thefinalword

Laurie Nash's hat-trick ball, and how the ICC screwed Thailand

Guess who forgot to post the episode to Patreon last week? It was... Adam, let's blame him. Yes. But you probably already found Season 11, Ep 7:

With a new COVID variant causing panic  in the ranks, the ICC cancelled its Women's World Cup qualifier that  was underway in Zimbabwe. But there will be no rescheduling, just the  promotion of countries that already sit at the top of the tree. Andrew  Nixon joins the show to explain how Thailand, in particu...

Taking apart the Tim Paine story

Season 11, Ep 6: There was one main story this week: another Australian captain resigning, claims and counterclaims, and a lot of misunderstanding and misinformation. We sit down with The Age's Daniel Brettig to find some more clarity in the tale. Also this week: Nerd Pledge is back, the WBBL finals, Amanda Wellington for Australia, the Shield, and a new chief exec at the ICC.

Audio is ...

The Final Word Live - Patreon discounts

We're back with some live shows in Australia this summer, when and where we can fit them in. Apologies to Brisbane and Perth, where quarantine requirements make it impossible.

Adelaide on December 14 tickets are here. At the UniBar just across the bridge from Adelaide Oval. Pre-dinner pizzas, all night Brick Lane.

Sydney is planned for January 4, but wil...

The day Azeem Rafiq testified

Season 11, Ep 5: The normal show returns, and it couldn't have been a more important week in which to do it. This is the week when Azeem Rafiq's testimony to a UK parliamentary hearing shook cricket, after years of him reporting racist conduct to players at Yorkshire have been dismissed and covered up. It was an extraordinary moment of truth. The ramifications may be felt more widely than in one country. 

We wanted to have this conversation with people who know the...

Tournament crashes and bike crashes

At the time of sending, in Week 2 of November. Australia and New Zealand are less than two hours away from the T20 World Cup final. Two unexpected finalists, with a lot of repeat players from 2015 at the So Big MCG. We've been busy during the week on the World Cup Daily for a couple of belting semi-finals, and Ashton has been busy on the video edits for those who prefer the visual feed. See the most recent, after the Wade-Stoinis ridiculum.

England and Pakistan, the two favourites, can ...

The T20 World Cup rolls on

Week one of November, and how did that happen so soon? This embedded video from last weekend is not to further trouble those watching the tournament from Australia, but to acknowledge one small but special moment. Namely:

The first time ever that a Final Word episode has been recorded without either Adam or Geoff. Growth! Change! Evolution! Not that we plan on disappearing, but...

The T20 World Cup Daily

Yes, it's well into stride. If you didn't catch the first episode, which Winnie gatecrashed after banging on the door for long enough to be let outside where Adam was filming, then you have some adorableness to catch up on. 

The Daily will be a multi-handed effort, with Daniel Norcross and Izzy Westbury coming through at times to spare Geoff some 5am recording sessions. The video views on these have tanked for mysterious algorithm reasons compared to our Test match shows, but the m...

Yes, it most certainly is a double hat-trick

Season 11, Ep 4: Four wickets in four balls. The talking point of the cricket week, after Curtis Campher did it for Ireland. Scotland also had a win after a huge comeback, so we got Matt Roller from Cricinfo to make his Final Word debut, telling us all about the early T20 World Cup quallies, warm-ups, and the IPL final. Also on the show this week: Brazil's women start their next campaign, the Mr Sheffield Shield is back, the WBBL beings, the county champo has yet another form...

TFW with guest co-host Ben Jones

Season 11, Ep 3: With Adam on holiday, his spot for this week's show was taken by the delightful Ben Jones, the CricViz whiz-kid - and just in time for IPL finals week. And yes, we should have posted this episode here before the final happened, but still - if you're interested in looking back, Ben examines a ream of analytical data on pretty much every ball of the tournament. Then sticks around for a spot of Nerd Pledge, the data on Shikha Pandey's wonderball, and some measur...

The Final Word with Philip Brown

Aka: No, FFS, they won't cancel the Ashes

Season 11, Ep 2: It's all we keep hearing about - will the Ashes happen? Spoiler alert: yes. We already have early season sightings of trademarked Ashes Bantz, dragging themselves from hibernation and buzzing obnoxiously into view. What are some better things to talk about? India's women bossed their Test match against Australia but ran out of time to press for a win. Sound familiar? Five days please!

