Lashing/dabbing a seed/cherry, moral victories, and why do the Aussies hate Bazball?

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Speaker 12 That is very good. Bold!

Speaker 12 A team Patrick!

Speaker 3 Bacing away!

Speaker 3 He didn't try and hit it too hard, just to rest it through the field. Spent time at the wicket, played bread and butter shots, keep it safe, took it off his hip and his legs.
He's done that.

Speaker 3 Got him!

Speaker 3 Why did he do that?

Speaker 12 Unbelievable!

Speaker 3 What about that? It wasn't just one of those where it may stick or it may not.

Speaker 12 Remember the name!

Speaker 14 There's so much elegance about it, and yet it was quite brutal.

Speaker 2 Hello and welcome to Cricket Clichés. I'm Daniel Norcross.
This is the very first episode of a spin-off that will hopefully be more Frazier than Baywatch Nights.

Speaker 2 We'll aim to do what our footballing big brother does, but in the genteel world of cricket.

Speaker 2 It'll be an audio celebration and an interrogation of the language of a sport whose jargon and vernacular is every bit as rich, eccentric, and downright frustrating as the beautiful game.

Speaker 2 And of course, the ashes are just around the corner. We'll be with you throughout the series, whatever happens.
After that, well, who knows? Coming up on this maiden episode of Cricket Clichés.

Speaker 2 How exactly does one bowl a heavy ball? Is it better to smoke, stroke, or poke it through the covers? And what is it about Australians?

Speaker 2 Why can they not understand the very simple concept of a moral victory?

Speaker 2 But who, you might well be wondering, have we recruited to answer those questions? Let me introduce you to our crack team of cricketing commentators. He's the conduit, the link to our forebears.

Speaker 2 He's the first reserve on football clichés, and he knows more about cricket than Adam, Dave, and Charlie. So here he is, the continuity candidate, Nick Miller.
G'day, Nick.

Speaker 2 I've turned into Australian. I've only been in Perth for two days.
I'm saying good day.

Speaker 13 I'm so sorry. You've gone native already.
This is dreadful scenes, Daniel. Hello.
I'm delighted to be here.

Speaker 13 Think of me as like the,

Speaker 13 whenever a team changes, completely changes coaching stuff, I'm the sort of masseuse that everyone keeps on to just to kind of keep things sticking over a little bit.

Speaker 2 Well, do you know, I've got quite a stiff neck from the 18-hour flight, and a masseuse is exactly what I'm after, Nick.

Speaker 2 And I can see with your bear-like hands digging into the knots in my neck that that could be exactly what I'm after. You've sent me off in a reverie.

Speaker 2 Next up is the author of the article that convinced our shadowy overlords that a cricket cliché's podcast might just be viable.

Speaker 2 His piece was about the curious and almost endless language that can be used for the ostensibly basic act of either hitting, throwing, or, you know, doing whatever you want with a cricket ball.

Speaker 2 He is South African. You can forgive him for that, but he is Dan Gallen.

Speaker 14 Hey guys, hey Daniel, yeah. I'm very excited to be here and play the Jonathan Trott role in this team.

Speaker 2 Well, yeah, I mean, that's a hell of a role. You're basically going to play absolutely brilliantly for about four years and then disappear in coach Afghanistan.

Speaker 14 Well, fingers crossed.

Speaker 2 Curious role to play, but good for you.

Speaker 2 And finally, the spiritual keeper of the cricket language flame, the arbiter of nonsense about this very silly but glorious game, and the man about whom one prospective listener said, if you've not got Dave Tickner doing cricket clichés, you're doing it wrong.

Speaker 2 It's Dave Tickner.

Speaker 7 Hello.

Speaker 2 Dave, now the thing about you being called Dave Tickner is that we all know you as tickers, right? Yes. So

Speaker 2 we are going to be calling you tickers throughout, but it occurs to me that

Speaker 2 if you say something absolutely brilliant, then I think we're going to call you by your full name, which is David Robert Derek Tickner. David Robert Derek Tickner.

Speaker 2 It's what happens when Brian Charles Lara smokes the ball through the offside, right? Brian Charles Lara becomes Brian Charles Lara if he does something absolutely brilliant.

Speaker 2 So I'm going to suggest right now that while you will exist for the most part in this programme as tickers,

Speaker 2 if you do, if you knock one out of the park, you're going to be David Robert Derek Tickner.

Speaker 3 Early pressure. Let's hope that gets oiled out.

Speaker 2 So our first episode lands on the eve of the ashes. The talking has been going on since, well, pretty much the end of the last ashes.

Speaker 2 And this is a sporting event where the talking is almost half the contest. But the actual cricket is nearly here.

Speaker 2 As such, we thought the very best place to start this show would be down under, and an examination of the very particular way that Australians approach and talk about cricket.

Speaker 2 So I'm going to kick us off with the thing that's been driving them completely nuts. There's no doubt about it.

Speaker 2 They've got the fear.

Speaker 2 I don't quite know exactly why. I've got my own theories, but I really want to hear it from you three.
I'm going to start with you, Nick. It's Basball.

Speaker 2 What is it about Basball that has sent Australians so hot under the collar? Normally, England arrived and we're just a bunch of limp-wristed, wet-eyed lambs to the slaughter.

Speaker 2 Now, turning up with basball embladened on our faces,

Speaker 2 it's like we've invaded the country and broken the Glen Eagles Agreement, various UN resolutions, not to mention the spirit of cricket. What is wrong with Basball?

Speaker 13 There are probably several things. There is, as you kind of suggested there, there is an element of England being kind of not the, oh, we're just going to show up and play the game kind of thing.

Speaker 13 There is an aggression that is historically un-English which is probably throwing people a bit and there is the there is obviously the piety that has come along with elements of Buzzball that is inevitably going to wind anyone up really never mind just Australians

Speaker 13 so there is there is some of that but the the kind of the

Speaker 13 and there's also an element of which I think we might hear in a a clip very shortly of the well we were we were hitting the cricket ball hard years ago. So, you know,

Speaker 13 surely we invented this.

Speaker 13 So, there is an element of that as well, that they are kind of irritated that this seems to be presented as a new thing that they claim that you know they have done been doing for quite some time.

Speaker 2 Well, look, you mentioned the clip. Let's get on to the clip.
This was a recent press launch.

Speaker 2 A great cricketer asked some former Test great, Dave Warner, Adam Gilchrist among them, and Pat Cummins, if they got wound up by Basball.

Speaker 3 Does Basball wind you up?

Speaker 14 Not really.

Speaker 2 I feel like most cricket that kind of batters the scoring runs that winds me up. But as a general I'd say not too much.

Speaker 3 Does Basball wind you up?

Speaker 14 No because I just think it's a cop-out.

Speaker 3 So if they win or they lose they just say this is the way that we play and we're entertaining. Does Basball wind you up?

Speaker 2 I thoroughly enjoy it. I love it.
We were doing it 20 years before them and that's just the way you play cricket.

Speaker 14 See the ball hit it.

Speaker 14 No, it doesn't wind me up.

