A Cricketing View

My guest is Daniel Norcross of BBC's Test Match Special.

Daniel came on to exchange notes about Bazball and its effect on the state of play in Test cricket. This podcast is an edited compilation of our conversation.

What is Bazball?

On Ben Stokes

A Theory about Virat Kohli

Daniel tweets @norcrosscricket

I tweet @cricketingview

This conversation was recorded on Wednesday, July 13, 2022

This is an extended conversation about the cricket played during India's Tests in England in the 2021 season. My guests are SIdharth Monga of ESPNCricinfo and Daniel Norcross of BBC's Test Match Special.

What lengths would you bowl to Kohli?

Daniel tweets @norcrosscricket

Sid allegedly does not tweet.

I tweet @cricketingview

This conversation was recorded on Saturday, September 11, 2021.

Our conversation from February 2020

Daniel Norcross is a cricket commentator with the BBC's Test Match Special @norcrosscricket

Daisy Christodoulou's newsletter - I Can't Stop Thinking About VAR. She tweets @daisychristo 

Jonathan Wilson is a sports writer and reporter for The Guardian. He tweets @jonawils 

I tweet @cricketingview

This episode was recorded on April 12, 2021.

Warren Brennan is the founder and chief technology officer of BBG Sports where he has developed the Hotspot/RTS system for spotting edges with Allan Plaskett. In this conversation we talked about technology in sports broadcasting, some details of the Hotspot/RTS system, ball tracking, and the future of technology in sport.

Rob Moody is the curator of the robelinda an robelinda2 cricket video channels on youtube. His videos will be viewed one billion times by mid-April. This is a conversation with him about his collection and its past, present and future in the landscape of cricket boards, broadcasters and Google.

Rob's video of Jason Gillespie's 201*

Rob tweets @robelinda2

This video was recorded on March 3, 2021.

This conversation is about ESPNCricinfo's Control statistic with their senior stats editor S Rajesh. We discuss what the metric tries to measure, what it contributes to understanding the game, and some interesting statistical summaries of the Control measure over 15 years and hundreds of Tests.

Read Sidharth Monga's review of Chennai Test featuring the control measure here

The episode was recorded on February 12, 2021.

Rajesh tweets (infrequently) @rajeshstats

This is an irregular review of an irregular series in irregular times. My guests are Subash Jayaraman, the veteran host of the Couch Talk podcast and Daniel Norcross from the BBC's Test Match Special. We had a conversation about the cricket we anticipate in this series, the players who are likely to feature in it. 

Daniel Norcross tweets @norcrosscricket

Subash jayaraman tweets @cricketcouch

I tweet @cricketingview

This podcast was recorded on February 2, 2021.

Jack Shantry is a former left-arm seam bowler who played for Worcestershire. He is currently a National Panel umpire in the UK.  Daniel Norcross is a cricket commentator on BBC Test Match Special.

In this conversation we discuss the laws of cricket and umpiring, and how they constitute the game. Daniel talks about the difficulties arising from having to communicate a subtle, complicated, and often arbitrary set of laws to new audiences. Jack speaks from an umpire's perspective about why certain laws are the way they are, which laws bother him (the answer is most interesting) and where the switch-hit and the lbw law might lead cricket. We also discuss whether batsmen should be out LBW after an inside-edge (its not as mad as it sounds).

Jack Shantry tweets @JackShantry
Daniel Norcross tweets @norcrosscricket
I tweet @cricketingview

This conversation was recorded on December 16, 2020.

This is my conversation with Abhishek Mukherjee and Arunabha Sengupta about their forthcoming book Sachin and Azhar at Cape Town: Indian and South African Cricket Through the Prism of a Partnership. Our conversation was recorded across three continents and is, in places, subject to the vagaries of inter-continental wireless communications. The book presents a rich picture of the protagonists of that stand (both Indian and South African) and the period they lived in.  This is a book not just about South Africa, but about a different era in Indian and world cricket.

Abhishek tweets @ovshake42

Arunabha tweets @senantix

I tweet @cricketingview

This conversation was recorded on December 5, 2020

This is a conservation with Tim Wigmore about his new book with Mark Williams The Best: How Elite Athletes Are Made.  Tim contributes to The Daily Telegraph, ESPNCricinfo, The New York Times & The Economist. Tim appeared in episode 3 of this podcast to discuss his previous book Cricket 2.0 with Freddie Wilde.

