The problem with the county schedule & Scotland qualify for the World Cup | Wisden Cricket Podcast

0:00 Intro
1:30 County schedule
18:06 County Championship
32:01 England women
39:19 Women’s podcast
41:05 RHF Trophy & Scotland at the World Cup
47:37 T20 World Cup & IPL
51:50 Jim’s Substack
55:51 Trivia
58:11 Outro

The English game was rocked this week after the sudden passing of Worcestershire left-arm spinner Josh Baker. Baker, though just 20, had already made 47 senior appearances for the county, and last season scored the run that sealed Worcestershire’s promotion back to the top flight. Our thoughts are with his family, friends and everyone associated with the club.

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After a study undertaken by the PCA revealed that two-thirds of county players believe the current domestic schedule is unfit for purpose, Yas Rana, Ben Gardner, Katya Witney and Jim Wallace address the challenges and discuss what needs to change.

Elsewhere in the show there’s a County Championship round-up, reflection on England women’s latest T20I squad, Scotland qualifying for the World Cup and much more.

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Check out Jim’s Substack with Jon Hotten here: https://arrangements.substack.com

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the English game was rocked this week by the sudden passing of wer left arm spinner Josh baker Baker though just 20 had already made 47 senior appearances for the county and last season scored the run that sealed worcester’s promotion back to the Top Flight Baker was in action for the werer second team the day before he passed away taking three wickets against Somerset wer chief executive ashy ja said the news of Josh’s passing has left us all devastated Josh was much more than a team M he was an integral part of our cricket family we will all miss him terribly all our love and prayers go out to Josh’s family and friends hello and welcome to the wizen cricket weekly podcast I’m yaas rner and with me today are Kaa Whitney Ben Gardner and Jim Wallace Jim it’s your birthday happy birthday thank you and uh I couldn’t think of anywhere better to be when the text came in I cleared the non-existent plans and made right line straight in bit late I hope you don’t mind me divulging your your age so you’re turning 35 turned now yeah and um with that in mind the trivia question for today’s show to keep in mind for the end of the episode is four players have scored a thousand test runs in their 36th year of existence who are who are those four um something mean to none of them are me not yet not yet not yet yet yeah um we’ll kick off with the PCA survey um that has attracted several headlines over the last couple of days so the professional cricketers association which is effectively the body that represents players in England and Wales released the findings of a player survey they did ahead of the season and I know there’s a lot of scheduled chat and we’ve had a lot of scheduled chat before but this is as damning and uh probably as United a front I’ve seen the players make so the PCA met with the players of all 18 counties before the season and found that 81% of them are saying that the schedule causes them concern from a physical perspective 23s are saying it creates an environment not conducive to high performance 76% say that the schedule causes safety concerns around traveling especially around the blast with late finishes and several back-to-back games and 62% say it prompts concerns from a mental well-being perspective there aren’t enough chances to get away from the game during the season former England Captain Joe root said I’m extremely pass about county cricket and it is apparent the schedule needs to change for a host of reasons to see longlasting benefits for English Cricket I’m fortunate to play a significant part of the season for yorra this year and looking at the fixture list from a physical well-being and high performance angle does cause me concern county cricket is the breeding ground for some of the best talent in the game and this requires World leading structures to allow players to reach their full potential this is a benefits for everybody in the game having space to recover prepare and improve your game during the season is crucial and the creation of minimum standards to protect travel windows and player welfare is nonnegotiable um Ben there’s a lot going on there but what caught your eye and what do you think is most significant from those PCA findings uh it’s funny because because this is just the the latest in a line really of of warnings from professional cricketers and this is the thing that they they are most United on whenever you speak to them um you know they’ll have different opinions about lots of things but the the one thing that they all seem to agree on is that that this this this this can’t go on and you know we had similar warnings at the start of the season now this Serb sort of backs it up show it is truly game-wide but you you know you had representatives of players who were voicing these concerns um uh so I don’t think any of it comes as a a huge surprise but I guess it is good that they um just really lay out some of the details around what they mean when they talk about it being unsafe because you can you know there are some County fans who will look at it and think you know firstly you’re played to you’re paid to play cricket for a living so you know kind of get on with it and also look at it and think like well you know it’s it’s a T20 match it’s three hours long you’re doing you know six six hours work across a weekend what’s the issue and then actually just think like no actually there’s so much more that that goes into it and the you know the travel is a good example of that the fact that you know there are players who are having to because you know if you just think about all the practicalities of what it takes to play a cricket match short you’ve got the three hours between when the you know the first ball is bow to when the the winning run is hit or whatever but then you’ve got you know you got to kind of get back in the change room you got you know debriefed you’ve got ice bars whatever you’ve got um you you got to get get your kit together you’ve got all that to sort out you’ve got you know maybe celebration you’ve got a good game who knows uh and then you’ve got to get in your car and back home and this all can to happen quite late at night um and then you’ve also got to the next day when you get into the ground it’s not just that you get there for you know you want to warm up at some point you want to you may you know do some practice ideally all that stuff that goes into it that just makes it some of these turnaround times they’re just crazy there’s a couple it’s worth it’s worth actually um spelling out just how pack that particular bit of summer is the blast bit from the end of May to Mid July you got 14 blast games plus two rounds of the county championship in a swe period And there are specifically some very tight turnarounds that um the players are particularly un happy about yeah but then there are and it’s probably worth outlining what those are but also some of the issu is just that they and this is the thing that’s trick is there are so many different stakeholders in this who have different priorities like you might think that the counties and the county players are aligned with this but they’re kind of not really like counties want to play across the the weekend basically so Thursday to Sunday is BAS is when almost all the T20 plus games are played um but that’s what causes some of the issues because some of the turnaround times when you have players who are there’s two examples of teams who play on I think either a Friday or Saturday night and then travel to a different ground to play on a Saturday or Sunday lunchtime which is which is kind of crazy when you think about what that turnaround time is but that’s something that counties kind of want so and and then because when you see that it’s tempting to think well maybe if you Shuffle It round a bit more you can arrive at a solution but