Speaker 2 Now tickers, there's a couple of things here. David Warder saying, I'm not wound up in the most wound-up way a man has ever said anything.
Adam Gilchrist, what do you mean, Basball?

Speaker 2 We've been playing it for years. Do they just not know what Basball is? What do you think they think Basball is?

Speaker 3 I think this is it, and I think England is guilty of this at times, is

Speaker 3 I don't think what... Basball is is what Australia think Basball is because they think it's just

Speaker 3 whacking it and not caring and trying to score quickly but it it is much more

Speaker 3 sort of ethereal than that it's more of an idea

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 the the fast scoring and the whacking it and

Speaker 3 you know not caring if you get out supposedly is

Speaker 3 a symptom if you want to have a go or but it's an outcome of basball basball is the approach to the game it's not about the batting.

Speaker 3 You can see basball in the in the field arguably more than you can when they're batting because England's batters are actually that's that is the way they play to use another cricket cliche the bowling attack becoming aggressive

Speaker 3 not always as demonstrably or as successfully as the batters but England basball in the field they don't just basball with the bat it is a whole approach to the game and it does require this sort of absolute buy-in this cult-like

Speaker 3 this is how we do it Because as soon as you let any doubt creep in, the whole thing falls apart. It has to be this cult-like obsession with it.

Speaker 3 And I think that does wind people up because there is a sort of hero, main character energy to it that I think is quite infuriating.

Speaker 2 You can see that in the film. I'm so glad you mentioned being in the field.
The old Trafford Test, Joffre Archer and Liam Dawson, the old Trafford Test this last summer.

Speaker 2 They were both being captained by

Speaker 2 Ben Stokes, and in some cases, for either the second time or the first time.

Speaker 2 You could tell they didn't understand that when they said that they wanted their field to be set in a certain way, Ben Stokes had to come around and say, No, no, no, no, no, no, you don't understand.

Speaker 2 I'm perfectly happy for you to be pumped for six over here. I don't give a damn if your leaking runs through there, Nick.

Speaker 2 This is Basbool, isn't it? Basboard is whatever Ben Stokes has the vibe, the feeling that needs to be done in the moment. and everybody just has to go along with it.

Speaker 2 That is one really crucial element of Basbo.

Speaker 13 And maybe

Speaker 13 one of the reasons that people get annoyed with it is because

Speaker 13 they kind of recognise that they don't quite understand it. They recognise that

Speaker 13 there is, or that their version of it is

Speaker 13 not quite what they sort of kind of see on the field. That it is this kind of, as they've said, this kind of ethereal thing that they can't quite get a grasp on.

Speaker 2 I want to throw in just something else. I'm going to throw it into into Dan because Dan's a, he can arbitrate this.

Speaker 2 Essentially, when the English turn up in Australia, you have this cultural battle, which is that Australia is a land that's new and full of great ideas and that they're not like the sad milquetoasts back in the home country who never showed any kind of get up and go, who just sit there tending sheep and then going off to war and being slaughtered.

Speaker 2 No, no, no, no, no. We Australians went for a bright new future

Speaker 2 and we do things differently. We're larickins, we're crazy, we reinvent the rules.
Now for this particular series, you've got a team of

Speaker 2 senescent pensioners, a 39-year-old opening the batting.

Speaker 2 When they lost Josh Hazelwood, they went for a 35-year-old in Michael Nisa as the replacement.

Speaker 2 They liked to go at about 2.8 and over.

Speaker 2 And England have turned up and they've turned the tables on them and said, look, we're all young. We're all funky.
We're all crazy.

Speaker 2 And this is like going right at the very heart of how Australians feel about themselves and how they feel about themselves is defined by how they feel about the English.

Speaker 2 Is that a reasonable thing to suggest?

Speaker 14 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and talking about clichés, it's so funny as an outsider seeing

Speaker 14 how the two teams are doubling down on the other's cliché. It seems to be making the Aussies more uncomfortable.
And, you know, what is Basball? I mean, Basball is whatever you want. It's a vibe.

Speaker 14 It's the water that you place in whatever vessel you decide it is. We don't care if we go out, but we're going to war, as the England mental skills coach says.

Speaker 14 So it's the most important thing in the world and it's the least important thing in the world. And the Aussies...

Speaker 14 It is quite fun seeing

Speaker 14 the alphas of the cricket world kind of chase their tails and try and act all prim and proper. So as a South African, I'm finding it hilarious how wet the Aussies are behaving.
It's brilliant.

Speaker 14 Bring it on. I still want them to win, but it is funny watching them just melt.

Speaker 12 Oh, wow.

Speaker 3 Dropped a bum there.

Speaker 14 Sorry, is that too early? Should I have been saving that for the third episode?

Speaker 2 No, absolutely not.

Speaker 2 No, because I mean, the assumption always, if you're English, is that everybody wants you to lose, and for perfectly decent and righteous reasons, because jealousy is an ugly trait, and it's what happens to almost everybody else around the world.

Speaker 2 They're not English. They wish they were.
They want the English to lose. I totally get that.

Speaker 2 But why in this instance? Because it doesn't really make any sense, you know. I mean, South Africans were welcomed with open arms to lords where they could finally win a trophy.

Speaker 2 We helped them not bottle it by putting it in a neutral venue and then really support them. You know,

Speaker 2 what is it about the Australians that you would rather that even they win?

Speaker 14 You know, it's two reasons, I think. You know, and obviously speaking for every single South African cricket fan in the world.

Speaker 14 The one is Mike Marquis sees anyone but England and you know, that sort of old colonial hang-up and that insecurity. But the other one is, is I share Australia's insecurities.

Speaker 14 I don't like England not being English. I don't like England being captained by a guy with a six-pack and tattooed forearms and they're all wearing bucket hats and playing rock music.

Speaker 2 You should have grey hair, yeah?

Speaker 14 Yeah, I want Mike Atherton and his erudite language to go to the toss and

Speaker 14 lose and

Speaker 14 return to England proud but defeated. That's the role you're supposed to play.
I don't like that you're behaving in a way that you shouldn't be behaving. So, yeah, I want order restored to the world.

Speaker 14 In the age of Trump and Musk and the threat of everything,

Speaker 14 I want at least cricket to behave itself.

Speaker 2 Okay, I get that. I mean, can we just,

Speaker 2 we're going to finish on Basboard because so much time is spent working out what Basball is. And I think we agree, it's essentially a vibe.
It's almost like homeopathy, isn't it?

Speaker 2 What it is, you like go to Tom Hartley, you say he's bowled nine overs, he's gone none for 63, and every other captain in the world is going, oh, God, they've sent me this completely inexperienced no-hoper.

Speaker 2 Then would I need a gun spinner? Then Stokes says, no, you're going to bowl another 30 overs. And eventually he gets him over the line.
It's like faith healing.

Speaker 2 It's like putting the tiny drop of something in his orange juice. And now we've given you a magic potion.
It's asterisks. It's all this kind of crap.

Speaker 13 An ex-girlfriend who was into Reiki healing said, Well, look, if you don't really believe in it, then it's not going to work, is it?

Speaker 3 That is Bazball.

Speaker 13 Yeah.

