Episode 118: World Cricket And All That Shapes It Covered By Wisden Editor Lawrence Booth

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack 2023 is the longest edition on record. It not only records the present state of global cricket but also reflects on the mighty global forces

Episode 117: Sovereigns, stars, stewards, scorers, statisticians … Steven Lynch on this year’s Wisden obituaries

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. Two monarchs lead the obituaries in the 2023 edition of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack. As always, it is a melancholy but matchless memorial to global cricket’s losses, and a section to which many readers turn first. Its compiler and editor,

Episode 116: From teenage record breaker to players’ champion: James Harris of Glamorgan and the PCA

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. After a record-breaking early start in county cricket for Glamorgan, James Harris is back with them after spells with Middlesex and Kent. He has also begun his second term as chair of the Professional Cricketers Association. He is the guest of Peter Oborne and Richard Heller in their latest cricket-themed podcast. In this edition Roger Alton

Episode 115: The weird genius who revolutionized cricket history

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. Many eccentric geniuses have written about cricket, and indeed played it. Few have been as eccentric as Major Rowland Bowen – or had his genius. In 1970, after years of dedicated research (not all his own) he published

Episode 114: Two testaments of cricket and war

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. John Broom has combined his passions for cricket and military history in two books on global cricket in both world wars: Cricket In The First World War Play Up! Play The Game and

Episode 113: A story made for the movies – Pakistan women’s cricket

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. Based in Mumbai, Aayush Puthran is an experienced cricket reporter and analyst, with a strong focus on women’s cricket. He has written an inspirational book, Unveiling Jazbaa, which weaves together the astonishing personal stories of the cre

Episode 112: After a hard day in Nagpur, the great cricket writer Mike Coward gives a masterclass on Australian cricket

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. Mike Coward is among the world’s most distinguished and distinctive cricket writers and broadcasters, although he graciously declines the title of “Australia’s John Arlott.” He makes a welcome return to the crease as the guest of Peter Oborne and Richard Heller in their latest cricket-themed podcast.

Episode 111: An elephant never forgets India’s first Test victory in England

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. In August 1971 Bella the elephant from Chessington Zoo travelled to the Oval to watch India’s historic first Test match victory in England.  Her story gives the title to the fascinating book, Elephant In The Stadium, by the historian

Episode 110: How professionals saved soccer – but not cricket – from public school amateurs, explains sports historian Richard Sanders

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. In the British isles cricket had a start on association football of over a hundred years as a game with Laws, organization and popular following. In the late Victorian era it was overtaken in a short time. Based on his fascinating book

Episode 109: Cricket, diplomacy and a fierce despatch from Freddie Flintoff

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. Cricketer, diplomat and author Tom Fletcher is now Principal of Hertford College, Oxford. As the UK’s ambassador to Lebanon, he made notable efforts to support the country’s cricketers, especially from its community of Sri Lankan workers. Previously, he served in 10 Downing Street as the principal adviser on foreign polic

Episode 108: England versus Pakistan – the first seventy years with historian Najum Latif

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. As England play their first Test series in Pakistan for nearly twenty years one of the country’s leading cricket historians, Najum Latif, describes their reception and celebrates the timely republication of a classic work on the start of England’s cricket relationship with the country. He is an expert tour guide to a vani

Episode 107: Another thrilling spell from fast bowling legend Wes Hall

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. Few sights in cricket’s history have been more thrilling than the great West Indian fast bowler Wes Hall in the 1960s bounding in from his long run. He is now Sir Wesley Hall and the subject of a fine new biography

Episode 106: Before D’Oliveira – the glories and the shame of England’s Tests against South Africa

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. In his book Swallows And Hawke, co-written with past podcast guest André Odendaal, the historian Richard Parry gives a uniquely penetrating account of England’s first eighty years of cricket relations with South Af

Episode 105: A select offering from Ed Smith

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. Ed Smith played cricket for Kent, Middlesex (as captain) and England, was an incisive commentator on Test Match Special and was England’s Chief Selector from 2018 to 2021. In that role, he drew on learning from many different fields as well as those of cricket, as he reveals in his recent polymathic book,

Episode 104: From the captains’ table – cricket in two village communities

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. Two highly successful captains of village cricket teams, Tom Greaves of Reed, Hertfordshire, and Callum Widdows of Horningsham, Wiltshire, are the latest guests of Peter Oborne and Richard Heller in their latest cricket-themed podcast. They share the problems and triumphs of