that’s just not really possible Alan Alan forom who you know has to put this together is tearing his hair out and I think if there’s a many more requests made of him he might start complaining about his schedule so um K what stands out for you because somebody emailed in making this point that if there was an obvious solution someone would have found it by now yeah exactly the whole point why this is kicked down the road is because there is no solution to it and it requires everyone like Ben said multiple different stakeholders everyone who has an interest in keeping the schedule packed um coming together and having a reasonable conversation with compromise on all sides and realistically that’s not going to happen um and we talk about this every couple of months um and it keeps getting kicked down the road you know we had the Strauss view a couple of years ago and now it seems like we’re headed towards some other big review that’s going to happen um and try and sort out but there is no perfect solution what I will say is that every workplace has safety regulations and minimum hours between work shifts and while cricketers are there to provide entertainment that is still their place of work and there has to be safety regulations and that includes minimum hours between workshifts and there’s a responsibility on the ECB as an employer to ensure that those players are safe and that they’re not driving up the M1 at a ridiculous hour in the morning having not had that much sleep and played a professional cricket game game um and it’s going to also impact if if this continues it’s going to impact on the quality of cricket which was another thing outlined in that PCA report Ben did an interview with Daniel B drumond before the season started where he attributed a hamstring injury to the amount of cricket that he played last season so it’s what do we want do we want there to be a slightly lesser quality of cricket players in danger of being injured and grumpy about the schedule or do we want to try and find some compromise to work around it um and it has to happen at some point the English Cricket summer is unique in the amount of cricket and the amount of competitions that it squeezes into such a short space of time just outside of cricket there are so there are four competitions across the summer what other sport requires players to play Four competitions running concurrently or consecutively at the same time over six months it is ridiculous um I don’t know what the solution is I’ve always said when we’ve discussed this I’m very glad I’m not the one having to come up with the solution but there has to be some kind of compromise or solution that’s found because I I really don’t think you can carry on like this yeah I mean Jim k k you alluded to the different stakeholders in English Cricket wanting different things from county cricket and something we’ve talked about a little bit this season is that people use county cricket for very different purposes um there were County fans out there who say 25 years ago yeah ramps was playing 98 days of cricket in an English summer now players do generally even the guys who play everything don’t play much more than 70 to 75 so they are playing less cricket um the 100 is obviously an additional competition but actually it completely overlaps with another one so individual players are actually still only playing three competitions yeah um so there’s not there is less Cricket than there used to be but county cricket is increasingly being viewed through the lens of high performance you know the the Strauss review um unashamedly refer to it purely through that lens yeah um a lot of people in in cricket are probably somewhere closer to the middle yeah how how do you view it and how comfortable are you um with county cricket being viewed more through the high performance lens I mean I think that’s just the way that the game has gone um and it has to be viewed in that lens I mean gone of the days where if you read some of those books by the old T you know a lot of hard yaka by Simon Hughes or whatever they there’s Tales of of players in that they used to love getting a sponsored car because they they were always in their car and they’d be smoking in the car and they they’ car pull with their like those days are gone I mean naively actually when you were just chatting then I was thinking you know um Team coaches are they not a thing anymore do they go to to certain grounds but like not to because it is I mean that’s it all it’s going to take is we were sort of saying something off air like you know all it’s going to take is for someone to have an accident or be involved in an accident or and then it’ll be you know it’ll that’ll be the the the straw that breaks the camels back and be oh you know we should have dealt with this matter so it has been kicked down kicked down the road because it is tricky to get all these things in in a line um my personal view is that yeah there’s there’s simply too much of of it if we want the game to be as good as it is and people to be at the top of their performance then something has to give maybe that’s thinking off the top of my head they alternate competitions uh you know one year on one year off whether there’s a two-year cycle or or something like that like a EUR Euros or a World Cup sort of cycle um I don’t know but yeah I mean a lot of people will say oh you know they played a lot more in in as youve as you’ve said it back in the day but it was a different quality of cricket it was you know much less athletic uh not to you know insult the olden days guys but it definitely was and less less scrutiny as well right every game every game in stream now players players probably don’t get away with stuff that they would have done 20 years ago yeah absolutely the the the scrutiny is is that much more they used to have rest days and things thrown in as as well so you know you could you could hit them back with that but I think there has to be a compromise and and and something you know has to give really yeah so so just I was looking for the the two-day back to back which is um uh Sussex who play uh at I think at can can yeah Canterbury and then back at ho uh sat Friday night Saturday 2:30 p.m. but also sar’s first three games of the season so they play uh Thursday in Southampton at 700 p.m. and then Friday in Cardiff at 6:30 p.m. and then Sunday back at the oval at 3:30 p.m. so that’s what with that’s three games in four days in three cities spread across quite quite quite a wide section there’s another one so gluster um have a game in Cardiff on the Thursday Bristol on the Friday before traveling 270 miles to scarra for a 4- Day game that starts uh on Sunday yeah yeah so so and and that that again that is part of the issue and again this is where the different sort of uh you know priorities come in because actually part of the issue a bit is that the 220 plus is now played in a block or or two blocks I guess and that is actually a lot down to requests from the players I mean the counties like it too because it means they can get overseas players for a large chunk rather than having to you know have Dwayne Bravo in and he’s sitting around and playing one game a week or whatever but players also like to be able to get into a format rather than you know having to switch between them constantly but it would actually like from a scheding point of view for example if you could have like um uh like you play in the you play a county in the uh County Championship from say okay from Thursday to Monday or from Monday Thursday whatever and then you play the T20 blast game on the Friday then actually you’ve got five days in the week they’re playing but you only have the two travel days back and forth that would be one way but players don’t want that because of the switching between formats and so I guess the thing is that you you have to like you either have to lose some Cricket or extend the season somehow and losing Cricket is really tough right so counties won’t want fewer blast games because especially if the ones that don’t have 100 venues the revenue they get from blast games is so important important you can’t