The Guerilla Cricket Podcast

Ho Ho Ho. It’s nearly time for the fat jolly bearded gentleman to arrive. To be fair, that could describe most Guerillas (obviously the likes of Annie and indeed our guest today excluded).   The halls and walls of the Bishop and Bear are decked with boughs of holly and our Barstool of Bravado guest to look back on the New Zealand series and the year in general is the admirable, ambitious and proli...

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Hello and welcome back to another episode of Hector and Henry’s World of Cricket. We are joining you from across the world – Henry is playing cricket for the Darren Lehman academy, in Adelaide, whilst Hector has recently touched down in Wellington for the second Test.  We were lucky enough to catch up with the great Jack Meacher – one-half of the cricketing social media sensations, Cricket Distric...

Welcome back to the Bishop and Mantis!   Hang on what? Well, that is correct, just for today. Alas, our Ursine Landlord has been called away by family duties so your Episcopal Barman is flying solo serving drinks, mopping tables, changing barrels and with a broom firmly inserted to ensure the floor is swept as he goes.   Fortunately, he has for company former New Zealand captain, scorer of 174* ag...

Welcome back to the Bishop and Bear!   England collapsed and lost the deciding Test to Pakistan in two and a half days. On the upside, your Episcopal Barman got a Sunday lie in he hadn’t been expecting, but that is really not a consolation for the meekness of the England collapse.   Pakistan looked across the border to India and said “forget our illustrious tradition of demon reverse swing. Wasim...

The warmest of welcomes back to the Bishop and Bear.   We’re delighted to get back together with you in the very short window of time allowed between the 1st and 2nd Multan Tests. And after records tumbled in the first, we now have all sorts of pitch shenanigans to discuss as it looks as though the 2nd Test will now be on the same pitch! And quelle surprise, on an old track being sundried and fan...

Welcome back to Hector and Henry’s World of Cricket!   It is great to have you join us, and with the cricketing summer a thing of the past, it is vital that we can get our cricket fix from somewhere.    Now of course, every England fixture, we are treated (either via our TV channels or even better, in the flesh), to the dulcet tones of the Barmy Army. Widely renowned as one of the most creative, l...

The warmest of welcomes back to the Bishop and Bear.   The English cricket summer is finally done, so late that Santa’s reindeer are already in pre-Christmas training. But if you think that means a short break for Guerilla Cricket, oh no, think again. England start a Test Series in Pakistan in just a few days’ time.    To look back with the Bear and I to the summer gone and forward to that Pakista...

Welcome back to the Bishop and Bear, cricket’s finest virtual pub.   An absolute smorgasbord of discussion topics this week, so your ursine landlord and episcopal barman needed to find someone of weight and forthright opinion to help navigate through them. And we did find one too. Who else, of course, but our own Hendo.   Delicately sipping a coffee liqueur or two , Hendo gets fully stuck in with...

Welcome to the very first episode of Hector and Henry’s World of Cricket.   Your hosts, Hector and Henry, are avid badgers of the game, with very different cricketing careers. Henry is looking to go the distance, playing for the Derbyshire academy, and travelling out to Adelaide to play for the Darren Lehman academy, whilst Hector spent the summer gradually being dropped down the order from opener...

Welcome back to the Bishop and Bear!   It’s always great to see you and even more so when a Test series is just around the corner. This one is against Sri Lanka. Perhaps not the force of old, but not to be underestimated either.   Also not to be underestimated are the two guests on the barstools of bravado. It’s our Sri Lankan Olegasegram double act. Bennett and Son - the works never done, at leas...

Bon retour au L'évêque et l'ours. Or, if this is your first visit, a very warm welcome to the Bishop and Bear.   Sorry, but that’s as much French as we are going to get despite our landlord having just returned sun bronzed from the south of France.   It’s a bon retour aussi (sorry a bit more French slipped in there) to our special guest, St Annie of Exeter. The wonderful Annie Chave of course, who...

Great to have you back with us in the Bishop and Bear.   It’s raining outside our pub window which can only mean one thing. There’s an England Test Match starting next week AT LORDS against the West Indies in Jimmy’s farewell. We will look forward to that and also briefly back at the World T20.   BUT first you may know that the first time the West Indies won a Test in England was at Lords in 1950....