Episode 103: The cricketing car park of Beirut

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. Fernando Sugath, a Sri Lankan expatriate, has been playing cricket in Lebanon for 25 years, in some extraordinary places and despite some extraordinary obstacles. With Will Dobson, an English expatriate and a bookseller in Beirut, he recently organized the biggest cricket tournament in Lebanon’s turbulent h

Episode 102: Wendy Wimbush – fifty years of keeping but never settling scores

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. Wendy Wimbush has given a lifetime of service to cricket. She is best known as the BBC scorer in the 1970s but has also worked in other capacities in other countries and with some of the most famous names in cricket. She is the guest in the latest edition of the cricket-themed podcast by Peter Oborne and

Episode 101: Mike Coward – sixty years of great cricket writing

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. After sixty years’ experience in all forms of media, Mike Coward has become one of the most honoured reporters and analysts of cricket in his native Australia and across the world. He is the guest of Peter Oborne and Richard Heller in their latest cricket-themed podcast.

Episode 100: Geoff Boycott celebrates yet another century

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. Throughout his playing career, Sir Geoffrey Boycott made a habit of celebrating special occasions with a century. It makes him the ideal and appropriate guest for Peter Oborne and Richard Heller on the hundredth recorded edition (according to official statisticians) of their cricket-themed po

Episode 99: At the wonder house of cricket books

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. Most of cricket’s history for nearly three hundred years can be found behind a small shopfront in a quiet suburban street in Surrey, forty minutes on the commuter train service from London Waterloo. It is easy to miss on a first visit. The most obvious landmark is the large plastic poodle promoting the dog grooming parlour next door. But a

Episode 98: High performance or last performance? Campaigner Alan Higham dissects the ECB review of English cricket

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. Alan Higham has become a leading campaigner for the preservation of the county championship as the foundation of first-class cricket in England and Wales and for real consultation with its supporters over its future. He explains why this is essential now in the light of the ECB’s just-published high-performance review, as t

Episode 97: Can serious cricket survive pornography asks Simon Heffer

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. Simon Heffer has had a distinguished career as a journalist, historian, academic and man of letters, above all as a cricket-lover who contributes a monthly column on the game to the Daily Telegraph. He is the guest of

Episode 96: Rebuilding Ukraine cricket and children’s lives – despite the ICC

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. When Peter Oborne and Richard Heller last spoke to Kobus Olivier, CEO of the Ukraine Cricket Federation, he and his four dogs had escaped to Poland from the war-shattered city of Kyiv. A lot has happened since to him and to Ukraine cricket. He updates Peter and Richard as the first guest in their returning cricket-themed podc

Episode 95: The joy of Sri Lankan cricket, expertly distilled

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. Given the joy it has given to the world, the history of Sri Lankan cricket has been strangely neglected. A young author, Nicholas Brookes, has now filled the gap with a masterly study: An Island’s Eleven. He shares its rich and often surprising conten

Episode 94: Dutch cricket – and when it can be dangerous to watch

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. The Netherlands has played organized cricket almost as long as England. Steven van Hoogstraten was chairman of the Royal Dutch Cricket As

Episode 93: Writing and cricket: two matching crafts for Harold Pinter

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. The 2009 edition of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack contains a beautiful tribute to Harold Pinter. It was written by the academic and musician Ian Smith, his friend and teammate in the celebrated Gaieties Cricket Club. Ian traces Pinter’s deep dedication to cricket and its influence on his life and work, as the guest o

Episode 92: Cricket – a prisoner of market forces?

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. Tim Wigmore and Freddie Wilde won major awards in 2020 for their book Cricket 2.0, tracking the T20 cricket revolution. Tim has now joined forces with one of the world’s leading sports economists, Stefan Szymanski, to writ

Episode 91: Charles Sale digs deep into the tunnels at Lord’s

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. Charles Sale has been a sports journalist for forty years, almost half of them as the incisive sports diarist of the Daily Mail. In his book

Episode 90: Non-racial sport: its slow journey with English cricket in the rear

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. The former Sports News Editor of the BBC, Mihir Bose, has written with great authority about British and international sport for nearly fifty years. His latest book, Dreaming The Impossible, tracks the slow journey towards a no

Episode 89: Writer, broadcaster, cricketer Isabelle Westbury celebrates the upward trajectory of women’s cricket

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They're no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans - hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects. After a playing career in the Netherlands, Middlesex and Somerset Isabelle Westbury has become one of Britain’s most acute writers and broadcasters on cricket, in combination with a professional legal career. She is the latest guest of Peter Oborne and Richard Heller in their cricket-themed