when there there are so many other Financial challenges facing counties at the moment you can’t take away such a significant Revenue generator yeah and then with a county Championship I know that people point to other countries which have fewer games in their first class season but it rains more here you if you have a 10 game season for example if you have the sort of I know people say we started this season early than usual for for for a start is not that much early than it’s been for the last 15 years by the way it’s been pretty similar maybe a week difference you do just get periods in the in the summer that rain more than other periods so if you only had a 10 game summer suddenly players might only be playing really eight games and then you get an injury and then suddenly you’re missing half the season so I think 14 games is quite important yeah I mean my my solution would still be I think 12 count Championship Games somehow but I do appreciate everything you’re saying the the other thing that is a possibility is to take some of it overseas to start with two County rounds in you know the Caribbean or something um and uh it’s like when Coronation Street goes to Spain or something like that you know yeah but but but that that that is to see the survey results on that from County Pro uh I guess I guess that would cost a lot of money uh yes and again you have the issue with County members who are like hang on I mean some would love it some like hang on I’ve I’ve got a membership and now I’m not able to go to my home ground to watch my County surely cheaper to get them all with a coach that just takes them all over the place right I mean England the UK isn’t that big a country and is there’s there’s it’s only sort two or three hours between everywhere there must be a way that they could do it no I’m not criticizing I’m sure they’ve looked into this but there must be a way of working smarter so that if they are playing in Bristol you know they they’re going to you know somewhere on the west side of the country rather than trolling across to the other way or or up north or down south um well we won’t as as Kathy said we’re not going to come up with a solution today you know I reckon if we kick it around for 15 more minutes the only thing the I do sometimes wonder whether we could we always moan about playing early in April as you said I I don’t understand why we don’t play more in September and October because with with the climate changing as it is September October is usually better weather than early April and if you added on that as well as the otherly April instead I just I I’ve always felt like you can get more Cricket in if you extended the season yeah I mean I mean given how early we start I wouldn’t be against finishing a week later maybe let’s start should we start arguing about why we change the clocks back should we should we should we scrap that throw that in the mix you know I know the farmers it won’t be popular with farming guys but you know then we’ll get some crucial daylight in in October um play to November related to all this uh a bit of news that I guess isn’t headline news in the UK yet but I think will be part of discussions next summer and will be a very significant part of the 2025 summer is the Pakistan Super League because of the Champions Trophy taking place in the usual PSL slot in Pakistan the PSL is going to take place most likely exactly when the IP I um takes place uh the officials in Pakistan say they are going to coexist with the IPL rather than compete with the IPL but it’s being reported that the PSL one have more money um but also a lot of the overseas players at the PSL are English players who don’t play in the IPL so there could be quite a significant impact on the quality of cricket you see in the first few weeks of the season um given that it’s like you know players like James Vin Liam Dawson Etc Hampshire are likely to be involved in the PSL counties could have a difficult decision to make over player availability etc etc and also the players are going to have to make those decisions too right because something’s got to give and if there’s we’re getting to the stage now where the calendar year um has Cricket on it all the time in different formats and you know that they will I saw that Zack Crawley interview with um Aon and and NASA Hussein on scar yesterday talking after the lanks match and he was saying you know he wants to do give bull Cricket more of a go he’s been concentrating on Red Bull cricket and you know now he obviously feels a bit more secure in in Red Bull Cricket at the top of the order after the summer he had last year and now white ball Cricket then so so you know a lot of players will want to do it all and think that they can do it all but then maybe we will see this more um segregation of I’m purely a T20 player I’m purely a 4 day player or whatever whatever it is and and and I’m sure that some of the resistance from players is in part a consequence of how much Cricket a lot of them play over the winter you know if you’re a white ball specialist English player and I know there aren’t that many of them your Gap in the year is actually April and May when the Red Bull players are playing the county Championship um anyway in the county Championship there was an extremely fun low-scoring game between Somerset and Essex at tton so Somerset won this by three wickets in a game where no side scored 200 in an Innings Nassar hsein on Sky said it looked like the groundsman had lost his lawn mower um I found this game fascinating because it’s the absolute antithesis of the first two rounds of the cooko B it was gripping to watch very entertaining and in many ways really high quality Cricket but just not what you really see in test Cricket you don’t really get pitches like that and although you had a lot of high quality bowling there it was closer to 76 77 m per hour than 85 886 and as a result bat has had to do some pretty funky things to combat the movement that was an offer before I go to you guys we had a really interesting email from Simon who watched a lot of this game he said there’s no question that the wicked was green and did more than usual but it was not excessive it was consistent throughout uh and coupled with the overhead conditions on day one there were proven quality seamers all bending their back bowling 80 mes hour on a wicket offering pace and carry there was nobly less in the pitch when Bowlers dropped their Pace to low 70s where batting looked much easier slips were brought into play with a decent carry and there were superb takes by both teams elements of captaincy from and planning from both sides e the leg slip and the way Elga was dismissed in the second innings was a joy to see the way Somerset learned and adapted their approach in the second innings was a factor that decid of the game they showed the best elements of basball not slogging instead taking every advantage to play positively and scoring a challenging Wicket playing good Cricket shots and not allowing Bowlers to settle into their groove the sorry Somerset game earli this year was a great game on a flat Deck with the cabar ball and this game was equally enthralling show showcasing different skills in the need for quality cricketers to be able to adapt to all conditions and not just play Shots on flat tracks I’m not asking for every pitch to be like this one I’m purely arguing that some variation in pitches help develop and showcase player skills whilst providing an entertaining game um Ben what did you make of of that game yeah well it’s interesting you say that you don’t get pictures at all like this in test Cricket because just occasionally you do like we you know we’ve had the shortest test in in the history of the game came early this year on a pitch that but but at you know 5 10 miles hour quicker from all the bowlers if you looked at a compilation of the wickets in those two games don’t look that similar yeah that that that that is true but you do get the occasional real bowler friendly surface and I and I do like watching a game where you know in in in in the tour of India it’s different but that pitch that was used