Tim Wigmore tweets @timwig

The book is The Best: How Elite Athletes Are Made. An edited excerpt from the book titled Under pressure: why athletes choke was published in The Guardian .

This interview was recorded on November 10, 2020.

In this episode of the podcast I speak to Karunya Keshav and Snehal Pradhan about their report (co-authored with the late Sidhanta Patnaik of Wisden India and Women's CricZone) for the Sport Law and Policy Centre title An Equal Hue: The Way Forward For The Women In Blue (read the report).

Karunya Keshav is Editor-at-large at Wisden India. She is the author (with Sidhanta Patnaik) of The Fire Burns Blue: A History of Women's Cricket in India

Since retiring from cricket in 2015, Snehal Pradhan has worked as a freelance sports journalist and broadcaster. She has written for ESPNCricinfo, Firstpost, The Economic Times, Scroll, among others. Through her series ‘Cricket with Snehal’ on YouTube, she shares lessons learned over a 15-year career.

Karunya tweets @kuks

Snehal tweets @SnehalPradhan

I tweet @cricketingview

Here's an old essay I wrote about women's cricket.

In this episode I speak to Arunabha Sengupta about his new book Apartheid: A Point to Cover: South African Cricket 1948–70 and the Stop The Seventy Tour. The book focuses of the 22 years of South African cricket from the inception of Apartheid as official state policy by the National Party Government in 1948 to South Africa's expulsion from international cricket in 1970 due to these policies.

This episode was recorded on May 11, 2020.

Arunabha tweets @senantix

I tweet @cricketingview

In this conversation the Australian journalist and cricket writer Gideon Haigh discusses the ways in which cricket, and sport more generally is political.

Gideon Haigh's work includes regular columns for The Australian and The Times, biographical essays about Jack Iverson, Victor Trumper and Shane Warne, reviews and reflections on series, teams, eras and controversies. He does not tweet, use facebook or any other form of social media.

I tweet @cricketingview

Daisy Christodoulou's insightful and widely read twitter thread about VAR prompted this episode. She is an educationist who has a special interest in the problem of assessments. Jonathan Wilson covers football for The Guardian and a few other publications. He's the author of 11 books, including Inverting the Pyramid and Angels with Dirty Faces. Daniel Norcross is a cricket commentator for the BBC's Test Match Special.

Daisy tweets @daisychristo
Jonathan tweets @jonawils
Daniel tweets @norcrosscricket

Notes:

Daisy's Twitter thread about VAR  
My thread about the Stokes DRS review  
Jonathan's review of the 2019 Copa America Semi Final 

This episode was recorded on February 23, 2020.

Links:
The Nine Waves, Mihir Bose, Aleph Book Company, 2019. (Amazon)
Will it help Test cricket if games are reduced to four days?, Kartikeya Date, thREAD, The Hindu, November 1, 2017
Mihir Bose's website: 

Anthony McGowan is an author who writes for children, young adults and older adults. His most recent book is How to teach philosophy to your dog. In this episode he joined me to discuss the nature of cheating and lying in cricket.

Anthony tweets @anthony_mcgowan

The ethics of walking in cricket: from Socrates to Nietzsche, Anthony McGowan, The Guardian, December 4, 2019

Apart from writing, Jarrod also conducts his course on sports writing: Fans With Laptops, which is a course in using your passion for sports to improve how you write.

This conversation was recorded on November 20, 2019.

Suresh Menon is a veteran observer of Indian cricket. He has been a reporter and an editor-in-chief at the Indian Express. Currently, he is a contributing editor to The Hindu where he writes the regular column Between Wickets. Since 2013 he has been the Editor of the Wisden India Almanack. 

In this episode, we discuss the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), which remains a controversial body coveted by politicians and corporate tycoons alike, and is also the most successful sporting institution in India. Recently, it acquired a new Constitution. What do these changes hold for the future? What do we misunderstand about the BCCI? What does the BCCI misunderstand about the public?

Suresh Menon tweets @surmenon.

I tweet @cricketingview

Please listen to this episode and share it with others. If you like this episode, please subscribe to the podcast at the podcast service of your choice. Please rate the show, so that others might find it more easily. The podcast is also available on youtube.