Then it's time for ...

Season 11! And the end of The Streak

Season 11, Ep 1: Time to kick off a new season, as cricket begins again in Australia. The audio is here. 

A huge omnibus show after a busy week in the game. We saw two all-time classics in the Australia-India women's one-dayers, one extending the Aussie streak to 26, the next ending it at last. See the last-over work of Jhulan Goswami, pictured above. 

There'...

The Final Word with Maeva Douma

Season 10, Ep 22: First of all, let's manage expectations. She's 16 years old, very shy, just home from school, and talking to us via translation from French, thanks to her national vice-captain Cynerah Dibande. So this chat is brief and breezy. But it's lovely to see where cricket is going around the world, and the image above is her smile when told that she owns a world record. 

This is Maeva Douma, who wowed the world last week with her four run-outs of the non-...

The Afghanistan dilemma

Season 10, Ep 21: Australia has cancelled on Afghanistan - not formally but in effect - to protest the Taliban's destructive attitudes to women. But identifying the right thing to do is difficult, given that choice also means abandoning Afghanistan's people to extremist rulers. Rather than advocating for one option, we try to look at different aspects to the problem in the hope of understanding it better.

Also this week: Nagraj Gollapudi joins the show to talk about the...

India's cancellation, and the stories of England's Black cricketers

TFW Daily

... is over for now, with the 5th Test at Old Trafford cancelled before it began. We talk about that whole *gestures wildly* thing in the video up top, or the audio here.

The week of watching You Guys Are History

Season 10, Ep 20: Guardian writer Emma John joins the show this week to talk about her recent article drawing togeth...

The Double Don Sachin sandwich

Season 10, Ep 19: Happy Birthday Sachin is back in a  big way, in a temporarily upside-down episode. There's a 7 in the  morning now? The Australian summer is upside down, with the women's  series against India suddenly moved to the Sunshine State. Plus all the  wash-up from the Headingley Test, a farewell to Lord Ted Dexter, and  England's domestic summer winds on.

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Cricket and the Taliban

Season 10, Ep 18: It's far from the most important question facing the country. But given that Afghanistan's cricket team has been a consistent good-news story for the last couple of decades, those who follow the game worry about what will become of it with the Taliban back in power. Shadi Khan Saif is a journalist who has covered Afghanistan politics for years, and who escaped from ...

The glory of a long fifth day

Season 10, Ep 17: Astonishing news for The Final Word this week: Adam had a holiday. The first time he's missed in 362 shows. Daniel Norcross fills in with Geoff, and luxuriates in recalling the  glorious last day of the England-India Test at Lord's, as well as the  last-wicket win that West Indies somehow produced against Pakistan.  You'll also learn just how passionate that night became between Daniel  and former New Zealand captain Jeremy Coney.  2021-08-20 06:19:15 +0000 UTC View Post

The Final Word with John Doyle / Roy Slaven

Season 10, Ep 16: No surprise that the work of Roy & HG has informed the comic sensibility of the Final Word. The voice behind Rampaging Roy Slaven joins the show, in a roundabout way, having spoken to Geoff for a Guardian interview about his book that we thought TFW listeners would like to hear in full.

Also this week: the ICC confirms it will try to get cricket into the 2028 LA Olympics, and onwards. A huge shift in policy. We speak to acting CEO Geoff Allardice a...

The Final Word with Felix White

Season 10, Ep 15: Most of were kids who dreamed of being rock stars. None of us had the single-minded determination to set about making it happen. Felix did, taking a bunch of mates at uni in Bristol to No.1 on the UK charts with the Maccabees. What's even more unexpected is the part that cricket played in Felix's life, two obsessions forming an unlikely partnership.

Now he's written down that story, in a beautiful debut book that ties together ambition, grief, and lone...

Betting the house on the Hundred

Season 10, Ep 14: Like it, hate it, or ignore it, The Hundred is... hunderway? The stakes are high. The bills are high. So is the risk of a stumble. Henry Moeran has been watching more of the actual cricket than anyone, leading the BBC radio coverage. He joins The Final Word to talk through the possibilities and pitfalls of the ECB's big bet.

Also on the show this week: might England bail on the Ashes? Not likely but suggestions have begun. India's reserve team gets tim...