for the for the four test that kind of had you know kind of crazy characteristics that were changed throughout the the day and you couldn’t quite tell what it was going to next that was great and it was great that kind of became a character in that game um and I guess you know all of this you know the chat about the Dukes versus the kabar bable about this kind of game is like it’s kind of about what what do you see the purpose of county cricket in the county Championship as and you know what do the the guys in charge see it as as well is it is it enough if it provides entertainment to you know a decent number of people even if that entertainment happens to counteract the the the needs of the England team is there a way to to balance both i’ like to think that there there probably is and that also you know the likes of uh of of Sam Cook of um you know the the other players who will be you know James R for example that they will still learn something from this game and that actually you know batters who are raised just on playing on you know flat tracks against a kabar ball or Bowlers who only ever uh are learning B with that and not you know you need to be able to get the most out of the surface when it’s at its most helpful as well as find ways of uh counteracting a surface isn’t offering you much those are both important skills I like that there is a balance that can be struck but um and so yeah the pit spects May well have a look at this but I didn’t didn’t mind it it was quite refreshing after you know a start season which has not had many results I guess no I definitely agree um Elser in division one Kent won a championship game at Old Trafford for the first time in 27 years lanua bowled out for 92 in their first Innings Nathan Gilchrist taking six for 24 for Kent laner bottom of the table nearly a third of the way through the season what’s uh what’s what’s going on at LS who wants to take this one um I’ll take it um I guess the Lancashire thing is interesting because a lot of people would have had them as kind of contenders going into the start of the season so it’s quite a surprise that they are as bad as they have been I think when you add up the cabara no results combined with the the near wash out they had against s when other teams were racking up batting bonus points they weren’t necessarily doing that you can also look at the impacts so when they’ve done well previously Keaton Jennings particularly has gone big um in throughout the season and he’s had one big Sentry in the rest of the time he hasn’t passed 50 their batting has been really really unstable they’ve had a lot of middle order collapses I think they’ve made potentially one 400 plus score this season probably getting that wrong but I think I think that’s right and I think they went several innings in a row not passing 200 yeah exactly um and I think also when you look at their their bowling it hasn’t been as effective as other Bowlers in the start of the Season especially once the Duke ball has come back in their batting has been so brittle that hasn’t allowed them to have any any runs on the board to play with but it is surprising I guess there’s an element of as well there was so much noise coming into the season with with Nathan lion playing for them that that hasn’t necessarily been the decisive factor that it it could have been um and also now that they’ve lost lion and then well not now but they will lose lion earlier than they thought they were going to lose lion there’s an element of that as well so it’s they’re going to struggle to come back and pick it up from here but it is it is very surprising what’s happened to them over the start of the Season well the N line thing they just not putting enough runs in the board to sort of get him into the game they’re not been the sort of games that you bring in in overseas spinner four even though it was actually turning quite a lot at Old Trafford towards the end of that game but you’re right to say just that the batting has just not done it job really so Tom Bruce the New Zealander overseas player with a outstanding first class record he’s averaging 10 in the middle order um that Jennings t is the only time anyone’s scored for them so far this season yeah exactly um and when does lion have to go now he’s only playing half of the games okay and he’s already played a handful of them yeah um so so LS fans I think it’s fair to say were not Overjoyed by the appointment of Dale benstein as head coach uh which is which I thought was a bit interesting because he had a since as batting coach in 2021 and they were one of the better batting sides in the country that season um and got to the what was the Bob Willis trophy final then I think um but he he didn’t do I mean he didn’t have a great track record at glossier and a glossier side that he took over when they were in the ascendency I guess Richard Dawson had done a good job there and that work was not carried on I mean it’s I don’t think not not worth going to the end and outs of it and we don’t know you know who was responsible for that there but I think that some of the names that were being thrown around around the ls job if they look around say you know York should have a proven International coach notas Gibson even you know the likes of Dar of Mickey Arthur actually if you’re a the head coach job one of the biggest counties in the country that has a very Plum coaching job that should be have a lot of contendant going in you know the lik Jonathan tro was being uh in in the mix or was being mentioned in in dispatches at least and then it’s Bon that comes in so they weren’t happy at that point and this will only increase that pressure I guess the other thing we talked about the the PSL earlier and you know the impact that will have on the on the county season langia are one of the more lenient counties in terms of allowing their players to go to the IPL at quite short notice I guess so s have Clauses in their contracts that say to players uh you know beyond this day you can’t sign a replacement player because you’re a sorry player so you’re going to do that whereas Lanier lost Phil salt quite shortly out from the season he would have bolstered that batting line which has really struggled and you look at it as well it’s it’s funny because you look at if if you could pick a best Lang year 11 you’d think it would contend with anyone in the country but haven’t come close to actually putting that out so often Luke wood as well losing him a big part of their struggles this season is that as good as Bailey and Williams have been for them um over a long period of time Bailey’s had a really difficult start to the season they have they they’re not able to rotate their bowling attack in in the same way the best teams in the country do and sakim mmud is reportedly going to be available next week for his first appearance in a very long time Luke Woods obviously been in the IPL as well so they’ve been short of um much of their best talent no James Anderson either no James Anderson either um in division two Sussex were the only side to win doing so by Innings against darer they they do look very good um Jaden seals looks a real handful leading with taker at div 2 he took a second Innings fer it’s bowling quickly um so Sussex are runaway leaders at the moment in division two that result means Jim that darbishire winless why why to me and darbishire GL Morgan and gler the three teams remain winless those three teams what between them have won one of their L 55 division 2 games um and we had a message in from a darisha fan sincerely asking what the point of darbishire is at the moment so Matt wrote in this is this is I think it’s very interesting given the conversation we’re having at the moment if it was wrong on so many levels to ask this as a longsuffering darish supporter but right now given the general climate of county cricket and darvish’s never- ending failures I can’t help but Ponder what is the point of Cy like mine realistically the top echelons of county cricket are closing faster than ever with the end of seemingly another full stor Drawing Near is difficult to muster enthusiasm granted darish