Speaker 3 It only works if you believe in it.

Speaker 2 But we can believe in the right spelling of it, can't we? Because the Australians have been trolling us by spelling it wrong. Okay.
And to me,

Speaker 2 I'm actually genuinely offended by that. And normally I'm only offended by people who take offence at anything.
But this is actually getting on my nerves now, right? It's not Baz Space Ball.

Speaker 2 There are no hyphens involved either.

Speaker 2 There aren't two capital letters. Can we all agree it's Baz Ball? It's all one word, and that's it.

Speaker 3 They're doing it on purpose. They know how to spell it.
They knew Stuart Broad's name when they wouldn't write that.

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Speaker 2 Let's come on to the next thing that happens when you're in Australia. And you guys have been really hot on on this.
It's what newspapers do. And normally the first test match takes place in Brisbane.

Speaker 2 And their newspaper, they've been used to this for years. So I reckon they've got an Eve of Ashes writer that actually spends most of his time talking about wind farms.

Speaker 2 But they drag him out from his day job and go, can you write those really insane headlines? Because the English are coming to town. What's it called? The Courier Mail or something.

Speaker 2 But now they're doing it in Western Australia. And I think this is the chance for these guys absolutely to flex their muscles.

Speaker 2 They've been waiting in Perth to write really ridiculous headlines, and they've pulled off a couple of absolute crackers. Here is one of my favourites.

Speaker 2 England's cocky captain complainer still smarting from Creasegate.

Speaker 2 Whatever the hell that is, I think we all know, but it was never.

Speaker 12 No one called it.

Speaker 12 No one.

Speaker 2 So Australian.

Speaker 2 I'll give it you again.

Speaker 2 England's cocky captain complainer, that's all in capitals, still smarting from Creasegate, lands in in Perth, the usual classic picture of an English person arriving with a lot of bags on a trolley.

Speaker 2 He lands there early, thinking dopey Bears Ball, with a capital B twice, can take the yeshes. That's one of the longest headlines of all time.
The big headline is Bears Ball, B-A-W-L.

Speaker 2 I'm going to start with you, Dan, because again, you are the arbitrator here. Stokes, cocky captain, he's a captain.
I mean, he's, I suppose, quite confident. What's he ever complained about?

Speaker 2 What is Creasegate? And what is he crying about? Because I don't see any crying going on. I see England turning up and actually doing the opposite of crying.

Speaker 14 Well, to be fair to the paper, he did land in Perth. So

Speaker 14 they got that right at least.

Speaker 14 Yeah, the Western Australia, God, they've been great. They're like the

Speaker 14 person who stumbled, you know, they're like a new money.

Speaker 14 They've stumbled on a lot of wealth, having a first test, and they've bought a marble statue for their garden and a gaudy staircase that they're building and the kitchen is some mauve horrible color so yeah good on them i mean you know they let let them let him enjoy it what are they complaining about well they

Speaker 14 is is the absence of complaining complaining if you've if you've built a cliche and a narrative in your head you know is he is he cocky because he's you know he's got a good rig and he and he looks good and he's got an angular jaw i don't know um

Speaker 14 I mean, long may it continue.

Speaker 14 I hope before now and the start of the test, which is only a day away, I hope we get five more headlines from the Western Australia because they've been fantastic. I've absolutely loved it.

Speaker 2 I couldn't agree with you more.

Speaker 13 Are we sure that maybe

Speaker 13 there's like a national person that's

Speaker 13 responsible for this in Australia? Like a sort of poet laureate kind of thing.

Speaker 13 It's not the responsibility of the individual newspapers.

Speaker 13 They just kind of call up this person whenever England lands anywhere.

Speaker 3 I'm almost sure it is the same guy from the Korean Mail. That might be wrong, but I think it is the same guy who writes this nonsense.

Speaker 2 Jacket, he's on like an annual stipend of like four jars of Vegemite and

Speaker 2 a leg of kangaroo.

Speaker 13 Like a, you know, in like the Bourne, the Jason Bourne films when someone says, activate the asset.

Speaker 13 They just kind of, someone presses a button and this and the little light goes on in this guy's head.

Speaker 14 Or they find him in like a cabin in the art back and he like he swore he never he wouldn't do it again and this is just going to be one last test series.

Speaker 14 Big beard, short shorts.

Speaker 3 It also works because they brought him out of retirement for one last job, and he's not been paying attention, which is why he doesn't understand anything that's happened in the last three years.

Speaker 3 They probably called it Creasegate

Speaker 2 because we've touched on Creasegate. We need to touch on the other thing that Australians do, which is get everything wrong.
So, they're totally right to be infuriated by the English.

Speaker 2 I don't have a problem with that at all, but they get infuriated the wrong way. So, they got infuriated.
Creasegate is our jumping off point here.

Speaker 2 I kind of know for a fact that pretty much everybody in the England team knew that Johnny Besto was being a dopey bugger walking out of his crease and it was perfectly within the laws of the game for him to be given out and he was.

Speaker 2 The fact that it made Ben Stokes and Stuart Broad briefly mad with rage simply gave England a better chance of winning.

Speaker 2 I mean, the worst thing that could have happened to England in that situation would have been if Pat Cummins had had called him back, because suddenly Australians would have had the moral high ground for the next 250 years, right?

Speaker 2 But this Creasegate nonsense is what's created the wrongness about the moral victory, isn't it?

Speaker 2 And let's just dive into that a little bit here, because the moral victory, Dave, or tickers, I should say, the moral victory, as Lawrence Booth has pointed out, was an answer to a question that was posed by a journalist to Harry Brooke before the fifth test.

Speaker 2 It had absolutely nothing to do with Alex Carey within the laws of the game perfectly justifiably stumping Johnny Burstow.

Speaker 3 First of all, I like that we are now calling it Creasegate, by the way.

Speaker 2 That's happened.

Speaker 3 That's a thing. Another thing there that you correctly said stumping, because one of my favourite things about that dismissal is that there's three things Australians like to say about it.

Speaker 3 One, it's perfectly fair, mate.

Speaker 3 Learn the laws, and you wrote the laws, but loads of them call it a run out.

Speaker 12 It's like, wasn't a run out, learn the laws.

Speaker 3 My only issue with that dismissal is when people call it a run out, then I get rattled. But the dismissal itself was absolutely fine, but it was not a run out.

Speaker 12 But

Speaker 3 the moral victory, yeah, had nothing to do with that.

Speaker 3 It was just a question asked to Harry Brooke, and he gave a very sort of standard answer that, yeah, if England were to win that final test and get a two-all draw in which they'd had the best of a game ruined by rain, that yeah, that could be considered a moral victory.

Speaker 3 And that is the definition of a moral victory that has existed in cricket, as far as I can tell, forever.

Speaker 3 Batsman Nixon threw the slips for four, and the commentator says, oh, that's a moral victory for the bowler there.

Speaker 3 Everyone understands what that means, or understood what that meant, because now nobody understands what that was.

Speaker 3 Because the word moral in there has now tied this to the spirit of cricket, and that's where the cocky captain complainer comes from. England do have this thing of

Speaker 3 we're the arbiters,

Speaker 3 that's not the spirit of cricket.

