The Final Word Cricket Podcast

Season 2, Ep 7: Reloading lost episodes from the early Final Word. In its second season in early 2016, The Final Word got spicy - it covered white-ball cricket. Having only been about Test matches to this date, Australia's tour of New Zealand for Brendon McCullum's farewell series was enough to make us change our style. The Big Bash was at its peak, the first WBBL had been played, the World T20 wa...

Season 2, Ep 6: In January 2016, we spend a wet Sydney Test match thinking of songs involving rain rather than watching cricket. West Indies refuse to cook up a run chase, concentrating instead on making 300 in an innings, while James Pattinson gets clobbered by Carlos Braithwaite - remember the name. Nathan Lyon has to go to India, and of historic importance is the moment Steve O'Keefe gets out t...

Season 2, Ep 5: It's the end of 2015! Cue the streamers. Australia have just beaten West Indies at the MCG. Usman Khawaja is making bulk runs, but not as bulk as Adam Voges: averaging 542 against West Indies, moving towards 20 innings batted, averaging 86, over a thousand runs in half a year since debut. Could James Pattinson survive injury? Can Peter Siddle get back in the team? Can Peter Nevill...

Season 2, Ep 4: It's December 2015. West Indies have just been blown off Bellerive Oval as Adam Voges and Shaun Marsh pile on 449, within a whisker of the record for the biggest Australian partnership. We have more mad stats for Voges, who has bettered Mike Hussey's first ten Tests. Also doing their thing were some up-and-coming bowlers named James Pattinson, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood. The...

Season 2, Ep 3: Reloading lost episodes from the early Final Word. Proof of concept. That's what it was all about in 2015, when Australia hosted New Zealand in Adelaide for the very first day-night Test. The pink Kookaburra survived, then prospered, in a contest that was suffocatingly close from start to finish. The bowling was hot, the batters had to survive, and an all-time umpiring mistake had...

Season 2, Ep 2: In 2015, the deadest WACA track in history made Mitchell Johnson retire on the spot. Dave Warner belted a million while wearing a WWII moustache, then Ross Taylor went back before WWI to take down the ancient record of Reginald Tip Foster. Kane Williamson was perfect, Brian Lara was in touch with Usman Khawaja, and if Mitchell Starc really bowled 161 kilometres an hour, does that m...

Season 2, Ep 1: To start their visit in 2015, New Zealand got first use of a Gabba pitch against a new-look Australian batting order, and fluffed it. That Test also marked the start of the first home season for The Final Word podcast, after its debut season during that year's Ashes: this was a new show designed to review each Test the day after it ended. Born and bred in Brisbane, John Harms and C...

Season 1, Ep 6: At the end of Australia's 2015 tour of England, after the one-day series to follow the Ashes, it was great to be joined by our friends Jesse Hogan from the Fairfax papers and Stephan Shemilt from the BBC. At the top of the order - I can't stand it, I know you planned it - are there shenanigans afoot with Jason Roy and Alex Hales? Or will Moeen Ali get a Test job ahead of both? John...

Season 1, Ep 5: Partway through a busy Australian tour of England in 2015, it's time to take stock of the short format. We started in The Cricketers pub in Cardiff, recording with Melinda Farrell after the Women's Ashes had just finished with three T20s. Two new women's T20 competitions were soon to start in Australia's Big Bash and England's Super League. So we spoke about the start of men's prof...

Season 1, Ep 4: The 2015 Ashes came to a close, after a series of batting collapses and bowling blowouts. Australia out for 60 in Nottingham and 136 in Birmingham, England out for 103 at Lord's - no Test was competitive, even if a 3-2 scoreline looked it. After a final belting of England by an innings at the Oval, Geoff and Adam got together in London with the BBC's Alison Mitchell and Cricinfo's...

Season 1, Ep 3: This is the show's first engagement with women's cricket, and you can hear how much we've learned since. Down in Canterbury, amid a men's Test series of batting collapses, the only women's Test of their 2015 Ashes series ended similarly. It wasn't one-sided until then though, with Australia staging a major fightback via Jess Jonassen before England gave up trying to win. Izzy Westb...

Season 1, Ep 2: Our second episode ever comes after Australia got shot out of the sky in Birmingham during the 2015 Ashes, for England to take a lead 2-1 with two to play. Geoff was joined by writers Will Macpherson and Subash Jayaraman, with Adam absent at a wedding or something. Will: "If you can't enjoy watching Mitchell Johnson bowl at his best you don't actually understand this sport." This s...

Season 1, Ep 1: London 2015, with our new Ashes podcast project not signed off in time to cover the first Test in Cardiff, we got started after the second Test at Lord's. Australia had been beaten badly in the first match, only to dominate the next when Mitchell Johnson went on the last of his magical sprees with the ball. Emma John, then of the Observer, and Phil Walker, then of All Out Cricket,...