don’t help themselves with the lack of player production meaning we don’t have that as a comfort blanket maybe it’s just me on a bad day in 25 years of scarce returns have taken their toll but I can’t help myself um Beyond The Never Ending Brilliance of Wade M Madson realistically what is the viable future for my County Jim as a darish man yourself y does that resonate with you is is there hope I was that Matt was it yeah I think Matt’s just having a bad week isn’t he well I can see where he’s coming from you know darbishire are often looked upon as the the sort of um the the the Poor Ugly Duckling sort of thing they they do sometimes they don’t help themselves with that with their player production but they do have a loyal core of players um I was really gutted when critchley left a few years cuz cuz he you know he he had come through I think he was Lancer originally but he’d sort of come through the the Youth System there um and they do you know they’ve got as Ben said they’ve got Mickey Arthur they’ve got they’ve got good people there they’re just a small County um and you know they probably when those players do get better they are sort of blinded by the bright lights of knots or you know or Essex or or whatever um but yeah I mean going back to the whole thing of what is county cricket for is it for entertainment is it to feed D I don’t I don’t think there’s been an English uh test cricketer from darash since maybe Dominick cork uh used to have you know uh Devon Malcolm Michael holding before before that um used to have it it it’s sort of darish have sort of gone down the the pegging um a little bit over the years and they’ve not won a lot of silverware I think they won the county Championship but I know this actually do you know when they won last won the county Championship I have no idea 1936 um yeah so they’ve won it once uh and have not won a great deal of silverware I think maybe since 1990 was their last trophy in a major in major competition so Matt and other darbishire fans have been starved of any of that stuff but as any fan of any club will tell you like it’s not necessarily about the silverware I guess if you can see uh Improvement and you can see um you know a good vibe and and and a certain atmosphere about the place that that perhaps has been lacking um recently um I always plump for whenever they do this the sort of like magazine pick your team for the Iowa is stick in a few darish players that whole thing of like tempting fate or you know saying oh may maybe this year will be their year where they’ll do a Leicester city sort of thing or whatever and it’s never quite happened um but yeah in short I don’t really know what the answer is yeah I think that stat is more uh sounds more alarming than actually is it actually is a trend across division 2 not just this season but last season as well very few teams actually win games or a lot of draws in division two so those teams even though they’re winless over the last season in a third I don’t think they’ve actually lost that many games those those three teams individually so it’s yeah I think I think there’s a there’s a broader question about the sort cricket being played in division two yeah um but but for darish specifically I guess it’s uh you know where do they go who do they get in how do they attract players how do they how do they improve their youth setup so they’re actually producing homegrown players that that other counties are um there’s all those sorts of sort of existential questions but as I said they do have a great coach and they’ve got really good players as as Matt mentioned uh they they need more they need a bigger Talent um Squad I mean have you been to Chesterfield and watched a day of outgrown Cricket at Chesterfield underneath the Crooked Spire I mean what more could you want in life but maybe that’s what Matt needs to do you know get down and on a sunny day and and watch a bit of that because um yeah I’m sure a lot of the count the smaller Counties have these these troubles as well it’s hard not to feel like you’re the poor relation in in terms of when you look at Sor or Essex or some of the B the bigger sides but yeah maybe Matt just just needs a in the sun underneath the Crooked Spire I think we could all do that um England uh women announced their squad for the upcoming Series against Pakistan the headline stories that safia Dunley has been left out of both groups while Tammy Bowmont is only in the ODI Squad by bushier who had an outstanding recent tour of New Zealand is set to get an extended run at the top of the order um Kier it feels like England are closing in on the group that they want for the T20 World Cup later this year which is which is a good place to be at six months out from World Club yeah I was looking at the the kind of what the 11 could be before before we started recording and that top six now looks pretty kind of nailed on for what it’s going to be for the T20 World Cup before New Zealand we were talking about that Dunley bont straight shootout and what it turned into was more a game of like musical chairs where there was one chair and sfia Dunley Bon and bushier and bushier made sure she was firmly sat down on that chair at the end of the series and will probably stay there for the for the World Cup regardless well kind of regard regardless of what she does not that much Cricket left right so there’s what five three five 22s Pakistan five against New Zealand something like that three t2s against Pakistan five against New Zealand um so there’s not that much left before they’re going to name that Squad the one thing I was thinking about was if let’s say one of Danny Wyatt or maysh gets an injury that puts them out of the T20 World Cup which one of Dunley or Bon is right in like ahead in the backing order to replace them and at the minute I think you’d potentially have to say that it’s Baymont um given what she’s actually done in T20 over the last year that she’s still playing in the Odis and that Dunley has been left out with both squads I wouldn’t like to put any money on that but I would probably say that it’s Bowmont yeah it’s worth saying that although Bowmont and Dunley aren’t in this squad for the T the T20 Squad that’s not because they’re completely out of the pit is that they’re not on the 11 and John Lewis wanted them to be playing Cricket runs out of the bench given how experienced they are yeah and there’s plenty of regional Cricket to be playing and even if they’re not playing against New Zealand as well there’ll be 100 cricket and proper Cricket for them to be playing outside the squad so it’s not uh this is absolutely the door slam closed this is just please go and get some runs and then we’ll reconsider um so I was looking at that top six and it looks pretty nailed on and then the seven below it you’ve probably sorry the Five Below it from s to 11 you’ve probably got three Spinners in Glenn Dean and Eon and then two Bowlers one of which will probably be Lauren Bell and then in that kind of number seven spot that’s the last spot they’re needing to fill and that’s what they’ll be doing over the course of this summer so you’ve probably got Danny Gibson Freya Kemp potentially Mika score although John Lewis said in the announcement for the squad that she is finishing her a levels and once she’s finished her a levels then they’ll take a view on her immediate future with that um so you’ve got that spot which is now the focus for them to fill over this summer so FR Kemp will be playing the upcoming series but she will only be playing as a batter because she had what was described as a flare up of her back injury that she got over a year ago now in the West Indies um so whether she can bowl in t20s by the end of the summer I think that will be the view on whether she’s retained for the T20 World Cup because Danny Gibson was bowling so much at the death in New Zealand um but yeah it does feel like they’ve pretty much nailed on most of who they want in that team and now it’s that last spot and the peripheral players that they’ll be looking at who they want to take with them as cover um there’s another interesting element from the squad announcement