Please do write to us with your thoughts.

My conversation with Suresh Menon was recorded on November 13, 2019.

In this episode, I speak to Snehal Pradhan. Snehal is a former India fast bowler. In addition to running her youtube channel Cricket with Snehal, she writes and reports on cricket for First Post, News 18, ESPNCricinfo, Economic Times and several other publications. She also commentates on cricket matches for broadcasters like the BBC. We spoke about the landscape of women's cricket in India in the 21st century. Among other things,  I asked her about the prospects for a Women's IPL, mixed-gender matches and the Indian domestic scene in women's cricket

Snehal tweets at @SnehalPradhan

I tweet at @cricketingview

Please listen to this episode and share it with others. If you like this episode, please subscribe to the podcast at the podcast service of your choice. Please rate the show, so that others might find it more easily. The podcast is also available on youtube.

Please do write to us with your thoughts.

My conversation with Snehal Pradhan was recorded on November 01, 2019.

This is part two of my conservation with Daniel Norcross. Daniel is a commentator for BBC Test Match Special. He also writes for various publications like ESPNCricinfo. Daniel is also the first guest on this show who commands his own Wikipedia entry. I invited Daniel over to reflect on the 2019 English summer season with the benefit of some distance. This episode begins where Part I finished. We discussed Ben Stokes, Pat Cummins, Ravindra Jadeja, India's recent results and ended with some speculation about where cricket might be at the end of the 2020s.

Daniel tweets at @norcrosscricket

I tweet at @cricketingview

Please listen to this episode and share it with others. If you like this episode, please subscribe to the podcast at the podcast service of your choice. Please rate the show, so that others might find it more easily. The podcast is also available on youtube.

Please do write to us with your thoughts.

My conversation with Daniel Norcross was recorded on October 29, 2019.

This is part one of my conservation with Daniel Norcross. Daniel is a commentator for BBC Test Match Special. He also writes for various publications like ESPNCricinfo. Daniel is also the first guest on this show who commands his own Wikipedia entry. I invited Daniel over to reflect on the 2019 English summer season with the benefit of some distance. This episode includes the first part of our conversation which ended up being a reflection on the two outstanding figures of the summer.

Daniel tweets at @norcrosscricket

I tweet at @cricketingview

Please listen to this episode and share it with others. If you like this episode, please subscribe to the podcast at the podcast service of your choice. Please rate the show, so that others might find it more easily. The podcast is also available on youtube.

Please do write to us with your thoughts. 

My conversation with Daniel Norcross was recorded on October 29, 2019.

Gary Naylor is chief reviewer for Broadway World in London, writes about cricket for the Guardian on the blog 99.94, and commentates on cricket for Guerilla Cricket. He also maintains a separate weblog called The Sound of the Tooting Trumpet . He tweets @garynaylor999.

I tweet at @cricketingview.

Do write to us with your thoughts.

This episode was recorded on October 21, 2019.

Cricket 2.0: Inside the T20 Revolution, Tim Wigmore and Freddie Wilde, Polaris Publishing, 2019

Why T20 Leagues need to be longer, Freddie Wilde, Cricbuzz

Gaurav Sabnis is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Stevens School of Business in Hoboken, New Jersey. He is also a cricket fan. I spoke to him about the question of the viability of Test cricket. Is Test Cricket viable as a professional sport? What does it mean for a sport to be viable? This remains a question of interest among people who are interested in cricket. This is the first of hopefully many conversations on this subject with people from different fields.

Gaurav tweets at @gauravsabnis

I tweet at @cricketingview

Do write to us with your thoughts.

If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe to the podcast on Google Podcasts, Spotify, Tune In or other podcast portals. This podcast will also be available soon on Apple podcasts.

Subash Jayaraman has covered cricket as a hobby for over a decade. During this time, he has traveled all over the world and attended matches at every major international venue. He maintains The Cricket Couch, hosts Couch Talk and has contributed reports, interviews, and essays to ESPNCricinfo, Scroll, Livemint, First Post, Sportstar and Cricbuzz. He is the Bradman of cricket hobbyists. 

Subash tweets at @cricketcouch

I tweet at @cricketingview

Do write to us with your thoughts.

This episode was recorded on October 5, 2019

Pearls from pressers, Subash Jayaraman, Livemint, September 14, 2015