The Final Word Cricket Podcast

Season 5, Ep 3: New things abound. The Australian summer starts for real with the first Test against India imminent. The women's team win the World T20 with a total team performance. And Geoff is flooding bookshops with Steve Smith's Men, his book on the sandpaper saga and the broader story around it, which leads him and Adam to assess the turmoil and head-rolling that has happened since the sands...

Season 5, Ep 2: Back to earth with a thud, as the Dubai draw is followed by an Abu Dhabi thrashing. Pakistan pull their biggest ever win over Australia out of the fire. Mohammad Abbas is statistically the most devastating bowler in history. There are a thousand unanswered questions ahead of the first home Test in a few short weeks. Geoff and Adam break down a densely packed UAE tour from a rose-ti...

Season 5, Ep 1: Let's call it straight - one of the most remarkable batting performances ever in the fourth innings of a Test. Usman Khawaja batted more than 12 hours in the match to deny Pakistan a win, while Adam and Geoff commentated his Dubai epic on radio. Time to take a few deep breaths and look back over all of it, as The Final Word comes back from a break to start a new season. Thanks to o...

Season 4, Ep 10: What a week. Cape Town to Johannesburg, one of Australian cricket's biggest disasters, and a story that bounced across the world. Sandpaper, cameras, and recriminations. Geoff and Adam have already done so much talking, and they're completely spent, but somehow they're going to talk a bit more. Support the show: https://patreon.com/thefinalword See omnystudio.com/listener for priv...

Season 4, Ep 9: One of Australia's top broadcasters joins Adam and Geoff in South Africa's southern city of Port Elizabeth, in a long-form interview to discuss it all. The art of the call. The nature of stories. Choosing joy over angst. The 1989 Grand Final. How to pick an election, and how to call a Superbowl. Cool Runnings versus Rocky IV. Staying grateful in the grind. The importance of sport,...

Season 4, Ep 8: Why does cricket do this to itself? After a brilliant Test in Durban, the discussion is instead about which Australians and South Africans said what to whom. This episode includes David Warner's first public statements since his dispute with Quinton de Kock, as The Final Word looks at the complicated issue of how Australian behaviour on the field is viewed. Then it's thankfully bac...

Season 4, Ep 7: After a mad dash from Auckland to Johannesburg, Australian vice-captain David Warner gives The Final Word. How can he succeed in South Africa? What constitutes being a cowboy? Does he want the captaincy, or maybe a political career? He covers that and everything from mental strength, masculinity, meditation, and Morne Morkel. Support the show: https://patreon.com/thefinalword See o...

Season 4, Ep 6: School's out for the summer. The Ashes are done, and BBC commentator Daniel Norcross joins Adam Collins and Geoff Lemon to sift through the fireplace, before we hand out The Final Word's End of Year 12 Formal awards. Next up, all of January's white-ball carnage. Support the show: https://patreon.com/thefinalword See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about...

Season 4, Ep 5: It is New Year's Eve in 2017, and we may be in the middle of an Ashes series but it is also time to run our eye over the year that was. Send us a Nerd Pledge at patreon.com/thefinalword Find previous episodes at finalwordcricket.com The Final Word was at this time a production for Guardian Australia. Title track by Urthboy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/...

Season 4, Ep 4: It was a warm night in Perth when we left the WACA after its final Test match saw Australia win the Ashes, and we went to interview Vic Marks. The all-rounder actually played there for a couple of seasons in the 1980s, as a rare overseas pro for Western Australia. But he is most known for his career with England, and his extensive post-playing career as a newspaper correspondent, r...

Season 4, Ep 3: The interview that started it all. It was December 9, 2017, when we sat down with Jason Gillespie by the boundary at Adelaide Oval as a charity game was being rained off. What was supposed to be a brief chat became our first long-form interview, as Jason was typically generous with his time and honesty. We were elated, and the Final Word style was born. Well worth a listen to this...

Season 4, Ep 2: Bancroft and Bairstow butting heads in Brisbane. In November 2017, Cameron Bancroft didn’t just make an unbeaten 80 to win an Ashes Test, he also defused an international incident while delivering a comedy routine. Not bad on debut. Geoff and Adam revisit that headbutt, and Jonny Bairstow’s explanation that failed to remotely explain anything. We also analyse everything from the fi...

Season 4, Ep 1: Recorded in a Canberra park after midnight following the final T20 of the Women’s Ashes in November 2017, Geoff and Adam started a new season that would also be released as the Guardian's Ashes podcast. One part that wasn't recorded in a park after midnight was an interview with all-rounder Ellyse Perry, on the ‘tidal wave’ of interest in women’s sport and the ways she has honed he...