coach John Lewis said that England used AI to help make one of their selections last summer against Australia he said I can send multip different lineups to the company and they run I think it’s about a quarter of a million simulations per team that I send with all the different permutations that could happen through the game Ben what what should we make of of this AI selecting Ash’s 11s yeah I don’t know because also with these kind of things you’re always not sure like how high-tech it actually is or how high-tech you know John Lewis kind of thinks it is especially when you like think he’s being scammed well no but especially when you just like slap a big number in there you know like loads of computing stuff has big numbers you know when you think about how much like a megabyte is that is so many bits but like it’s not as if that that sounds like you know uh so I to some extent I don’t think this is this is like revolutionary exactly I don’t think this is England doing something that is totally unheard of to other teams and AI it’s not that it’s it’s overselling it but I don’t think he’s putting into chat GPT who should I pick for the for the ashes and it’s saying like yeah get Charlie Dean and it’s it’s more like it’s running simulat and that kind of stuff is kind of because you can you can talk about like it’s it’s almost a bit like game theory in mathematics where if you have you know what a c a certain percentage of uh so so if say you have have to explain this one so this is more like with a a uh I see it more in baseball but you can think of it in cricket where if you think you have say four different types of delivery and you know the batter you’re up against has uh you know a different percentage of likelihood of hitting each one but if they set themselves for one then have a different percentage likely of hitting each one so you have lots of different bits of information there you can then create kind of optimal strategies for uh what how how often you should Bowl each different type of ball basic and then just do that kind of at random but following the the percentages kind of thing and then I can see how a similar sort of thing fills into a a simulation type thing where you think like okay this batter might really struggle against off spin or tall off spin or whatever but you can use a simulation think like how often is that SAR going to crop up in a game because you might think you might be overplaying certain bits of information and underplaying other bits of information and the simulation can maybe help you weed out um you know which bits are important and which aren’t kind of thing and it seems like the bit of the selection they made was to pick Charlie Dean and also possibly to bowl her with the new ball and then she did get aissa hey out with the with the new ball in one of the games that would be if if if that is a selection then that would be a win for it I guess what saying leou said it was a successful use of it and I guess if it wasn’t he wouldn’t have said it’s weird that he mentioned it I thought he was asked he was asked was he asked specifically about it it was mentioned in a Forbes uh story in Forbes and then I’m not TR got into there but then someone read that I think someone’s leaking that he’s uh he’s just putting his feet up and putting it all into chat we want to pick Betty snowball this week um that’s what that’s what the algorithm says but you also said that like it was used in rugby and in football as well I’m probably going to get team wrong but Wigan potentially wi rugby as well I think um so it’s not necessarily totally revolutionary thing that with sport it’s just it’s application to Cricket and how beneficial that is in terms of selection he also said that it was a factor in selection not the whole picture otherwise he’s doing himself out of a job sure AI Cricket coach but also people not not not to delve into AI chat but AI has been around for ages and exists in multiple forms so like if you play a computer game in the early 2000s you’re playing against the computer that is AI um so it’s not as if everything is as Ben says you know the evil chat VT chat gbt taking over the world sort of stuff he B saying John le is using FIFA to select the team how how different is it to International care captain 2002 um I’d love to know darisha still didn’t win that we have an exciting Announcement by the way from later this week we will be launching a weekly podcast on women Cricket myself katier and new wisdom signing Lauren Winfield Hill will put together a weekly show that gets stuck into the biggest stories in the women’s game as well as some stories that haven’t had as much attention as they should um it’s very exciting we’ve got some big plans lined up and our first episode we kick things off with an interview with England Captain Heather Knight about her eight years at the helm here’s a sneak preview of what to expect this is Heather Knight on Angela Merkel out of Interest Who who are the non-cricket sporting leaders that you look to um good question I can’t think of any off the top of my head um like Angel this sounds like really boring but like Angela mer Merkel like kind of how she’s she’s done stuff for um for Germany yeah just a sort of no fuss people like Ruth bad Ginsburg do you know that is loie no I’m looking through I’m like who these people I think sorry they’re just they’re just people that popped into my head team or something like that no you did we did a bit of work um oh yeah K Kate Rich yeah yeah yeah that was some that I thought of a little bit I I find sorry I find that fascinating Heather because those are those are not ansers I think many cricketers would would get look up the blank look on my face I’m trying to make myself sound intelligent here aren’t I got pick some pick some um the world leaders I guess I was going to say I did not expect an Angela M reference on on the first podcast that pod will appear in your feeds later this week um elsewhere in the women’s game this week two uh brilliant finishes in the Rachel heho Flint trophy so the diamonds beat the Sparks by one run over the weekend and then uh Thunder beat the blaze by one Wicket yesterday watching the end of the uh Thunder win and the streaming numbers would been we were both watching this in the office were uh not only really good but were like comfortably higher than almost every County Championship men’s game that you you’d see so like it is important that these games are streamed because actually it’s not just that people will watch them when the games are good actually more people watch them than than the men stuff that’s were they on their long before it was going down to a one ball finish as well it wasn’t a case of oh this is going more people watching it at the end sure but but but still the the numbers are the numbers are healthy there were more there were more people watching that than I think watching when Brooke and root were batting together for York for example um uh yeah and I mean that stream did also go down for a bit so it shows the the value of having a robust stream as well I guess um but yeah know it’s it’s it’s it’s great to have to have these things streamed and yeah I do yeah because it’s none of these numbers are sort of they’re decent Siz chunks but they’re not huge chunks you do feel like like there is some really high quality Cricket on show both in count Championship but and in the Rachel Flyn you know comparable to um you know you get the play that you see at you know the international level that you that you know and love and I know you know speaking on this podcast is kind of going to be preaching to the converted but like I I feel like there has to be a way to to let people know that you know you really like these International cricketers they also play this other stuff and you can watch it for free and yet it doesn’t someh doesn’t quite get across even though the numbers are improving and encouraging and the streams are good quality so I I do wonder how much the tier one stuff has brought into more people’s Consciousness that there are these Regional competitions that you can watch um 100% because