The Guerilla Cricket Podcast

The warmest of welcomes back to the Bishop and Bear.

The English cricket summer is finally done, so late that Santa’s reindeer are already in pre-Christmas training. But if you think that means a short break for Guerilla Cricket, oh no, think again. England start a Test Series in Pakistan in just a few days’ time. 

To look back with the Bear and I to the summer gone and forward to that Pakistan series, our guest is comedian, BBC voice of Pakistan cricket, winner of the Live Stand Up Comedy Award at the 8th annual UK Enterprise Awards 2024, but most importantly a Guerilla Cricket alumni – Aatif Nawaz.

Not only do we reflect on the good, the bad and the ugly from the summer (Lords ticket prices for a start), we also find out what it’s like to get a lift off Jimmy Anderson, what car he has and indeed how many of them. And if you have some questions about ECB policies and decisions, just wait until we light Aatif’s blue touchpaper about the PCB. Safe to say, we well and truly poked that particular sleeping bear. Not our Bear of course, Heaven forfend!

We all seemed to agree that none of us expected much from the late, late Australia white ball show, but actually really enjoyed it and we even find time to reflect on Cricket’s Manchester City, aka Surrey and their Oval Invincible alter egos winning again. And poor old Somerset not winning. Three times.

And if you want to know why David Gower’s invitation for Aatif to go swimming in Pakistan turned out to be an empty promise, then you will find that answer here too.

It’s a lot of fun, so grab yourselves a drink and settle in to join us. We love having your company. By the way, if you want to help us keep our show on the road and great cricket coverage free across the internet, then do please consider supporting us through Patreon here. There are loads of great benefits as well as our undying gratitude of course.

Cheers!

Your Ursine Landlord and Episcopal Barman

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Welcome back to the Bishop and Bear, cricket’s finest virtual pub.

An absolute smorgasbord of discussion topics this week, so your ursine landlord and episcopal barman needed to find someone of weight and forthright opinion to help navigate through them. And we did find one too. Who else, of course, but our own Hendo.

Delicately sipping a coffee liqueur or two , Hendo gets fully stuck in with us to cover all of the following and more besides:

·     The Sri Lanka series to date

·     A disappointing Sunday crowd for a great day of Test Cricket and what’s to be done?

·     The Lords Man of the Match Award

·     Breaking news about that award winner – Gus Atkinson

·     A look forward to the Oval Sri Lanka Test

·     The September return of the Kookaburra

·     Farhan Ahmed, WG Grace and Abraham Lincoln (and does the Bear know the connection between them?)

·     BMac as supreme ruler across formats and the impending Aussie white ball series

·     Bangladesh making history in Pakistan

Do grab yourselves a drink and settle in to join us for the chat. We love having your company.

By the way, if you want to help us keep our show on the road and great cricket coverage free across the internet, then do please consider supporting us through Patreon here. There are loads of great benefits as well as our undying gratitude of course.

Cheers!

Your Ursine Landlord and Episcopal Barman

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Welcome to the very first episode of Hector and Henry’s World of Cricket.

Your hosts, Hector and Henry, are avid badgers of the game, with very different cricketing careers. Henry is looking to go the distance, playing for the Derbyshire academy, and travelling out to Adelaide to play for the Darren Lehman academy, whilst Hector spent the summer gradually being dropped down the order from opener to number 8! Like with all fans, we are unified in our love of the game.

Together, Hector and Henry (that’s us – think Bishop and Bear, but much younger and better looking, probably), will interview a range of exciting guests, from current players, to content creators, to provide you with a short engaging discussions.

Episodes will be released every fortnight, and we are keen for this show to be refreshingly different – so please feel free to send in any suggestions/questions for us to ask our guests to [email protected]

To kick off this series, we have a great guest, as we were lucky enough to speak to recent back to back Hundred champion – a vital part of the Oval Invincibles team, and potential future England superstar, Nathan Sowter.

We chat about his time in the Hundred, his views on the future of Test Match Cricket and County cricket, what it’s like bowling to Kieron Pollard, and much more!

Thank you so much for listening, we really hope you enjoy it and bear with us as it is our first try!

By the way, if you want to help Guerilla Cricket keep our show on the road and great cricket coverage free across the internet, then do please consider supporting us through Patreon here. There are loads of great benefits as well as our undying gratitude of course.

Cheers!

Your Ursine Landlord and Episcopal Barman

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Welcome back to the Bishop and Bear!

It’s always great to see you and even more so when a Test series is just around the corner. This one is against Sri Lanka. Perhaps not the force of old, but not to be underestimated either.

Also not to be underestimated are the two guests on the barstools of bravado. It’s our Sri Lankan Olegasegram double act. Bennett and Son - the works never done, at least not until they have given us the lowdown on this year’s Sri Lankan tourists.

The son is Dylan who explains how the times are a-changing for Sri Lankan domestic cricket and the truth behind B – Love Kandy. A Sri Lankan Cricket franchise apparently, not a chocolate aphrodisiac .