Speaker 3 But of course, Australia getting annoyed about that, that's just more hypocrisy because they always had the line that they would push right up against the line but never cross the line, but they decided where the line was.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 it always comes back to with England and Australia that they're both going, yeah, but when I do it, it's cute.

Speaker 3 They're both as bad as each other for this sort of stuff. But suddenly, everyone now thinks a moral victory is winning in a moral way.

Speaker 3 So that England can't win a game unless they've also won it morally.

Speaker 12 And that's never what it meant. It never, ever meant that.

Speaker 3 It just meant you didn't win, but

Speaker 3 you know,

Speaker 3 you in some way had the better of that situation. A bowler gets a, you know, draws a false shot out of a batter, but the batter gets four runs for it.
That's a moral victory for the bowler.

Speaker 3 Everyone knew what that meant. Like, there was, like,

Speaker 3 Ian Botham was asked about it, some event or other, and he said, oh, I don't know anything about that. I didn't play for morals.

Speaker 12 Now,

Speaker 3 there's no way that Ian Botham hasn't said, that's a moral victory for the bowler. Probably after complaining that there should have been seven slips instead of six.

Speaker 3 but there's no way he hasn't used and understood that phrase and now no i don't know what that means it's an entire sport has apparently decided to pretend it didn't use and understand that phrase for decades and now it's all about crease gate which it was never about anyway personally i want to campaign for us getting rid of the moral victory generally in in in all parts of cricket because one of the wonderful things about cricket is that it doesn't have to be like other sports and it it doesn't have to become obsessed with moral philosophy.

Speaker 2 I'm all for that. The game is essentially unfair.
You start with a toss for heaven's sake, right? It's the most unfair game that there is. You might get to bowl first in cloudy conditions.

Speaker 2 Bowl aside out. I mean, let's face it, England did that when they won the Ashes in 2010.
The MCG, the ball hooped around all over the place, it was grey.

Speaker 2 They bowled out Australia for under 100 and they were 140 odd for done when the sun came out at the end of the day. I don't think the Australians could claim a moral victory there.

Speaker 2 There were no morals going on at all. There was just the cruel, hard reality that cricket is the most unfair game in the world.
So I personally want to be done with the whole notion of morality.

Speaker 2 It's just that the Australians insist on keeping it going. Right, let's move on.

Speaker 2 It's the greatest trick I've been asked here, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled, getting Australians to be convinced that the English are the whines.

Speaker 2 And I think this is a really good question because the first people to hurl bombs at people's heads were Macdonald and Gregory.

Speaker 2 I'm going to get around Tommy, I'm going to get really historical here with you.

Speaker 2 1920-21, 1921 and 1924-25, the Aussies used fast bowlers for the first time. It's hard to believe, but before the war, a spinner would open the bowling.

Speaker 2 Somebody might bowl a little quick, but you know, you could see in the record, he's bowled 26 overs. So what's he bowling? 70 miles an hour? Absolute tops.

Speaker 2 Suddenly they got these big quicks come along.

Speaker 2 Then in 1932, and they're doing this, by the way, at a bunch of emaciated war veterans who hadn't eaten properly for six years, while the Aussies, like Don Bradman, later on, complained that they got sore foots and never had to go to war and just sit there consuming kangaroo steak by the absolute bucket load and wait for us off the boat, each of them three times bigger than all of our poor sad lads.

Speaker 2 1932-3, Douglas Jardine goes over there, takes a look at the laws of cricket, realises that you are actually allowed to hit Donald Bradman around the chest area and England win comfortably.

Speaker 2 Ever since which time, the Australians have somehow accused us, the English, of whining.

Speaker 2 How have they pulled that trick, Dave?

Speaker 12 It's

Speaker 3 the annoyingly simple answer is because they win more, isn't it? That you don't winge after you win, you winge after you lose. Pound for pound, Australia are bigger whines than England.

Speaker 14 I will go to my grave on that hill.

Speaker 3 But England whinge more because Australia win more often than England do, and especially in the ashes. But, you know, there's like

Speaker 3 the last series in that final test,

Speaker 3 the series that they have come to define as England claiming moral victories and whinging about Creasegate non-stop.

Speaker 3 That test ended with Australia crying their eyes out because Chris Wokes and Stuart Broad were getting the ball to move in English conditions.

Speaker 3 They whinge after every game they have ever lost. England whinge.
I'm not saying England don't whinge.

Speaker 3 But the idea that Australia just accepts defeat as part and parcel of the game and on they go, don't whinge about it like the

Speaker 3 crying English do. They whinge all the time.

Speaker 2 Well, they've been whinging since 1956. 100 years.

Speaker 2 When Jim Laker took 19 wickets at Headingley, apparently it was because the pitch was unfairly took spin, even though England scored 420 in the first innings. I mean, there's a toss.

Speaker 2 If you'd won the toss, they could have batted first. They didn't.
Whose fault's that?

Speaker 2 They probably called tails because they, you know, don't like to see the monarch's head on a coin and yet consistently vote to keep it there for reasons that only they know.

Speaker 14 It's a land of contrast.

Speaker 14 It really is.

Speaker 14 Can I just say, as a South African, this whole conversation and all this moral victory in the whinging, I'm just reminded of that Spider-Man meme where the two spiders or the three Spider-Men are just pointing at each other.

Speaker 14 It's also that office meme where they hold up the two pictures and it's the same thing. You are the same.

Speaker 14 The rest of the world likes you just as much as each other, which is not very much, and you're the same. Can you both lose? Can both teams lose in Ashes now?

Speaker 3 They're both bad winners and bad winners.

Speaker 2 I would argue, Dan, that actually the last Ashes in England, both sides lost.

Speaker 2 England lost the opportunity for an amazing come from behind 3-2 win because of the rain at Old Trafford. and Australia has still not won a series in England since 2001.

Speaker 2 So actually, it was supposed to be one of the greatest Ashes series of all time.

Speaker 2 And both sides really don't want to talk about it anymore because they didn't actually achieve what they were trying to do, which is one of the essential absurdities of playing a sport in which a draw is acceptable.

Speaker 2 Now, let's get on to a couple of things. Listen to Neil.
A little bit of housekeeping here, and it's a very reasonable. question.

Speaker 2 He says, I know they're down under, and the joke is often about things being upside down or the wrong way around, But what kind of nonsense is putting the wickets first in the score?

Speaker 2 This is a really good question. They don't do it in New Zealand.

Speaker 2 They don't do it in South Africa, do they?

Speaker 12 No.

Speaker 2 They don't do it anywhere. Does anybody...
I think I do know the reason, but does anybody else have a theory? Because mine is mostly a theory.

Speaker 3 I've heard a theory.

Speaker 3 It doesn't really explain it, but the one I heard, it sounds like bollocks, is that when they built the scoreboard at Sydney, they built it with the wickets first and everyone else just copied it.

Speaker 3 But that really just begs the question:

Speaker 3 why did they do that? It doesn't answer the question, but that's the theory that someone told me once. I think they were having me on.