I think they’re they’re being talked about closer to the counties that they will eventually be exactly and and just on like the the players that you’re watching I think in that Thunder game there was Tammy Bowmont Sarah Glenn Kirsty Gordon Emma Lam Sophia Aon Kate cross mahika Gore and other 100 players in England under 19 players so there was like there’s such a density like having eight Regional teams does mean that the talent is so densely kind of concentrated that if you do switch on a blaze game or a viper game or a diamonds game then you are going to see very high quality International cricketers the end of that diamonds game by the way was totally mad so the Sparks needed four runs off the last over with three wickets in hand uh and then two runs off the last two balls with two wickets in hand and ended up being bowled out one run short of the target there’s a great um still on Lauren’s Instagram page of the moment at which the diamonds win and take that last Wicket uh worth finding that finish on on YouTube if you can um elsewhere Scotland have qualified for the 10 team T20 World Cup later this year beating Ireland in a playoff to seal qualification alongside Sri Lanka Scotland restricted Ireland to do 110 for n from their 20 overs Katherine Bryce took four for eight before scoring 35 not out to take her country over the line with her sister Sarah at the other end it’s the first time Scotland have qualified for a Women’s World Cup in either white ball format um Ben Scotland and a 10 team cup is a really big deal and and Katherine Bryce obviously a huge part of the reason why they’re there yeah I mean because you know you want to focus on the wider Scotland story but it’s just a ridiculous effort from her basically so they were beaten by Sri Lanka and getting given the nature of these competitions it’s it’s you know what one win leaves you with no margin fera and since then she has not had any she’s not made any errors basically she’s made what I think about 150 over 130 balls without being dismissed in the next three games including against Thailand who would have been probably just about favorite ahead of Scotland to go through or they’d have been at least to go through to the semis in that group um and then also taken something like 8 for 39 with the ball across uh 11 overs which is which is kind of freakish I mean she was the the ICC women’s associate CCT of the decade for the 2010s and she won that w at the age of 22 or 23 I think uh and you think the only thing that’s going to stop her winning it for this decade is that Scotland might now be you know this will bolster their claims to being a a full member side I guess uh and and yeah I mean what a moment it has to have been for her as well to hit the winning runs alongside her sister Sarah after they’ve been playing these events since 2015 when Sarah was 15 she Katherine was 17 um you do still feel for for Ireland and I think that these events keep highlighting how actually the Gap is not that big I mean San with the other side to qualify they beat UAE and you think about you know what we talked about Shan recently that chamari atatu is you know what one of the the kind of the greats of the the modern game and they were you know U Were within 15 runs of of of knocking them out of of Shamari not being at a World Cup Thailand were one of the stories of the 2020 event and didn’t even make it to the the last four under a full member side a professional side um and you know a good side and we’re just beaten by another good side after a top order collapse which you know is feels like a very harsh way for you know you a lot of your plans to be kind of set back is going to go to 12 teams from 2026 but I it feels like it can support 14 teams and actually you wonder if looking at this you know like that that group that um UAE and Ireland progressed from was just very competitive we had Vanuatu being Zimbabwe we had Netherlands UAE Zimbabwe van all taking games off each other um that’s like the World Cup is about those teams getting their chance on the big stage as much as it is about finding out who the best team in the world is so absolutely from from an Ireland perspective as well it’s just worth remembering that in the last World Cup just before it they beat Australia in a warm-up game um and then less than 18 months later they’ve been knocked out of the qualifier and they’re not going to be at the next World Cup um so yeah it’s also worth remembering how kind of the cycle has worked for Ireland and it’s not really worked especially with it being a 10 team tournament no no definitely and I think yeah I I also think that just the quality of qualifying tournaments like this just make me think the absurdity of having 10 team World Cups clearly matches between the teams uh who are there are thereabouts in terms of qualification are good matches you see the Sri Lanka example is a good one shank can nearly does qualify for this world cup yet we know can take games off the best teams in the world and if they missed out on on this world cup that would have been totally absurd um some men’s T20 World Cup news uh Jake fasen mcer is not in the Australia Squad neither is Steve Smith there’s actually quite a good interview with fras mcer um that’s doing the rounds at where he outlines uh very sensitively why it made sense not for him to be picked um so if you’re wondering why Jake’s not been picked here hear from Jake himself self um yeah but but I I saw that and I saw Josh hawood as well Josh hawood saying like well who’ you leave out and Jake saying like well I haven’t earned the spot and that just seems like who would you leave out well well I’d leave out you know like I’d pick him over David Warner right now like um really yeah like like I think that you don’t fras MC has never played a game in the Caribbean yeah but but I think you I don’t think you want to look at International selection in terms of like earning a spot or someone having to do Lads to get dropped I think you just look at a guy who is like you know like the the guys who kind of that their sole job is to pick the teams to to do these things that they are picking fras and mcer over other other players thei s do feed in in I don’t I don’t feel that strongly about it it was it was more the reasoning just felt like a little bit like you’re you’re selecting safe there and uh that’s quite a feature of international selection which I think you don’t see in the franchise world is a bit more Cutthroat and in that Cutthroat world fras mcer has risen above yeah other players yeah is he just biting his T just being a nice guy then saying hey look I didn’t expect to be pied it would been bold for a 22 23 year old to throw his toys out the pram about not getting picked for a World Cup no one would do that no one would do that in a cricket team right no they wouldn’t and and and this is a guy who’s not yet played T20 ey Cricket for Australia either but he’s having a great few weeks he’s hitting them well yeah uh on on players hitting them well the IPL is is still happening we are approach ing the end of the group’s agage sen nine over a month into the tournament is is still the leading runs scorer among overseas players um he scored another ridiculous knock this week 81 of 39 and I know he’s opened in the past but this is totally on a different level from anything we’ve seen from him Ben what’s happened what why is it happening and and make it make sense so I mean to be honest I think the the the most decisive the most important factor is that he is a very talented ball Striker who is in the form of his life basically um I think but there are a few specific facts about this tournament one is that the batting conditions in ter of the pitches have been really good and he is a player who will benefit more from that than other players because he is such a uh you know a one gear type of player that’s his role and so if the pitches actually allow you to swing through the line and it’s not going to move too much either way that’s going to benefit some more than other players his partnership when when he succeeded in the past in the IPL that was when he had a really