Season 3, Ep 10: All the way back to when we used to record The Final Word for the ABC. No Urthboy, no stings, no improper language, just straight down the line. At the end of our third season in February 2017, Geoff comes back from New Zealand, Alastair Cook ditches the England captaincy, Marcus Stoinis produces a one-day miracle in Auckland, Sam Heazlett gets picked despite having never played f...

Season 3, Ep 9: It is late January in 2017, Donald Trump's inauguration week, in which Billy Stanlake is King of Geelong, Glenn Maxwell is switch-hitting to the moon, an exorcism is held against Marsh spirits, Peter Handscomb makes his one-day debut, Allan Border is prohibited from getting old, Yuvraj Singh keeps going for India aged 57, and Jess Cameron combines with Amy Satterthwaite for one of...

Season 3, Ep 8: Stop us if this sounds familiar: it's January, around the Sydney Test, there's a tour to India coming up any minute, and we're wondering whether Mitchell Swepson is good enough to feature. Matthew Renshaw is coming into the side, Glenn Maxwell is vying for a spot with Travis Head. But this is 2017. Also on this episode: Minty Panesar (sic), Javed Miandad and his I Love New York hat...

Season 3, Ep 7: With Pakistan's Test series wrapped up in Sydney, let's spend a moment on the great undersung career of Younis Khan: on the occasion of his 34th Test ton, having reached the rare club with more hundreds than fifties. David Warner made his own hundred in the first session of the Test, backing it up with the fastest Australian fifty, while we made wildly inaccurate predictions about...

Season 3, Ep 6: Happy New Year for 2017! Our new NYE segment is Best & Worst. Admittedly it is a short segment at the end of the show, but before that we have to talk about a wonderful Boxing Day Test. Mitchell Starc has missed a lot of them, but reserved his best all-round performance for this one against Pakistan, despite the best efforts of Azhar Ali. Also this week: Gusatvo Kuerten, Thomas Mus...

Season 3, Ep 5: It's the Gabba just before Christmas in 2016, a match in which Pakistan get set 490 to win... and damn near run it down. Asad Shafiq, Yasir Shah and Mitchell Starc play the defining hands in the first pink-ball match played in Brisbane, including the first appearance of a swimming pool in the stands, and one of the most joyful fifth days in Test cricket. Experience the magic. This...

Season 3, Ep 4: David Warner is on one of the hottest batting streaks in one-day cricket history. After saying that it was his worst format, he has finally cracked the code - and we wonder what his character would be like in anime. Our ABC colleague Brittany Carter joins us to talk WBBL in its second season, and we work out how to measure the relative numerousness of 637,000 people, using snacks....

Season 3, Ep 3: Glenn Maxwell exiled from the one-day team for answering a question about batting higher up the order? Yep. It's the middle of the Steve Smith era as cricket supremo, while making a squillion runs in every format. Also this week , Amanda-Jade Wellington debuts for Australia to take a wicket with her first ball. Matthew Mott is played this week by Emilio Estevez, Travis Head makes a...

Season 3, Ep 2: After the Hobart debacle and the Australia's Got Talent round of the Sheffield Shield, a new-look Australian team takes the field in Adelaide. Faf du Plessis plays smarter, not harder, to set an all-time Test record, Usman Khawaja demonstrates that him opening the batting might just be a great idea, Adam suffers from a case of delirium, we talk about "hardness" and Handscomb subver...

Season 3, Ep 1: What a week this was. Early November, 2016, Donald Trump has just been elected US President, Geoff returns from following the circus in the US, and we go straight into Hobart where South Africa demolish the home side in seven sessions. We wondered if it was the lowest point for the Test team in our lifetimes. At the time, maybe. Get all the wash-up with The Final Word. This season...

Season 2, Ep 9: It's February 2016. Brendon McCullum is playing his last Test match, and decides to sign off with the world record for the fastest century of all time. Up to the front of the Titanic with him, where he and Steve Smith can decide who gets to play Kate Winslet. Meanwhile, Joe Burns goes long, and Neil Wagner produces one of his inimitable bouncer marathons. The Final Word from the se...

Season 2, Ep 8: To end the 2015-16 summer, Australia head to New Zealand. With the one-dayers done it's time for the first Test at Wellington. Would it be defined by the bat? By the ball? No, by the umpire's arm, calling Doug Bracewell for a no-ball that wasn't, and reprieving Adam Voges who would go on to a double century. It was the beginning of the eventual move to no-ball automation via the th...