The Offspin

You might not recognise the name of this episode’s guest, but you’ll certainly know some of the people he’s worked with. Kit Perera is an Auckland cricket legend, and in his capacity as a coach at Suburbs New Lynn has helped players like Jimmy Neesham, Jeet Raval, Ajaz Patel and Martin Guptill fine-tune their techniques and mental approach to the game. Alex and Simon pick his brain about cricket etiquette, coaching in low-decile schools and how lessons learned from cricket can be applied to life, before committing to a punishing podcast schedule for the fast-approaching World Test Championship final.

The Offspin is brought to you with the support of our friends at The Beer Spot.

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In this episode, Simon and Alex are joined by Michael Appleton, diplomat and The Spinoff's chief cricket statistician, to learn about his previous posting to India, the place cricket holds at the heart of Indian culture and how many diplomatic doors it opened. They discuss the IPL taking place amid the rampant Covid-19 outbreak in India, and in especially exciting news, the team announce The Beer Spot as their brand new sponsor. Find your nearest Beer Spot at thebeerspot.co.nz

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The Spinoff’s resident cricket nerds Simon Day and Alex Braae are joined by Andrea Nelson, CEO of the 2022 ICC Women’s World Cup, to talk about landing the hosting rights for New Zealand, the challenging decision to postpone the tournament by a year and why we should be getting extremely excited about next summer.

Simon and Alex also spend some time looking ahead to the World Test Championship final, which they’re still planning to podcast daily, and Alex faces up to a tweet about Martin Guptill from a few weeks ago that didn't age very well.

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With the Blackcaps headed for the final of the inaugural ICC World Test Championship at Lord’s in June, Simon Day and Alex Braae have successfully appealed to bring The Offspin out of retirement. Today they look ahead to the big game, before refocusing on all the cricket that’s right in front of us with White Fern and Canterbury Magicians captain Frankie Mackay.

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Join various hosts of The Spinoff podcasts Gone by Lunchtime, On The Rag, The Real Pod, Paper Cuts, The Offspin, and Dietary Requirements as we look back at the car crash that was 2019.

In this special end of year podcast hosted by Leonie Hayden, we dissect the country's response to national disasters, the highs and lows of MAFS, international literary scandals, the madness and tragedy of the 2019 Cricket World Cup, Mad Chapman's Pulitzer Prize-winning chip ranking and more, plus we add our entries to the official The Spinoff 2019 Honours and Dishonours board.

Pour yourself a Baileys and settle in.

Check out more of our podcasts here including the pop up pod The Spinoff Book Out Loud (The Spinoff Book is available in stores now). If you want to continue to support the work we do, behind the mic or on the site, check out The Spinoff Members, where you can support independent media for as a little as a dollar a week!

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The Offspin Podcast is back by semi-popular demand for a bonus episode, with Black Caps Cricket World Cup hero Jimmy Neesham. 

For those still suffering from the lead-weight despair of seeing the Black Caps losing the World Cup final in the closest possible way, talking about it helps. After a cathartic month playing T20 in Canada, allrounder Jimmy Neesham sat down with Simon and Alex from The Offspin podcast, to talk all things cricket and life.

Over an hour in the studio, he talked about coming to terms with how the final had gone, his newfound enthusiasm for a long-lasting career in the game, getting paid by itinerant T20 leagues, and what it was like to have a real job for a while. Neesham also revealed what it was like to come home to the flat he shares with Silver Fern Bailey Mes, who did manage to bring a trophy home from England. All that and more on The Offspin.

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The Offspin podcast tries to make sense of the greatest cricket game of all time, at the same time as not seeing the Black Caps win it.

Perhaps our guest Sam Flynn Scott has the right approach to this one – immediately upon arrival at the studio he decided to focus on how the Black Caps didn't actually lose the Cricket World Cup final. After all, it was tied on the field not just once but twice.

But really, after a game like that, what else is there to do but hopelessly grasp at straws – when after six gruelling weeks of cricket fandom, it came down to the absolute last possible ball, and the result went the other way?

Along with ample chances to unload on the things that went wrong or were just plain unlucky, there's also a chance to look at the positives. We pick some of them out and lavish praise on the players who played their hearts out when it mattered. And for the fans, there's a very simple question: could we ever ask to have been taken on a more total emotional journey than what the Black Caps have given us over the tournament? And was it all worth it? 

Probably. Wow. What an amazing game. Sport at it’s finest. The best game we've ever seen. It was so tense. So much skill. So much pressure. It was a beautiful vision of the most beautiful game.

We feel like we’ve just left a five-day festival. Thank you for being there with us. 

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On the latest episode of The Offspin, the team are joined by actor, Lotto host, and hugely passionate cricket fan Sonia Gray as we dare to believe of a Black Caps World Cup victory.

It's still hard to fathom, but we're in the final again. And it's against the English (down with Australia!). Ahead of the last game of the World Cup we've convened a panel to assess the Black Caps chances, assess the state of the fans who've been on a 5-week bender, and start to prepare for Sunday's final.  

Back in 2016, Sonia Gray wrote an incredible piece for The Spinoff about the importance of simply enjoying the moment when the Black Caps had success. After all, we've all had to deal with so much failure from the team, it can be hard to know how to absorb a win over the richest team in the world to make the World Cup final. 

We also discuss the thrill of seeing Australia plummet back down to earth against England, talk about the lows that come with the joys of Black Caps fandom, and Alex shares a theory as to why Brexit will help the Black Caps win the final.

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In today's episode of The Offspin podcast, Simon Day and Alex Braae go absolutely berserk over the semi-final win that put the Black Caps into the Cricket World Cup final.

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In the latest episode of The Offspin, cricketer, commentator, activist and aspiring local board rep Peter McGlashan joins the show to mix sport and politics.

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