Yep.

And three of them right at the end.

Um, so Ac- the ...

What happened with Atkinson is I couldn't believe it, and, and I said this at the time, how many wickets Atkinson got at the start of his career.

It was a miracle.

Um, the run's more believable for me, but the, the amount of wickets he was getting and the strike rate at which he was getting them was incredible, and that was just luck.

It wasn't just luck.

He was just teeing off.

Yeah

... because his dad had boatloads of money and wanted his son to be a cricketer.

So he went, "Okay, I'm gonna get him off to India to train in Indian conditions for three months.

Then he's off to South Africa.

Then he's off to Australia, where they're gonna bomb him." And he just said, "Well, I've got loads of cash, so I'm gonna get him trained by everybody ever."

Yeah.

Hmm.

I think for every Compton, there's a total outlier that just comes up through system, you know, sports that they potentially wouldn't have played otherwise and all the rest of it.

Right now we're saying should've been 14 or 16, and why are they 12? And you're saying 32.

32, but they're, they do fake quali- they do fake rounds, don't they? They say, "Well, this is the qualifying bit of the World Cup," where in, in actual fact it's giving lesser nations a, a couple of games on obscure TV channels.

Okay, so there needs to be things that count in the years where there isn't a World Cup rather than going back to, which I ag- we've had this conversation before, which I agree that bilaterals, as much as I love them, and tri-series, my favorite cricket growing up was tri-series, they've had their day now because T20 is, is, you know, the proliferation of T20 is-

Mm

... rest of it, right? But there is still room for the former.

I think the 40-over game should be played more at domestic level, 'cause that is, um, that we found when ODIs were a proper thing, that when you go down all the levels, the quality of the cricket doesn't really last for the 50 overs when you have lesser players playing it.

40-over cricket seems to have disappeared.

Ask the guys that played Pro40 back in the day.

... sorry to inter- interject, but Varun said that this performance by Pakistan is the worst batting performance by an away team in England since 1958.

Yeah, okay.

So, so it's, it's not just bad, it's, like, all-time stinking from Pakistan.

And I said after the last test they need to change as many as they can, and the only change they did make, um, the only change they did make was bagging the captain off and getting Babar in, who's done nothing with, with bat, um, or, or in the field, or geeing up the troops or anything like that.

He was playing silly shots as well.

He, you know, he looked...

People have been comparing, um, Babar to Steve Smith and, and that sounds ridiculous to say these days, but at one point they were on the same sort of, you know, they were in the same conversations, weren't they? And no one will forget that saw the spell that Jofra did at Steve Smith, and somehow he didn't get him out.

Hmm.

[laughs]

You, like, does he do it when they need him? Because if you break down Jack Callis' numbers, for example, he got most of his big runs when loads of other people did.

He was just piling them on top.

Whereas what I wanna see is the guy that stands there and is the only one that can do it when everyone else is falling around him.

I'm thinking Sehwag here when Mendis was tearing through India-

Mm

...

if you can go, they have two great bowlers, it swings loads at the start, the new ball does all sorts.

You must have some weird ones.

Yeah, there's some.

There's quite a few came running up to the surface when you asked the question.

Uh, Scotland, you all remember Scotland-Afghanistan from the World Cup in 2015, don't you?

[laughs]

What a game that was.

That game was sick, right? It had everything.

Um, had one of my favorite players getting loads of runs.

But I think Sajid still should have played, and that's nothing, taking nothing away from Ali Osman, because I think five for 95 are really good figures in, in 24 overs.

Well, you may as well play both of them in the next test match.

Honestly, you might as well play both because England aren't very good against spin.

And you say it was a three-pronged or four-pronged attack.

It was a no-pronged attack.

It was nothing.

There was no, there was no team.

I mean, it's, it's maybe not an innings, innings defeat always, but it's pretty much always a victory.

Yeah.

And he thought, "What's the, what's the issue with you players?" And I remember when he got Dravid, Dravid's face, Dravid was the, like, coolest guy ever against spin.

He just, y- you couldn't get him out, and he bamboozled him.

And Dravid's face was genuine shock, and I've never seen that before or since from Rahul Dravid.

And Sehwag's at the other end, like spinning his bat around.

Feroz Shah Kotla, yeah.

Shah Kotla, where the pitch was a total dog.

And it was almost like, well, 100 might win this.