We start with England though and debate not just how they will fare without Ben Stokes, but also whether his three appearances, four runs and no wickets for the Northern Superchargers was worth the few extra bums on seats in the Hundred as far as the ECB is concerned. Probably not, but we doubt they’ll admit that.

From there, it’s a thorough review of the old, new and returning Sri Lankan squad, who have just beaten India in a One Day series don’t forget! They will have a very familiar name as batting coach for this series. None other than our old favourite Ian Bell…Bell….Bell….Bell.

Finally, we circle back to the Hundred again. Mainly to assess Jimmy Anderson’s desire to play in it and other franchise tournaments. To us that seems a bit like asking Michelangelo to don his overalls and slap a lick of paint over cracks in the Bishop and Bear walls. But Jimmy has earned the right to do whatever he wants.

By the way, if you want to help us keep our show on the road and great cricket coverage free across the internet, then do please consider supporting us through Patreon here. There are loads of great benefits as well as our undying gratitude of course.

Cheers!

Your Ursine Landlord and Episcopal Barman

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Bon retour au L'évêque et l'ours. Or, if this is your first visit, a very warm welcome to the Bishop and Bear.

Sorry, but that’s as much French as we are going to get despite our landlord having just returned sun bronzed from the south of France.

It’s a bon retour aussi (sorry a bit more French slipped in there) to our special guest, St Annie of Exeter. The wonderful Annie Chave of course, who was very quick to get in the French spirit with several large glasses of our highly quaffable Côtes du Rhône.

Hopefully you find us in up-beat, but also reflective mood as we chew over things from the wonderful world of cricket. We start by paying our tribute on the tragic passing of Graham Thorpe, taken too young, but a man who we and indeed all England fans, remember with great fondness.

From there we look back to Jimmy’s final Test farewell, seeing it as reflective of an era’s end, not just a magnificent career. We celebrate some great cricket (and decent crowds) in the One Day Cup, consider the implications of the Hundred sale with Hampshire seemingly leading the way, consider the implications of England’s new selections for the Sri Lanka series and finally, for good measure, assess who might fill the shoes of the departing Mathew Mott.

By the way, if you want to help us keep our show on the road and great cricket coverage free across the internet, then do please consider supporting us through Patreon here. There are loads of great benefits as well as our undying gratitude of course.

Cheers!

Your Ursine Landlord and Episcopal Barman

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Great to have you back with us in the Bishop and Bear.

It’s raining outside our pub window which can only mean one thing. There’s an England Test Match starting next week AT LORDS against the West Indies in Jimmy’s farewell. We will look forward to that and also briefly back at the World T20.

BUT first you may know that the first time the West Indies won a Test in England was at Lords in 1950. A thumping 326 run victory inspired not just by Ramadhin and Valentine, BUT also by a 2nd innings 168* from Clyde Walcott.

Our special guest today on the Barstool of Bravado is author Peter Mason, whose book “Clyde Walcott – Statesman of West Indies Cricket” is released in September. It’s an essential biography of a cricketing great exploring his achievements as a player, manager and political activist. Peter's book gives us a timely reminder of the huge impact that Clyde Walcott had both on and off the field. It is also a fascinating exploration of how theWest Indies came to dominate the game for so long at the end of the twentieth century. You can preorder the book at most good bookstores and there is a link below to point you in the right direction.

It’s the start of a West Indies series, so no surprise that our other guest is the ever-eloquent David Brook. Together with Peter, we look back to the World T20 and more importantly forward to the England Vs West Indies series and Jimmy Anderson’s Lords farewell.

You can pre order your copy of book “Clyde Walcott – Statesman of West Indies Cricket” at most good bookshops, including here.

By the way, if you want to help us keep our show on the road and great cricket coverage free across the internet, then do please consider supporting us through Patreon here. There’s loads of great benefits as well as our undying gratitude of course.

Cheers!

Your Ursine Landlord and Episcopal Barman

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A huge welcome back to the Bishop and Bear.

“As strange as it sounds, what I want to be doing right now is playing cricket. Sweating and getting tired at training sessions, the ball hitting my legs and body.

But I have a sniper’s rifle in my hands instead of a bat and a grenade instead of a ball”.

Those are the words of Ukraniain cricketer and now soldier defending his homeland from Russian invasion, Sasha Romanenko. His story, and others like him, is brilliantly told in the book “Getting Out – The Ukrainian Cricket Team’s Last Stand on the Front Lines of War”.

It’s author, Jonathan Campion is our guest in the Bishop and Bear today to discuss not just of how Ukraine’s cricketers helped the people around them to escape from Russia’s invasion (including first – hand accounts of the war), but also about the growth of cricket in the Ukraine to the cusp of ICC membership before Putin’s aggression.

Personal, harrowing yet heartwarming, your ursine landlord and episcopal barman strongly recommend it. You can find a link on where to buy it below.