Speaker 2 Well, I've got one that is obviously described by an Australian and therefore comes freighted with probably deviousness and lying because we know what they're like.

Speaker 2 By the way, we can only say this because we're going to have Aussies on soon.

Speaker 3 We've got to get it all out now, haven't we?

Speaker 2 Get it out of our system. Get it out of our system.
I was told that it's because, well, look, mate, you can't win a game without taking 20 wickets. It's how many wickets have you got?

Speaker 2 Who gives a damn about the runs?

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's kind of plausible, isn't it?

Speaker 3 Do you know what? That sounds to me like the way Americans try to rationalize Fahrenheit as being more logical than Celsius.

Speaker 3 If you want to do the score the wrong way round, do the score the wrong way round. It doesn't matter.
It doesn't really matter, does it? But don't pretend it makes more sense.

Speaker 14 just own it. Someone's told me that the only reason was because it wasn't what the English weren't doing, like it was just a point of being different.

Speaker 14 I mean, I don't believe it, which sounds ridiculous, but you can kind of believe it.

Speaker 3 If that is the reason, I'd have to grudgingly admire it. I can respect that as a reason.

Speaker 14 Look, we've called the crease gate. Should we just say that is the reason?

Speaker 3 We're solving stuff here, aren't we?

Speaker 2 I've got to get on to Australian weirdnesses in language.

Speaker 2 We've touched on this, but the basic question comes down to this. this.
Why can't Australians call a cricket a ball, a ball, a delivery, a ripper?

Speaker 2 Why can't they do that? Rock is another one. Here, though, is perhaps the most extreme example.

Speaker 7 Here's Cameron Bancroft talking to the broadcast team after a BBL game.

Speaker 17 And when I was playing County Cricket for Gloucestershire, I was a declaration bowler barn with the new stonker, and I picked up a deuce at Del Ray Rawlins, a young left-hander that plays for Sussex.

Speaker 17 So poor young man

Speaker 13 stonker means something very different from where I'm from.

Speaker 14 It means something that's smelly, isn't it?

Speaker 13 That's what I thought. Can be.
Can be, yeah, can be, I suppose.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 13 Stonker to me

Speaker 13 is, you know,

Speaker 13 you've got a stonkom, you know.

Speaker 13 That's what I know it as.

Speaker 2 Nick, where are you from?

Speaker 13 The sort of leafy midlands of England. Maybe we do things differently there.

Speaker 2 So is this where

Speaker 2 you call a roll of bread a cob?

Speaker 13 A cob, yes, very much so. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 So, could a really good cob give you a stonker?

Speaker 13 It would have to be really good, but yes, in theory.

Speaker 3 Could a cob be another name for a cricket ball?

Speaker 13 It's going to be, you're not going to get much bounce with a cob, but um, but yeah, I suppose it could be.

Speaker 2 Some of these drive me absolutely nuts.

Speaker 2 Like, to the extent that I think I don't do it anymore, but I took to Twitter at the end of the last decade because I'd heard so many Australian commentators using the words cherry, pill, and seed.

Speaker 2 These are three that I absolutely despise.

Speaker 2 Who started these three? And

Speaker 2 I don't want to lead you down the obvious path of Warney, but I feel like he was there when it happened.

Speaker 2 But there was a group thing that happened, and it never I never heard Richie Benno talking about a seed. No.
I never heard Richie Benno talking about a cherry.

Speaker 2 When we had proper commentators from Australia, when did this nonsense start?

Speaker 13 man.

Speaker 3 Proper audience.

Speaker 3 I was going straight to Warren. I don't know if he started it.
He definitely is the one in my head who popularised it.

Speaker 3 He seems to be the one that I can just easily hear him now talking about a cherry or a pill

Speaker 14 taking poles.

Speaker 3 I have a slightly different opinion on seed.

Speaker 3 I don't like it, but I think

Speaker 3 I think with like cherry or pill, they're just bad second mentions of ball. And ball is such a fundamental thing to a game of critical.
You can just say ball.

Speaker 3 Say ball as many times as you need to say ball.

Speaker 14 I like nut.

Speaker 3 Nut.

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's close to a seed, that is a nut.

Speaker 14 Bigger, though.

Speaker 3 Heavier.

Speaker 2 But often it's the same thing, isn't it?

Speaker 14 You can't bowl a heavy seed, can you?

Speaker 12 Well, no.

Speaker 14 You can bowl a heavy nut.

Speaker 3 You can't bowl a heavy seed.

Speaker 14 No.

Speaker 3 But I think a seed has some connotations of being a good delivery, yeah. Like, oh, that's an absolute seed.
I don't know, I

Speaker 3 even hearing it come out of my mouth, I don't like it, but I think that you couldn't say that's an absolute cherry, yeah.

Speaker 14 Where's the end points? You know, that's an apple, oh, that's an orange, you know, like

Speaker 14 these are these all, these, I mean, these, have you seen a seed or a nut? They're not even shaped like balls, but an apple is a you know, oh, that's a that's a cracking watermelon. That's

Speaker 3 that's a heavy ball, yeah.

Speaker 2 A watermelon is a heavy ball, an apple makes way more sense, You're absolutely right. Yeah, always.

Speaker 2 What a kumquat that was. I mean, it's just

Speaker 2 cherries, a minuscule. Yeah.

Speaker 2 A good red apple looks a lot like a ball. I mean, it just.

Speaker 14 Golden delicious.

Speaker 12 What a ball that is, by the way.

Speaker 2 One last thing to say about that. It's that I hate it more.

Speaker 2 You see, because look, it may have been Warren. He may have started it.
He may have invaded Poland. I don't know.
But what I do know,

Speaker 2 what I do know is that there is something somehow that gets a little bit of sick in the back of my throat when somebody who's not Australian or is Australian and isn't an ex-player does it.

Speaker 2 Do you know what I mean? There's something kind of like trying to gain approval that doesn't work for me. And it's similar if I hear an English commentator do it when they've got an Aussie with them.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Because it's like, we've lost the war then.
Like basketball's never going to work. You can take your basketball and stick it up your ass.

Speaker 2 If you're actually falling for their seed cherry pill nonsense, we might as well give up now and go home.

Speaker 3 It is definitely that sort of bully's little sniveling mate thing, isn't it?

Speaker 2 Just yeah,

Speaker 12 that pill.

Speaker 3 No,

Speaker 3 it is very hamster-hammond.

Speaker 2 That was a very beautiful Stuart Lee moment.

Speaker 4 Time, it's always vanishing.

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Speaker 2 So, look, we've put a few worlds to right, but we have got six more episodes to put more worlds to right.

Speaker 2 And the reason why these worlds are being put to right is actually, in a way, our founding father, the man who's made all of this possible.

Speaker 2 He sits there now without his beanie on, with his internet connection now finally working like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. But he came up with an idea.

Speaker 2 I remember him ringing me, and we had a very gentle conversation. I had no idea it would turn into this.

Speaker 2 Dan Gallon, writing in The Guardian, compiled a dictionary of all the words we use to describe the very simple and straightforward act of hitting a ball with a bat, or at least a first draft.