good partnership with Chris Linn and they had a real sort of like Chris Lyn would really attack pace and nine would destroy spin so they would often that was the history of why nine first open right because Lynn had that vulnerability and N was so good against it it meant that Lynn got more bowling faced more bowling that suited his batting basically yeah exactly and and there’s a similar thing going with Phil salt like Phil salt is he’s got pretty good St crate against both pace and spin but it’s particularly against Pace’s strength so you get a bit of that working out but then also I think n has improved his game against fast bowling as well I think particularly against short fast bowling he sort of figured out a way to survive and and and score runs against it people used to say that people used to say you know he’s a great ball Striker but if you pitch it short and his his throat or whatever as as a lot of Batman they don’t they don’t like it there but he’s improved at that and and yeah and I think because that weakness was so obvious teams didn’t plan beyond that so now that dear actually has like now that’s not just like a goto like fail safe approach against him then actually you find yourself short of ideas quite quickly or just going back to that again and again and not knowing what to do once once that’s not working kind of thing so um yeah is interesting and but he’s he’s not coming back for the T20 World Cup even though there there were some efforts made to convince him I think he’s happy enough just uh going and smashing it for KKR and uh and bowling some darts each day but yeah um Jim you you ventured into the world of substack uh not the IPL sub stacking what is sub stacking first well I thought it was quite a new thing but apparently it’s not it’s been around it’s been around for ages it’s basically a hosting platform right for um for writing or or podcasts or or or whatever it might be um and what and what is ours ours is basically a home for um so ours is me and John hotton I should say the cricket writer who I’m very much holding on to the coattails of but um he uh he often writes about the game from different angles or different points of view and and maybe that’s something I’ve tried to do over the past few years and so this is a place where we can write about stuff or talk about stuff that um perhaps or go into detail on stuff there’s no word limit for example you know if you do a piece for a newspaper or even the magazine you know it’s great you get a few more words but you you don’t get so many um and so it’s sort of a a platform for that and you know to just dig into crickets Hinterlands or things that tickle our fancy that perhaps you know no no right thinking mainstream media person would publish but you know it’s a good uh it’s not a Dumping Ground I don’t want to say that but it’s a good it’s it’s a good place for for ideas and um for creativity and yeah so we we just started it so there was about 10 pieces up there and we hope to do a podcast and things there’s a piece on Fielding joh so John yesterday did a piece about how he hates Fielding uh and it’s the worst thing ever in the world and you know how he would just uh um sort of slug through it in order to get the chance to bat you know because he’s in selfish batsman type whereas I’ve always quite enjoyed Fielding have you really yeah yeah yeah and so I did a sort of counter piece today you know it’s like what is it is it Drake and who is it Drake and someone else who I got a spat at the minute Kendrick Lamar Kendrick Lamar yeah hton and Wallace are very much uh doing that in the cricket uh not even the cricket media mainstream just sort of through through the medium of long form writing the interland yeah I did a thing about you know the joy of catching and Fielding actually maybe it’s more about actual catching yeah Fielding is you know I guess you got to be in the field to take take a catch but um yeah so uh it’s that sort of stuff um so yeah so uh it’s um it’s called Arrangements of white on green which is suitably pretentious um but uh yeah I’m sure we’ll we’ll stick a link up to it and there’ll be loads of subscribers and and do you think this is the way that that Cricket media is going uh I don’t think it’s the way it’s necessarily going but I think it’s an interesting uh subplot in that um well one reason being totally honest that we wanted to do it is to have a have something that you own and that you’re completely in control of you know often we’re at the be behest of editors or you know um people commissioning you to do something or you know or following a certain news uh whatever’s in the news or whatever um and so this is very much we can do what we want and and there’s a certain of attractiveness in that um but um you know it’s also born out of you know if if you want to do plow your own Furrow a little bit or do something slightly different then then then it’s then it’s a space for that you know it’s it’s a subscriber model so people can read and it’s all free essentially but if you wanted to chuck in a few coins and then that will help us keep doing it I suppose and if you look at other projects that have done this you know I don’t know like Jeff and Adam with the final word or or other other sort of things where there’s there’s an audio element there’s perhaps a written element Gideon hag does one in Australia which um we didn’t cop Cy him but he we were certainly talking about doing it when him and Sam Perry and and a few others Pete Lawler does um stuff on that now as well and if you’ve read that you know that’s great it’s just it’s Gideon and and Pete talking about whatever’s in their head that day or whatever um uh and it’s it’s a good you know writing is a tool so it’s a good place to sort of flex your muscles a bit well fascinating I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read so far and we’ll leave a we’ll leave a link in the in description oh great um that is everything for today um thanks Ben thanks qu quiz question oh the quiz the quiz question go that that could have been upro that could have been yeah um so presume you’ve got four answers ready to go a reminder of the question as this is Jim’s 35th birthday the question was who are the four people who’ve scored a thousand or more test runs in their 36th year on this planet any suggested answ can I go first as it is M birthday yeah Chris Rogers no that’s what I was going to say was it yeah any other any other answers grae gu no who I think a lot I think a lot of these people have done well just more genuinely after their 35th birthday rather than in their 36 well yesterday I said earlier I said Kuma Sakara but he’s not in there no are there some really big names in there pretty big but pretty big other people can do guesses but unisan no any English in there there’s there’s a there’s a name very close to unisan that that you you didn’t get maybe not close Khan but Chand Paul no yeah sounds like Muhammad Yousef no close to Unis Khan but so the name is close to his no is is in you you great Pakistan middle order batters of the early ughs it’s the other one in man yeah okay me and eny so I’m going to put you out your misery because I don’t think you can get them so lean the list and I was actually genuinely quite surprised by this because I I was I did not remember that he had uh this good end to his career top is ganguli scored um 1,200 runs at 53 age 35 tops off on the balcony then uh inzamam scored uh 1,100 runs at exactly 80 uh then the the one I think one of you might have got kaara because it’s just happened just happened Kaa a th000 runs at 72 uh and then zahab Bas 1050 runs at 81 um so as you 36th year Jim’s a lot of Hope just bear in mind Z herob bass’s 8283 runs spree yeah um as inspiration but I can’t play on May the 11th or you can’t play on May once the pictures have dried out I’m your man cool excellent good to know that is everything for today thanks Ben thanks Kat thanks Jim that is everything for today’s show but remember we’ve got our first episode of the women’s weekly podcast starting on Thursday and live show still couple tickets or not still a couple of tickets yeah