Of course, we also take the opportunity to chat with Jonathan about the World T20, now at the Super 8 stage and we look at the two groups and ask “Can anyone stop another Australia vs India final”? Yes, is the answer, so listen in to see who we favour.

You can buy ‘Getting Out – the Ukranian Cricket Team’s Last Stand on the Front Lines of War’ at all reputable book stores, but here is one of them.

Cheers!

Your Ursine Landlord and Episcopal Barman

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A huge welcome back to the Bishop and Bear.

Having just staggered across the finishing line of the IPL marathon, don’t think for a second we have time to put our feet up in the Old B and B. Oh no! The WT20 looms. All 20 teams, 4 groups, 2 countries, nine venues and specially grown and flown drop in pitches of it.

So much to talk about with our special guest Gargi Raut, presenter, broadcaster and writer with Revsportz in India. Gargi and your episcopal barman have worked together before, so it was high time she had an invite into cricket’s favourite virtual pub! Is a lively chat too.

We dissect the IPL and agree, to put it nicely, that this year was far from its finest showing. Certainly, the final wasn’t. We conclude that six, six, six truly is the number of the beast as most bowlers were reduced to mere cannon fodder. Jason Holder has had some interesting things to say about that and we tend to agree with him. 

Should they stay or should they go? We also discuss whether English players should have been hauled home or whether staying in India would have been better World Cup prep. Michael Vaughan thinks they should have stayed. But hey, that’s Michael Vaughan.  

With Gargi’s insight, we also dive into the cult of personality and the intrusions on player privacy that cricketing celebrity in India entails. It is, we all tend to think, bonkers.

Finally, or course, we look ahead to the World Cup and ask whether India can finally bring home an ICC Trophy again or whether a cheeky punt on Uganda at 1,500/1 might be worthwhile (probably not, but it’s up to you of course).

Cheers!

Your Ursine Landlord and Episcopal Barman

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Hello and welcome back to the Bishop and Bear. Now who do you think of when you think about a hard man? Vinny Jones, Norman Hunter? Mike Tyson? Nigel Walker?

Well, it’s none of those that we are discussing in the old B&B today. We want to focus on Cricket’s Hard Men – the Toughest Characters from the History of Cricket and our guest on the barstool of bravado is Richard Sydenham, sports journalist and author of a book which is all about that very subject – Cricket’s Hard Men. 

So, what actually constitutes a hard man of cricket? The truth is there is no simple definition. Whether it's resilience to defy injury from players like Kepler Wessels, Mike Atherton and Allan Border; sheer physicality from cricketer turned cage fighter Adam Hollioake; the bloody-mindedness to snub tradition by Douglas Jardine and John Reid; a chest-thumping need from Arjuna Ranatunga to show pride for a flag that had a reputation of being soft in the cricket world; or the blind courage of Brian Close, each player has his own unique story.

Cricket’s Hard Men is a cricket book with a difference, not focused on runs, wickets and averages but on the characters who have excelled in the challenging environment of professional cricket, through the generations. Richard has picked 22 of them and mad a very good case for their inclusion. Here is the full 22:

Mohinder Armanath, Michael Atherton, Eddie Barlow, Allan Border, Brian Close, Brian Davidson, John Edrich, Andy Flower, Roy Fredericks, Adam Hollioake, Douglas Jardine, Javed Miandad, Anil Kumble, Bruce Laird, Dennis Lillee, Arjuna Runatunga, John Reid, Viv Richards, Graeme Smith, Steve Waugh, Kepler Wessels and Peter Willey.

But who is the ultimate Hard Man of Cricket? Listen here to find out who we think and let us know who would make your cut!

You can find the book here But of course, other retailers are available.

Cheers!

Your Ursine Landlord and Episcopal Barman

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Welcome back to the Bishop and Bear.

If you fancy a cracking night out, plenty to eat and drink, plus the chance to play some cricket and even face some of the world’s best bowlers, there is a bar you can go to. It’s called Sixes. If you are in the UK, you probably already know it. If you are in the USA, you soon will as they are have already opened in Dallas and will be opening more there too.

At Guerilla Cricket, the social side of cricket is central to what we do. It’s the philosophy of our guest today too. Andy Waugh is the co - founder of Sixes Social Cricket and shares with us the story of Sixes, and tells us about some of their backers and fans which include the likes of Yuvraj Singh, KL Rahul, Stuart Broad, Jofra Archer and others. How did a Scotsman who never played cricket, end up creating a chain of social cricket experience bars? You are in the right place to find out.

Andy seemed to feel straight at home in the Bishop and Bear and the conversation quickly turned to how social cricket and Sixes is a perfect opportunity to help people find their way to the game. Our thoughts also turn of course to the World T20 and the run fuelled IPL amongst other things.

It’s a lively chat, so do have a listen and let us know what you think.

And, if you haven’t tried Sixes yet. Get down to one and give it a go. We are planning a Guerilla night in one very soon.

Do enjoy the chat and see you again soon in the Bishop and Bear.

Cheers!

Your Ursine Landlord and Episcopal Barman

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