Speaker 2 As it feels, this is something that could run and run. It could grow and grow.
This is what this programme, hopefully, is going to tease out.

Speaker 2 I mean, you've even gone so far because you are, if you don't mind me saying so, like everybody involved in cricket, just a little bit weird. You've put together a wagon wheel.

Speaker 13 I've got it right in front of me.

Speaker 2 Where you've divided the wagon wheel of

Speaker 2 the ground into eight different quadrants and then put words as to what kind of a shot might send the ball there. So like you take it away, Dan.
What was the inspiration?

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 2 I guess, well, just talk us through it.

Speaker 2 What happened when you did this? When you had this voyage of discovery? Did you discover anything new? Did you discover any meaning in life? Did it transform the way you thought about all this?

Speaker 2 Or did you just think, there's 300 quid I can extract from the Guardian?

Speaker 14 If you ask my wife, it's probably some undiagnosed autism or ADD that I've got that compelled me to even care about this. But

Speaker 14 it was actually Joe Root who kept dabbing and steering and angling the ball down to third man. And I just thought, oh,

Speaker 14 that's quite fun. Wonder what happens if he would prod it or scythe it or lash it because he's definitely not lashing it or scything it.
It's just hitting a moving seed nut rock pill

Speaker 14 into different parts of the ground with a blade, wood, willow, whatever it might be, stick, as the Aussies like to refer to it.

Speaker 14 So yeah, and I love how crickets, when you're on the Guardian blog, you need shorthands because you have to go so quickly, especially when you've got like two spinners working at both ends.

Speaker 14 So you can't just say hit every single time.

Speaker 14 So instead of saying, oh, with an angled bat he came down and with a flick of his wrist i can just say he tucked off his pads and people know exactly what that means and i and i i mean clearly i'm showing how how nerdy i am but i think that's one of the coolest things about cricket that you've got these little languages and i'm also you know i'm such a fan of the football clichés pod shout out to the bosses please keep me on the roster Yeah, I just sort of made, put two and two together and I'm pretty sure, Dan, over like our third bottle of wine, we'd probably had this conversation at some point.

Speaker 14 So I just run you up and I thought, hey, let's, yeah, yeah, let's, let's get that guardian money with a peas.

Speaker 2 Yeah, well, I mean, I didn't see any of it, I've got to say. And Nora, if you bought me that drink off the back of introducing you to the word grebel, which you had never heard before.

Speaker 14 Well, greeble was a good one. I'd never heard greeble.
Greeble remind me, greeble is when you sort of like, let's ask the other two.

Speaker 2 What do you think a grebel is, Dickers?

Speaker 3 Sort of like a little sort of miscues that sort of dribbles away. Yeah.
Maybe like into the offside, I feel, more than leg side for a grebel.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's it.

Speaker 2 It's spot on, it's behind square on the offside, so it's often a tail ender and a quick bowl of bowls, and it gets it gets an edge that goes into the ground without any great pace, and it never makes it to the boundary.

Speaker 2 A greeble will never go for four, but it might go for two through sort of backward point, like they've got three slips in place, but it's somehow greebled its way down towards the boundary.

Speaker 2 You've got some beautiful ones on here. I mean, just we've got a run down, we've got an angle, we've got a dab and a guide and a caress.
Those are all possible down to third.

Speaker 2 And for point, which I think is the place of the richest language, Nick, I'm going to ask you about this.

Speaker 2 He's got, you can have a steer, you can just about have a squirt through there and a prod and a poke, but it's the lashing, the scything, the flailing, the slapping, the drilling, the thrashing, the spearing, and the slashing.

Speaker 2 That is an area, isn't it, of maximum verbal excitement? It's basically that little bit between point and backward point.

Speaker 13 Yeah, and I think it's because

Speaker 13 that kind of shot, or particularly

Speaker 13 the more aggressive versions of that shot,

Speaker 13 requires a lot more physicality because you have to kind of, if you obviously, if you have a right-hander doing that, you have to kind of open your body out a little bit so there's movement there and then draw the back back and really kind of go through with it.

Speaker 13 So, the more kind of moving parts there are to a shot,

Speaker 13 it feels like there's more kind of richness to

Speaker 13 the number of words that you have to describe it. One of the ones from that piece that

Speaker 13 I think it might have been your suggestion, Daniel, was strapple. Can you talk us to what strapple is?

Speaker 2 Well, strapple was introduced to me by O'Brien, Ian O'Brien, the New Zealand fastbowler. And no one strappled until the very early part of the 21st century.

Speaker 2 And then Kevin Peterson made it famous with the most famous strapple of all time. It's the shot that's larrapped past Brett Lee, isn't it? Right, right.
In the Oval Test of 2005.

Speaker 2 You know, that moment when English people genuinely believed that they were going to get out of it because KP stood tall and he hit a widish, short ball straight back past the bowler for four.

Speaker 2 It was a pull, but it was a straight pull. So it became a strapple.
And, you know, I just thought that was absolutely delicious.

Speaker 2 I use the strapple loads, but the problem with the strapple is that I've tried to get everybody to understand it,

Speaker 2 but I have to explain it every time I do it right I mean do you think they'll do you think there comes a point is it do I have to be more famous to make a word actually like stay forever because

Speaker 2 I mean j just try to think about a commentator guys now just think of a commentator who's made a word their own and I d I don't mean KP who's made the word great his own that's a great shot that's a really great shot that's a really really great shot other than that you know is there is there anybody out there who's got a kind of like

Speaker 2 word that they've got in and made it work?

Speaker 14 No. The strapple one's interesting.
See, for me, I know this is, it doesn't sound nice, and I don't like saying it, but for me, the first thought is baseballed. Like, can that be a word?

Speaker 14 You baseballed that down the ground because it's sort of like, you know, you can

Speaker 14 says what it does on a tin. Whereas I wonder if these words are kind of like a bit of a bell curve where

Speaker 14 Strapple might be just kind of veering down into the other side of the bell curve a little bit and KP's great is on the other other is on all the way on this side of the bell curve. Yeah.

Speaker 14 Not to put you in the same breath as KP Danielle.

Speaker 2 Well I'd be I'd be honored, genuinely honoured. I mean we've we've found the best of KP and the worst of KP in the last three minutes and that's really what cricket cliches is going to be all about.

Speaker 2 We give with the one hand and we take.

Speaker 14 with the other. Nick's right about the about back backward point and cover.
The one I also really liked was cow corner because that's where you mow and you smear and you tonk.

Speaker 14 Two very different kinds of areas of the pitch where, you know, one is very graceful and forceful and deliberate.

Speaker 14 Another one is like, I mean, no one, we call it a cow corner because the ball shouldn't even go there. So if you are mowing or smearing or hoiking, something's kind of not gone very well.

Speaker 14 So I do like how certain, you know, this is the whole Rungie playing it off his pads.

Speaker 14 Even in 2025, we like to think that there are proper cricket shots and the ball should move in a particular direction. And yeah, I really like that.

Speaker 2 So what's the ultimate? I mean, for me, when I hear caressed,

Speaker 2 I mean, that just gives me feels.

Speaker 14 Goosebumps.