Yeah

... that would be great.

The T20 World Cup could easily be 32 teams.

It would grow the game more.

The Olympics may have that effect.

But we no longer have room in the calendar for tri-series and bilaterals as much as I would like them.

So can the idea.

It's the most enjoyable limited overs cricket I've ever watched is 40 over cricket.

They-

It's, it's where, it's where sport's going.

I don't mind the idea that the IPL is the big one, and you have a season like football.

It, it's the Premier League or, or whatever.

But how, how does that coexist with other franchise leagues at the same time if it's six months?

You're still gonna have all your stars be Indian

So football used to be, um, when you played in the, whatever the Champions League was called back then, you could only have two that played in Europe in your 11.

Maybe even in your squad.

Yeah.

I go, "Look," I go, "J- I just wanna give you this information.

You have been out 15 times to this shot against this type of bowling, and you're now averaging four when you play that shot And I'm not n- I, I am now not qualified to tell you what to do with that information.

I just wanna go look, look, look at that.

If you're playing the cut shot against this guy, you're averaging four when you do it.

And you might say, "I love that shot.

It's fine.

Right.

Yeah.

So a ba- every batsman had to be teamed up with a bowler, and they had to practice their batting with that person.

They rec- This was part of England, to be fair to that lot, when England became the number one side in the world in Test, a lot of it was just trying to find these, call them one percenters, but it's lower than that.

Mm.

So you have a bowler, um, who is unbelievably good facing another bowler and bowling at him.

I want to see Phil Tufnell coming out to bat.

He doesn't know which way around to put his helmet on, right? He just comes out.

He can't see.

Yeah

... and they get incredibly upset about things that don't matter.

Like offside decisions that go, like all you hear on the radio, I listen to sports radio constantly.

All you hear on the radio is every day somebody's moaning about some decision.

And all the fans of Team A think it's a good decision, and all the fans of Team B think it's a bad decision, and they all phone up and argue with each other.

That is just people wanting to get away from their normal lives.

Right?

Mm.

They got the absolute most out of Ashton Agar, right?

Um, just bowls a bit dry, goes at seven and over, nobody really whacks him.

Does his job, and he can offer you something with the bat, as England found out in a test match.

Um, they were just a team that was well put together, and they played the right sort of cricket for that league.

Um, they were also, Jarrod, the only team that worked out how to use the movable power play, which is called the power surge-

Mm.

Even Bumrah in 2015 was such.

But, uh, uh, Rohit, I think, kind of, uh, stuck his guns out and he was m- he can, uh, back these players.

Yeah

... to the, to the, to the game, and he managed to, to navigate the waters with zero scandals, right? No nonsense, no private life stuff came out.

No, you know, he wasn't doing any of the bad stuff that a lot of people with that amount of temptations would succumb to, right? So I keep saying it is how he's managed and how he's looked after bec- because at 15, like, should he even have a phone? Do you know what I mean? It's, it's a question, isn't it? Should, should, should he be on social media? You're not meant to be, are you, when you're 15? I...

stay away from all of that stuff.

Get the kid playing cricket and get him being as good as he can be at cricket.

... ex- exciting time, right?

There's a kid in England, right? And, and darts is a very big sport in England.

It's very popular.

[laughs]

He was built in a lab and designed for ODI cricket, and he stopped playing it.

So he is the perfect ODI batsman because his natural tempo and the way he bats is set up for that format, to bat for 50 overs and let the other guys do their thing around him.

He then has to switch to T20 cricket because it's the biggest show in town, right? And he opens with people like Shahjil for a while, which he did domestically, who Shahjil is trying to hit every single ball for six.

I hear you talk about that

...

but he definitely, like, whacked the, uh, the advertising hoardings and all that sort of stuff.

So he's, he's now kind of...

Yeah.

But I, but I think, uh, I think a meerkat is a good team member as well, because the, the meerkat, like if you've e- if you've ever spent time around meerkats, they're really fun and cool, and they're not ruffled by things.

But they're su- the things you need in Test match cricket, right? They're very, very alert.

So, so they are, they are always paying attention, so they're gonna be great in the field.

Um, they are really good communicators, which you, you're gonna need for running between the wickets and, and also in the field.

And they are, uh, they are known as being adaptable to their surround- there's loads of animals that are adaptable.

But in, in Test match cricket, you need to be adaptable.

