The Final Word Cricket Podcast
Cricket for everyone – your friendly guide to the world's strangest sport. Geoff Lemon and Adam Collins combine match analysis with irreverence, politics, interviews and history as they follow the game they love around the world. You can support the show at patreon.com/thefinalword.
Episodes
April 24, 2025 • 106 mins
Season 18, Episode 7: Call it a mutual admiration society: given the way we respect Wisden, it's nice to get an observation back. More importantly this week, the kind of wild net-run-rate ending that we've been anticipating for some time came to pass in the women's World Cup qualifiers. The new English women's domestic system got started, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh played a stunner in their Test series, and Bangladesh's 10 and 11 rema...
Mark as Played
April 23, 2025 • 61 mins
Season 18, Episode 6: Richard Gould has always been up for a lively chat over the years, whether that was in his previous gig as the boss at Surrey or since taking over England cricket's top administrative job in 2022 and this is no different. Here, two years after our previous visit to his office, the chief executive at ECB towers talks through what is shaping up as a vital period ahead both at home and on the global stage. A wort...
Mark as Played
April 21, 2025 • 57 mins
Season 18, Episode 5: It’s official: Dan Worrall is one of the five cricketers of the year in the 2025 Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, following a third dominant season as Surrey completed a county threepeat. From a lower-grade club spinner in Melbourne to the South Australian Shield team to the Aussie one-day team to going full-time in England, he’s the definition of a modern journeyman. Now the 33-year-old finds himself in the mix f...
Mark as Played
April 20, 2025 • 89 mins
It's Story Time, our walk through cricket history via your listener quiz challenges. This week, a wild tale from early colonial history about Australia's first political assassination, and how it links to the first Test match in 1877. Also, a heatwave with an Arctic deviation, the masters of so near and yet so far, and a tribute to the influence of Shannon Doherty and Tori Spelling.
Your Nerd Pledge numbers this week:
Lachlan K -...
Mark as Played
April 18, 2025 • 66 mins
Season 18, Episode 4: Over the years, we’ve had the company of many people for whom cricket is not their day job, but none with as many letters after their name. Mervyn King’s life in economics involved teaching at some of the finest universities, going on to become the long-standing governor of the Bank of England. That term included the 2008 Great Financial Crisis, as one of the world’s most important figures in finding a way out...
Mark as Played
April 16, 2025 • 93 mins
Season 18, Episode 3: Great news this week that after years of campaigning, the ICC board has agreed to support Afghanistan’s women cricketers in exile. Details aren’t yet clear but the principle is. Also this week, more Olympic news, James Anderson is made a knight, a hefty county round includes some sizzling finishes, and there was an even better one in the unofficial Australia-England Test starring Charli Knott.
Tickets for the...
Mark as Played
April 14, 2025 • 32 mins
That's right, we've been kindly offered the chance to play on Wormsley, one of the most beautiful cricket grounds in the world, with The Final Word XI set to take on our mates at Zero Ducks Given on Monday the 18th of August. It's a superb opportunity for us to raise money for The Lord's Taverners, the charity close to both podcasts, so we came together for this chat (a collaboration, if you will) with Toby Tarrant and Daniel Norcr...
Mark as Played
April 12, 2025 • 65 mins
It's Story Time, our walk through cricket history via your listener quiz challenges. This week, Adam and Geoff reunite from The Oval in London, and as luck would have it, this show includes two separate stories featuring a great Oval moment and a great Oval player. It also, rather less expectedly, includes the story of the Australian Shahid Afridi, who did so many miles from Traralgon to Doncaster that he earned the right to tweak ...
Mark as Played
April 10, 2025 • 59 mins
Season 18, Episode 2: It can’t be easy putting red-ball cricket first as a modern West Indian cricketer, but that’s exactly what Kemar Roach has done. Throughout a long and winding international career the start in 2008, and is still going strong 17 years later, the quick from Barbados has always given complete commitment across 85 Test Matches. Back in London for his fifth stint with Surrey, after playing a key role in their count...
Mark as Played
April 8, 2025 • 105 mins
Season 18, Episode 1: The new season begins! It begins with a triple century in the county championship, among a slate of brilliant finishes. It also begins with a sad formal farewell to the sport from Will Pucovski. And as tends to be the way, our episode finds its way through governance changes and scheduling questions into some peak 90s light entertainment. Settle in for Season 18: we can vote, but we still can't drink in Americ...