Speaker 2 In a way that if I hear marmalized or larped, I kind of know what's happened there, but it's been an act of violence. But the it's the the the caress,

Speaker 2 that is the thing that really reminds me of my uh late teams.

Speaker 14 Mark Waugh through the covers.

Speaker 3 It's Damien Martin, Ian Bell. It's it's these guys, isn't it?

Speaker 13 The the kind of stroke that uh would make Mark Nicholas say, oh yeah.

Speaker 12 Oh yeah.

Speaker 3 That is Ian Bell.

Speaker 14 Is it different to a ping? Because you ping through the covers as well, but that's not, it's not as nice as a caress, but it's not far off, is it?

Speaker 13 I think ping probably involves a little bit more, like, not violence, but a little bit more follow-through. A caress is, you just sort of, you can sort present the bat and it just

Speaker 13 goes straight.

Speaker 14 Daniel, I think you once said someone had compelled it through the covers, which I really like. It's almost like he insisted it went down there, which I really

Speaker 3 enjoyed.

Speaker 12 yes

Speaker 2 part of the reason for that may have well you may have caught me in an act of ipl coverage there come times especially if you're commentating a game at the chinnaswamy in bengaluru where the pitch is so good when you've seen a b de villiers play that shot over and over and over and over again into the crowd you've got to find words and and some of them just stick but then you get like the metaphors that stick so this doesn't work quite for what you were saying but like the tracer bullet for example Like a lot of people have got a downer on the Tracer Bullet.

Speaker 2 They say, well, the thing about the Tracer Bullet is that it goes more slowly.

Speaker 2 Well, in fairness, when you hit a cricket ball, if it went as fast as off a bullet, then there would be health and safety concerns.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 2 When you were like writing your piece, did you like have commentators in your mind when you were thinking about a particular word?

Speaker 14 Tracer Bullet, definitely, because Ravi Shastri sort of made that his own, hasn't he? I mean, the Ravi's Tracer Bullet has sort of become a meme of its, you know, in and of itself.

Speaker 14 And I wasn't a fan of the the Tracer Bullet until Henry, Henry Moran, who also spoke on the piece, pointed out, yeah, but you can see a Tracy Bullet.

Speaker 14 And all of a sudden, light bulb moment, and I, you know, things had clicked.

Speaker 13 No, I didn't, I didn't really, because

Speaker 14 when I'm thinking of

Speaker 14 the shots, you know, I say these words when I'm when I'm bowling. In fact, I was bowling in my very average club game and someone mowed me.
And I even told him, oh, that's just a moe.

Speaker 14 You know, like, it's just, they just come to me straight away. So I don't even, I'm not thinking of commentators, but it's just so automatic.
Some of them are derogatory.

Speaker 14 I mean, like, you don't, if someone's mowing me, I'm on that's a moral victory for me.

Speaker 14 If they mow me, if they're smearing me, but if they um if they're bludgeoning me, oh, well, that's just proving that I'm not bowling a heavy enough ball, as it were.

Speaker 2 I'm going to leave this subject with one example of, I think, one shot that has only ever really been described by one man, and that is the shorthand jab.

Speaker 2 The shorthand jab is completely Richie Benno. You might know it as the bunt,

Speaker 2 but he meant something a little bit more forceful than that. It was something a little bit, it was somewhere between a bunt and a thwack.

Speaker 2 But he was the only man you ever heard get just a little, no more than, no more than, he'd say, a short ham jab, as if trying to let young people know that you don't have to go completely hell for leather.

Speaker 14 Well, does a short-arm jab go to the boundary, but a bunt is just in the gap for one or two? Is that the difference?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it tends to, tends to, tends to, I would say that definitely would be part of it. But most people would find other ways of saying that now.

Speaker 2 But the shot ham chab was always his.

Speaker 2 Look, now there are lots of variations because this is an offshoot of football clichés on the cricketing version of Mezzet Harland Dix.

Speaker 2 So some of them roll off the tongue a little better than others. We've had a few contributions here.
Matt C has gone for Desmond Boland Hicks. I quite like Desmond Boland Hicks.

Speaker 2 Rob has got Mustard Hayden Dilshan.

Speaker 12 Eddie has.

Speaker 3 The initials.

Speaker 2 No, why not? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Desmond Boland Hick. I tell you, Desmond and Boland and Hick are coming up big time.
And suddenly Mark Eilert makes a mention.

Speaker 2 And the moment Mark Eilert gets a mention, we're all on the edge of our seats. Desmond Eilert Gibbs, best I can do, settling a baby at 2 a.m.

Speaker 2 So I like that. He's come up with actually quite a good one, but then said, don't at me because I'm dealing with a baby at two.
Alex again, my God. So after he'd done the 2am,

Speaker 2 he'd thought better of it and he thought, hang on, I want to change it. It's Fraser Eilitt Gibbs.
Happy without Nick, or you know, you're the arbiter of these things.

Speaker 13 The best I came up with was kind of a variant on these, which was which was Herbert Boland Hicks, which is kind of

Speaker 13 a little bit, I wasn't entirely happy with it. I think of those, my favourite is Desmond Boland Hicks, because

Speaker 13 it has the kind of of des.

Speaker 3 What about Desi? Desi Haynes, wouldn't he? Does Desi Boland hit him?

Speaker 2 Oh, Desi,

Speaker 2 it's got a nicer rhythm.

Speaker 13 For anyone who doesn't know, this is something that happens on football cliches. It's a play on Desert Island discs, if that wasn't abundantly clear.
And there isn't a perfect fit.

Speaker 13 Hicks kind of feels like it has to go in, even though that actually isn't the name of

Speaker 13 the famous.

Speaker 14 It's the name of the snooker player, Andy Hicks.

Speaker 12 It's the name of it.

Speaker 13 Yeah, exactly. We all remember him.

Speaker 13 A workaround, I thought, getting into that is

Speaker 13 you could put an apostrophe in there, which is not perfect.

Speaker 3 I think it's fine because in Desert Island discs, this is a plural. Yeah.
Hicks is a plural. That's fine.

Speaker 2 Tickers, what is your favourite?

Speaker 3 I've warmed to the idea of Desi. I like Desi in there.

Speaker 2 Desi Eila Gibbs. Desi Eila Gibbs.
That's strong, isn't it? That's strong. If so, I think we're giving it to Alex after he's settling his baby at 2 a.m.

Speaker 2 Right then, have we actually mentioned the heavy ball yet?

Speaker 13 It's been kind of obliquely referenced, but yeah.

Speaker 2 Right, well we're running out of time, so we're going to. Well, the heavy ball is the thing that everyone's like, you know, obsessed by.
Jordan sent us a message, the concept of bowling a heavy ball.

Speaker 2 It's just a tall bowler, isn't it? I personally, I'm going to kick this off by saying I don't think they're just tall. I think they've got quite a large ass.

Speaker 2 I think they've got a slightly outsized head.

Speaker 2 And I think they bowl back of a length as their stock ball.

Speaker 12 Yeah.

Speaker 14 I think a heavy man needs to bowl a heavy ball, first of all. So Mornay Morkle, even though he was long and tall, Joffrey Archer, quick, Mark Wood, quickest, they don't bowl heavy balls.