Yes

Big time.

Because back in the day when, when, you know, Ganguly, Dravid, Tendulkar t- Tendulkar very good fielder, Dravid good catcher and all that.

But they never bothered running after the ball in the field.

You never saw them doing that.

And if, if they were, the other team was racking up a score, it was hands in pockets and, you know, n- no one was prowling the outfield, were they? Kohli doesn't stand for that, right? You're fielding properly, all of you, and he sets the example with that, and he's still doing it now Um-

Mm

... is strategically thought out to have the best career.

Also, to be on the most posters and to be on the most adverts and to do all that.

And did you foresee this? Could you see Baz getting sacked? Because it's come as a bit of a surprise to me.

Nothing is a surprise with this lot.

I mean, the sensible thing would be the surprise.

So when the Ashes happened, and you know, what I don't like is when you get stuff happen is when commentators or people that are asked for their opinions don't remember all the stuff that they used to say, and they just react to what's happening now.

And like I told you so, I told you so.

We're in a position here, Behram, where you and I have recorded so much stuff about the England cricket team.

Go back and listen to what we said all the way along, right? I'm not changing my mind here.

And, uh, I'm not sure if, you know, they've gained anything in these four years apart from the fact that, I don't know, um, maybe they should be a bit more smart with respect to their on-field decision-making, or have they even learnt that?

Yeah.

So, so you want your...

Because there's no point in putting the same amount of weights on the bar for Chris Gayle as there is for Sam Billings and Alex Ross, because their job is to run twos.

But you shouldn't test them in running 5K, you should test them running 22 yards, turning around and running back again.

Yeah

... or dive over it, and he went, "Well, I'm gonna go backwards." Oh, look, he's 30 centimeters better than everybody else, 'cause he'd found a technique that...

So the, the coaching manual, great.

You know, there's a coaching manual from 100 years ago that high elbow and all this sort of stuff.

No, I mean-

In knockout games, maybe.

But women, women are like, they support each other better.

There, there's a, there's a unity, and they're off the field.

They're...

it seems like they're nice to each other.

I don't have any experience like you do of knowing what dressing rooms are like.

Mm.

Quite the opposite now

...

I understand.

When, when probably in your era, Robbie, the first thing you're taught is, is high elbow, block the ball, good defense, and you build everything from that.

Now it's you reverse ramps and scoops and sweeps and all the rest of it.

And, and we do get, you know, England coming out first ball of a, of a morning playing ludicrous sweeps and, and nutcase shots.

Um, so the, the kids aren't built to block and play test cricket how it used to be played.

since that has happened.

That's the fascinating thing about that.

But you, you also have a thing now.

So I would say recent Virat, last couple of years, much more focused on the team's performance, and we wanna win the IPL, and I'm gonna play like this.

And the, for us to win the IPL, if I bat like this, we have a better chance, therefore I will.

It coincided with cricket changing because of impact sub and, and the other big switch in cricket in the, in IPL, which is this year and this year alone, was we've had no fun chases.

We've had two, right? We had the Chaudhary one for LSG, and we had the ridiculous Miller deciding not to take the, the, the run that would've made them all right to win and then they lost.

So we've had two, two fun chases in the whole IPL, and we've had millions of 200 scores, right? Loads of 200 chases that have been boring as hell.

[laughs]

Yeah.

And if he gets the ball moving around there from a little, a little bit, the wobble ball and move it around, move it in, he becomes really dangerous.

And I think he's finally settled there, because I think he was bowling very differently in white-ball cricket, and it's something I noticed especially after watching the, the SA20s over the last couple of years.

I just started seeing...

Man, I was thinking, "If this guy just bowled proper lengths, like hard lengths, his strength-

Mm

... he'll be so much more dangerous in T20 cricket than he is." 'Cause it feels like he's trying to reinvent himself as a bowler just for T20 cricket.

And it felt like, hey-

... had both of them together, yeah.

And so you, you end up getting it's square pegs in round holes stuff, and then when Chahar, who has had his injury troubles and he is knocking on a bit, isn't Chahar and he's getting whacked, and is not swinging it, and then you go to Boult and the same thing happens.

The cupboard that you've built up is now bare, right? You don't have anything else.

And Mumbai don't bother with spinners this time.

Um, Gazanfer.

Um, this time Gazanfer, who was excellent.

Really good season.

Yes