Bonus episode for patrons

Going behind the scenes, plus an extra serving. For most people twice a week is adequate, but maybe some special ones are fiending for more TFW?

After interviewing Clare Connor last week, all the cricket chat that we had already recorded felt pretty superfluous. It got cut.

But we know that people enjoy faff. So if you'd like to hear us whip around slightly out-of-date matches involving Ireland, Australia, India, South Africa, England, West Indies, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh a...

The Final Word with Clare Connor

Season 10, Ep 13: From captaining boys' under-10s to captaining England goes the story. But retiring as a player brought much more. By now it's fair to say that no one person has driven as much progress for women in cricket as Clare Connor. Through the ECB and ICC, this is the story of that change. It's also the story of the human side of making it happen.

On the first day of the controversial Hundred competition, and soon after learning that she will become the first w...

Justin Langer and the spiral of confusion

Season 10, Episode 12: It can be hard to follow Justin Langer's line of logic. The Australian men's coach has an extempore media style that over time can veer into inconsistency. After enough misgivings about his coaching style to prompt a formal review, and after talk about embracing the chance to grow, this week the coach had moved back to denying there was a problem to begin with. Let's try to untangle.

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Ben Stokes and The Replacements

Season 10, Episode 11: Remember when England's whole team got COVID? Or something like that, everyone was watching football. That's why we got Will Macpherson on the show to tell us about England having to quarantine a squad who caught the bug at home, after pulling out of trips overseas to avoid the same. How did it happen, what's happening, and why weren't more hilarious selections made among the Replacements?

(They're going alright, as we type – four quick Pakistan...

Fixing slow over rates once and for all

Season 10, Ep 10:  Welcome to July! We've talked about it, argued about it, and done some hand-wringing about it, so now it's time to look at the subject in detail. What is happening with slow (and ever slowing) over rates? Does it matter? Why or why not? What is happening, why it is happening and how might it be fixed? Andrew Samson, the BBC's master statistician and historian, joins us for part of that chat. 

This is your No.1 stop for over rate discussion, ...

The World Test Championship (finale, problems, solutions)

The biggest six-day three-day event in cricket came to an end this week, and we were all over it like a Las Vegas buffet. Congratulations to New Zealand, and we hope our Kiwi supporting listeners are enjoying this week's warm glowing warming glow. All of our TFW Daily shows are up on the video tubes (see the clip above) and also in the podcast feed covering that match plus the women's Test in Bristol. 

Once all that was done, we recorded our weekly show with Wisden Cricket Monthly ...

This week's show, and a visit from DK

There are a lot of DKs in cricket these days. Delissa Kimmince. Dinesh Karthik. Davis Karashani Arinaitwe, who has torn up some batting line-ups for Uganda. But the original will always be Dennis Keith Lillee. The other week on the show we mentioned a photo of a young Shane Fagg, decades before his TFW patron days, visiting DK in the dressing rooms. Here's that duo.

We're changing things up this week to accommodate the WTC Final running through to Wednesday. So there'll be a Daily show ...

World Test Champs and making change for women in India

If you've been watching the England-India women's Test, you may have noticed a familiar voice on commentary. Adam has been calling the match for Sky and doing an excellent job. Geoff is now living out his dream of being able to directly message disagreements to commentators while watching the TV. 

We're also doing the Daily show for that Test, and will roll it into a double Daily when the World Test Championship starts tonight. The most recent episode on video is above. It's also i...

Robinson and racism, with Vithushan Ehantharajah

Season 10, Ep 7: Vish joins the show in a busy week in England after Ollie Robinson was suspended following his Test debut. We talk through the purpose of his suspension, his history of racist jokes, and what part is played by age – either of the comments themselves or the person making them.

Also: Dan Christian for Australia! He's in the touring squad. But how many weeks of quarantine is it reasonable to ask of someone? The England women's contracts are announced, th...

Boom Boom, Barassi, and Kiwis at Lord's

Another large week has begun. We decided spur of the moment to do the Final Word Daily for the England-NZ Test at Lord's, because why not with Adam at the ground and Geoff in lockdown for those 5am finishes. The video is above, the audio is here.

Only hours before that went out, we published:

Boom Boom boom boom, I want Shahid Afridi in my room

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