Speaker 14 They have to have broad chest.

Speaker 14 The sort of man who, if he wasn't a professional cricketer, would immediately develop a beer belly. Yeah, big ass,

Speaker 14 someone who leaves thick track marks in his run-up. Back of a length is important.

Speaker 14 And basically what a heavy ball for me is just someone who looks like he should be bowling slightly slower than he does actually bowl. Someone who rushes the batter.

Speaker 14 It's not just about pace and it's not just about

Speaker 14 the intent and the aggression. Although, obviously, aggression is part of it.

Speaker 14 If you can bowl a heavy ball and force the batter backwards and give them a little stare because, oh, that rushed him a little bit. I think that's what we're looking at.

Speaker 14 A heavy man bowls a heavy ball with heavy intent.

Speaker 2 Flintoff bowls a heavy ball. Ekta Bisht did not bowl a heavy ball.
Titch Freeman did not bowl a heavy ball. Ian Austin might bowl a heavy ball.
We've got some physics here.

Speaker 2 Does anybody want to try it?

Speaker 2 It just came in with a WhatsApp group.

Speaker 13 We need some boffins here.

Speaker 2 Well, I was going to leave it to a boffin. Unfortunately, we don't have access to all the boffins, but there is some physics that's been sent through

Speaker 2 and I didn't understand it at all. So this is how it goes, right?

Speaker 2 Momentum P equals M with a dot slightly higher up than you might expect V

Speaker 2 dot where you'd expect it. For a given mass M brackets standard cricket ball

Speaker 2 not quite equals, it's a wavy equals. I don't even know what that means.
Roughly equals 0.156 kilograms.

Speaker 2 Higher speed versus gives higher momentum so the ball carries greater capacity to decide if you haven't killed yourself by now just thinking to this i mean this is this this i couldn't do archimedes principle let alone this it carries greater capacity disturb the bat or hit the stumps kinetic energy here we go KE equals half m dot v squared so small increases in speed raise kinetic energy more than linear so a slightly faster delivery feels more punchy I'm happy to stick with the big ass thing, actually.

Speaker 2 Jason Holder could not bowl a heavy ball, and my reason for that is that his head's too small for the size of his body.

Speaker 3 It just seems like a lot of complicated stuff to say Tim Bresnan hits the gloves hard.

Speaker 14 Hits the gloves hard, but see, even that doesn't quite, because I mean, Archer hits the gloves harder, surely, but he's not bowling a heavy ball.

Speaker 3 I think

Speaker 3 it's the unexpected element, isn't it?

Speaker 3 It's that there is no matter how many times you face Tim Bresnan or Jack Callis or Andrew Flintoff and their big asses and big chests and heavy, heavy everythings, is that you still are somehow surprised that that ball is hitting the splice of your bat a bit harder than you expect it to.

Speaker 3 It's hitting the keeper's gloves a bit harder than he expects it to, having kept to them a million times.

Speaker 14 Does Colin de Gronholm bowl a heavy ball?

Speaker 14 I feel like heavy New Zealand all-rounders, they tend to bowl heavy balls, don't they? Because they're not bowling quick balls.

Speaker 13 Jeremy Neeson. They're all just heavy.

Speaker 13 He feels like a heavy ball bowler.

Speaker 2 General, I'm not going to tell you who said this to me because you mentioned Colin de Grandom.

Speaker 2 I asked a very good friend of mine after Colin de Grandom had got out to a particularly poor shot in a World Cup match in 2019. I turned to him and I said, hmm, you know Colin pretty well.

Speaker 2 You've interviewed him many times. Can you give us an insight into what he's like? And he took a deep breath and he said, well, Dan, Colin not a man overly encumbered by the heavy weight of intellect.

Speaker 2 As a result, he has a tremendous clarity of thought,

Speaker 2 if you can call it that.

Speaker 13 It's a really good job you didn't give us the person's name.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm really bad at accents. I'm really bad at accents.

Speaker 3 I'm just surprised Kevin Peterson said something so thoughtful.

Speaker 2 Right, we've got loads more of these to get through, but we're we're not going to get through them today. We're going to get through them over the course of the next six weeks.

Speaker 2 It's been absolutely fantastic bringing you this episode of Cricket Clichés, and please keep your questions coming.

Speaker 2 If we haven't answered them all this week, it is really because we've been quite self-indulgent and needed to set the tone of what the programme's about.

Speaker 2 And there was an awful lot of concern over whether or not Dan Gallum would be able to join us before he was spirited away by the Barder Weinhof gang and taken to an underground eerie, never to be seen again.

Speaker 2 I've been Daniel Norcross. If you don't know who I am, that's probably best left that way.
Tickers has been Tickers. He hasn't quite reached today, but it will happen.

Speaker 2 David, Robert, Derek, Tickner, status. Nick Miller, thank you so much for guiding through the runes and reasons for why it is that we are here.

Speaker 2 And to you, Dan, our founding star, almost like one of those, you know, like the sort of the Karamak coloured philosophy apes from Planet of the Apes, the original, with Roddy McDowell.

Speaker 2 You're like even wearing the right coloured jumper. If it weren't weren't for you, we wouldn't be here today.
I want to thank you, especially for making it all work.

Speaker 2 And I know how much agony it caused you. We'll be back throughout the ashes.
We have got five stonking matches to come.

Speaker 2 Look, it's also been really lovely having two English people and a South African here. It's not always going to be this friendly.
It's not always going to be this much fun.

Speaker 2 I'm going to coerce some Australians on and we're going to get their view and that then means that, well, the whole spirit of the thing changes, and we become really English and go, Oh, no, that's fine.

Speaker 2 No, it was a good seed. No, I really enjoyed that cherry.
But for now, for today, we've all been allowed to be the very best versions of ourselves. Thank you so much for listening.

Speaker 2 Keep your reader suggestions coming in. We will read out many more of them over the coming weeks.
Apart from anything else, we're going to need them.

Speaker 2 We've used up most of our material in the first episode. But to tick us to Nick and to Dan Gallon, and from me, Daniel Norcross, it's a very warm goodbye.

Speaker 19 This podcast is part of the Sports Social Podcast Network.

Speaker 20 Hey, this is Sarah.

Speaker 4 Look, I'm standing out front of AMPM right now, and well, you're sweet and all, but I found something more fulfilling, even kind of cheesy, but I like it.

Speaker 20 Sure, you met some of my dietary needs, but they've just got it all.

Speaker 12 So farewell, oatmeal.

Speaker 20 So long, you strange soggy.

Speaker 21 Break up with planned breakfast and taste AMPM's bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit made with K-tree eggs, smoked bacon, and melty cheese on a buttery biscuit. AMPM, too much good stuff.

Speaker 22 Be our guest at Disney's enchanting musical, Beauty and the Beast. Experience this timeless, classic tale brought to life like never before.

Speaker 22 Fill your heart with joy and Disney magic at this dazzling and beloved production.

Speaker 23 Coming to the Orpheum Theater July 14th through August 9th, tickets on sale now at BroadwaySF.com.