Mark as Played
April 6, 2025 • 122 mins
It's Story Time, our walk through cricket history via your listener quiz challenges. This week, Daniel Norcross is back with Geoff for a short and sweet Story Time that somehow turned into this. It begins with Jeremy Coney's preferred method of staving off hyenas, and goes on through pondering who is Daddy, why we remember certain names, who was on the verge of weeping through his entire long career, and who may have wept after his...
Mark as Played
April 4, 2025 • 52 mins
Season 17, Episode 35: Welcome to episode three in our series of interviews with county cricketers at the top of their games. It’s opening day today with Lancashire visiting Lord’s. After being relegated at the end of 2024, the job for the men representing the Red Rose is obvious – to bounce straight back up. And when it comes to posting their runs over the next six months, it’ll be their skipper who sets the tone. Keaton Jennings...
Mark as Played
April 2, 2025 • 100 mins
Season 17, Episode 34: As the Mighty South Aussies finally took home another Sheffield Shield and completed the domestic double, Australia's national contracts came out, which raises interesting questions about who will be defending the World Test Championship title in June. In other matters this week, Ben Stokes' body is not a wonderland, James Anderson stuns the world by straining a calf, St Kilda punish Carlton in grade cricket,...
Mark as Played
April 1, 2025 • 63 mins
Season 17, Episode 33: Welcome to our second interview in a series with county pros at the top of their game as season 2025 begins. Jack Leach’s career has been an unusual one - a Test spinner best known for the most significant 1 not out in modern Test nistory. But when he has the ball in his hand, he's been a matchwinner or England. And when he’s had the backing of the powers that be, he’s seen as one of the most important playe...
Mark as Played
March 30, 2025 • 53 mins
Season 17, Episode 32: The English season is upon us, with the county championship starting this week. And in keeping with the comprehensive coverage we’ve given to that competition over many years, we thought this would be the right time to roll out a series of feature interviews with some of the best county pros out there. One man who meets that criteria is Middlesex opener, Sam Robson. A man who played Test cricket in 2014, he's...
Mark as Played
March 28, 2025 • 103 mins
It's Story Time, our walk through cricket history via your listener quiz challenges. This week, Cameron Ponsonby joins Geoff to make his Story Time debut, representing a younger generation of badgerdom. And we do badger: detouring from Australian legends to patchy West Indies number threes, encouragement from Australian legends to promising West Indies number sixes, and an unexpected discovery of one of the most bonkers first-class...
Mark as Played
March 26, 2025 • 76 mins
Jarrod Kimber was a trailblazer in how the modern game was covered, disrupting press and commentary boxes in the best possible way. But throughout his interesting career, he’s always been an author, and his latest offering includes all the passion and insight you would expect as he goes deep on a simple yet essential topic – making runs. Once he and Adam have finished with that, they move onto another area that has dominated much o...
Mark as Played
March 24, 2025 • 95 mins
Season 17, Episode 31: Yes, we said the wrong episode number. Let's all be grown-ups about that. We're leading up to the Mr Sheffield Shield final, while Queensland's former captain Usman Khawaja smacks down his home state association for putting out false stories. Meanwhile, the sackings have started after England's surrender tour of Australia for the Women's Ashes, we have some new nonsense for the World Test Championship structu...
Mark as Played
March 22, 2025 • 92 mins
It's Story Time, our walk through cricket history via your listener quiz challenges. This week, Bharat Sundaresan joins us for tales from the beginning of India's national team, and the inadvertent birth of the BCCI. Gandhi flashes some kneecap, before we turn back twice through the tale of a heist-master who had one more job in mind.
Your Nerd Pledge numbers this week:
5.93 - Rama Subramanian
8.05 - Michael Holden
6.26 - Cam Ter...
Mark as Played
March 21, 2025 • 65 mins
99 years ago, England was in turmoil, leading to unprecedented industrial action. What kept the country together? In no small part, so goes the thesis of Stephen Brenkley in his beautiful new book, a terrific last-gasp Ashes victory - the first time they had defeated the Australians in a series since before the First World War. A Striking Summer – How Cricket United a Divided Nation, paints a vivid picture of post-war Britain and t...
Mark as Played
Popular Podcasts
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.