs over the next six months, it’ll be their skipper...

Season 17, Episode 34: As the Mighty South Aussies finally took home another Sheffield Shield and completed the domestic double, Australia's national contracts came out, which raises interesting questions about who will be defending the World Test Championship title in June. In other matters this week, Ben Stokes' body is not a wonderland, James Anderson stuns the world by straining a calf, St Kil...