A huge welcome back to the Bishop and Bear.   “As strange as it sounds, what I want to be doing right now is playing cricket. Sweating and getting tired at training sessions, the ball hitting my legs and body. But I have a sniper’s rifle in my hands instead of a bat and a grenade instead of a ball”.   Those are the words of Ukraniain cricketer and now soldier defending his homeland from Russian in...

A huge welcome back to the Bishop and Bear.   Having just staggered across the finishing line of the IPL marathon, don’t think for a second we have time to put our feet up in the Old B and B. Oh no! The WT20 looms. All 20 teams, 4 groups, 2 countries, nine venues and specially grown and flown drop in pitches of it.   So much to talk about with our special guest Gargi Raut, presenter, broadcaster a...

Hello and welcome back to the Bishop and Bear. Now who do you think of when you think about a hard man? Vinny Jones, Norman Hunter? Mike Tyson? Nigel Walker?   Well, it’s none of those that we are discussing in the old B&B today. We want to focus on Cricket’s Hard Men – the Toughest Characters from the History of Cricket and our guest on the barstool of bravado is Richard Sydenham, sports journali...

Welcome back to the Bishop and Bear.   If you fancy a cracking night out, plenty to eat and drink, plus the chance to play some cricket and even face some of the world’s best bowlers, there is a bar you can go to. It’s called Sixes. If you are in the UK, you probably already know it. If you are in the USA, you soon will as they are have already opened in Dallas and will be opening more there too....

Welcome back to the Bishop and Bear and today we have a real treat.   Many cricket supporters will have recently heard a resounding thud on their door mat (or more likely a tiny tap on the door followed by the rapidly retreating footsteps of an Amazon delivery driver) – because last week saw the launch of the 161st edition of the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack!   Quite a year it’s been for cricket on...

Welcome back to the Bishop and Bear.   Most guests in this pub would probably agree that they want cricket to grow and be healthy. They want it to be more diverse, inclusive and attractive to new younger fans. They also, want to watch national teams to play entertaining winning Test cricket and be successful in other formats too. For many of us, that is England. But by no means exclusively. Those...

Welcome back to the warm embrace (and warm beer) of the Bishop and Bear.   The chat this week is very much focused on the IPL as this year’s marathon begins. Who are the runners and riders? Where is the smart money going? Who are the stars and who is missing for each team? What makes the new smart replays smarter than the average replays? Why do Sunrisers Hyderabad get battered everywhere? Is thei...

A warm welcome once more to the Bishop and Bear.   A fabulous if ultimately unsuccessful Test series for England is behind us, but there is plenty to reflect upon. The IPL stretches out before us. No less than 66 days of, well pretty much the same as last year, but it will be fun.   As we look back to that enthralling Test series in India, we have two guests propping up our bar to cogitate on that...

Sæll og velkominn til Biskups og Björn   I’m not sure you can ever fully trust Google Translate, but that should be Icelandic for “Hello and welcome to the Bishop and Bear”. If you happen to speak fluent Icelandic and it accidentally says something else, I can only apologise. Blame the landlord not the barman.   There is a reason we have gone full Icelandic though. Our guest on the Barstool of Bra...

Welcome back to the Bishop and Bear – the internet’s favourite virtual cricket pub (probably).   Well, it was a right old battering for England in Rajkot. The young Jazz Whale played all the right notes in exactly the right order and there were way too many bum notes from England against Bumrah and co. The Yorkshire middle order of Root and Bairstow looks under pressure and out of sorts. Can they...

Once again, a very warm welcome to the Bishop and Bear. We’re enjoying a little bit of breathing space between the 2nd and 3rd India Tests and the England team are enjoying themselves too with golf and family time in Abu Dhabi. Not Rehan Ahmed though. The lad thinks golf is for old men and he’ll be catching up with a Turkish TV series about the Ottoman Empire instead. Our guest this week is no str...

Get your Kicks in the Bishop and Bear 66! With due deference to Bobby Troupe who wrote Route 66 (and not a lot of people know that), perhaps not even Joe Root who wears 66 on the back of his shirt of course.   What a week for Test Cricket, culminating in its own Super Sunday. Two incredible Tests, two extraordinary results. Three heroes in the form of Shamar Joseph, Ollie Pope and Tom Hartley. The...