Reverse Swept Radio - a cricket podcast
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53 episodes
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: Andy reports back from the Logan Cup, and Toby enjoys the small (and futile) parts of Sunday cricket "Clearly the Reverse Swept Radio coffers will be extensive enough to fly me back to Australia every three weeks to record the podcast?" FROM THE ARCHIVES (11'00): the Tied Test between Australia and India, 1960 "Richie Benaud walked onto the outfield as Australia begins their chase, and sees clover flowers all over the outfield." THE REVIEW (24'30): The Miracle Makers: Indian Cricket's Greatest Epic, by Bharat Sundaresan with Gaurav Joshi (2023) "It was on trend to hear that Justin Langer screams "Warrior! Warrior!" to Steve Smith in the nets." Recorded 3 March 2024
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: Reflecting on the West Indian victory against Australia "So I woke up last Sunday morning in a Gothic temple, as you do." FROM THE ARCHIVES (10'50): Benjamin West's The Cricketers, and the battle to take the painting to the US "One bat is being leant on like a walking stick, the other has been discarded on the floor." THE REVIEW (21'55): Shane Warne: A Hampshire Love Story (BBC Radio Solent, hosted by Robbie James) (2023) "If you're doing a radio show about Warne, generally you talk to the people who like him of course." Recorded 4 February 2024
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: Andy ponders the lot of the groundstaff of waterlogged British pitches; Toby reports back from day 1 of the SCG test "You presumably need a super super blotter, when it comes to a flood." FROM THE ARCHIVES (10'50): When Cricket Added a Fourth Stump: the innovations of Cricket Max "This is a niche question: where do you take guard when you've got four stumps?" THE REVIEW (22'40): Evita Burned Down our Pavilion: A Cricketing Odyssey through Latin America by James Coyne and Timothy Abraham (2021) "Pablo Escobar's son was sent to an English school, where as a wicket keeper he would put a match under the bails, attached to a piece of thread, which he would pull to claim a bowled." Recorded 9 January 2024
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: Andy becomes a Middlesex member, and Toby finds himself hopelessly out of his depth "We have a running joke that our shirts are our best player. This has come back to bite us in the arse: bonus points for wearing the same shirt got us promoted up a division." FROM THE ARCHIVES (11'10): The One Ball Walkout: Transvaal vs the Rest of South Africa, 3 April 1971 "We create so many assorted reasons for play to stop, that you do become slightly immune as a spectator..." THE REVIEW (20'35): You Guys are History: The Story of England's Black Cricketers (2021) "Phil DeFreitas talks about getting ready to bowl and thinking about the sniper threatened by The National Front." Recorded 10 December 2023
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: Andy reflects on a rare summer without cricket, and Toby enjoys Mark Ramprakash's insights into England's woeful World Cup "To lose me and Sir Alastair in just a few weeks would be a lot for the nation to take." FROM THE ARCHIVES (13'48): The Greatest Australian Cricketer you've never heard of: Greg Mail "Perhaps the secret to his success is not being quite good enough." THE REVIEW (26'18): First of the Summer Wine by Harry Pearson (2022) "A breeder of canaries and pigeons, and a champion clog dancer, as a keeper he often purred 'Well bowled, Honey' from behind the stumps." Recorded 5 November 2023
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: Andy makes a first visit to Nevil Road and Toby reflects on post-captaincy careers "In my head, Misbah-ul-Haq had to go for it. In reality, he could have done it in singles." FROM THE ARCHIVES (12'10): When Warne and Dravid met by the Solent "He is eventually undone by legspin - but not by Warne." THE REVIEW (22'10): The Englishman Abroad - BBC radio play by Christopher Douglas "Much like that Australian top order, I might have had enough of Bodyline by this point." Recorded 24 September 2023
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: Andy plays cricket in a field in Kent, and Toby enjoys Afghanistan v Pakistan "The other great advantage: compared to a proper game, the wait for a post-match pint is much shorter." FROM THE ARCHIVES (07'50): A potted history of cricket in Japan "And then the penny dropped, and I realised that all along he had been talking about croquet, while I had been talking about cricket." THE REVIEW (17'15): Edging Towards Darkness: The Story of the Last Timeless Test by John Lazenby "We were disappointed to be robbed of the opportunity [to win], but at the end of the day I'm afraid few of us cared what happened." Recorded 27 August 2023
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: For the third episode in a row, Andy visits Lord's, and Abdullah Shafique pulls off an impossible catch "Maybe short legs around the world are cursing Shafique for resetting expectations for what short legs can be." FROM THE ARCHIVES (11'20): Ted Alletson's 189 in 1911 "Play restarted at 2:15 and Alletson was out at 2:55. In those forty minutes, he scored 142 runs." THE REVIEW (21'40): Stumped (2022) by Shomit Dutta "We've all played in games of cricket that don't really matter, but they do matter to us. And so it's extraordinary to watch a Nobel prize winner anxious about scoring runs in an amateur village game." Recorded 23 July 2023
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: Andy visits Lord's again, and a vintage cricket story on Twitter "This is the most awful team I have ever had, the batting is awful and the bowling, my god. I have not got a bowler. . . . If anyone would like to take on my job they can have it. . . I hope it rains for the rest of the season." FROM THE ARCHIVES (10'00): Fowler's Match: Eton vs Harrow, 1910 "In the whole history of cricket, there has been nothing more sensational" - The Times THE REVIEW (19'15): Gilbert: The Last Years of WG Grace, by Charlie Connelly (2015) "It'll be a while until the next episode of Reverse Swept Radio, while Andy and I set about writing a new series of historical fiction novels to plug this gap in cricket literature." Recorded 30 May 2023
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: Visiting the Lord's pavilion, and Leicestershire win a remarkable game "You can't really have everyone wandering around with pints" FROM THE ARCHIVES (10'20): Ian Botham v Andy Roberts in 1964: a teenage Botham loses his teeth but wins the match "I spat out the last fragments of teeth, took a few sips of water, and let the 12th man assess the damage." THE REVIEW (19'20): Caught Out: Crime, Corruption, Cricket (Netflix documentary “Sport is meant to be unscripted. It’s the unexpectedness that makes it special. If it’s scripted, it takes away everything that sport stands for.” Recorded 9 April 2023
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: Discovering ICC TV, and rediscovering The Nightwatchman "Watching Zimbabwe is pure nostalgia for me: in Harare I made a very elegant four." FROM THE ARCHIVES (09'10): The Curious Case of the end of Bobby Peel's Career "Pissed at the wicket? Most probably. Did he piss on the wicket? Probably not." THE REVIEW (19'50): Cricket 2.0: Inside the T20 Revolution, by Tim Wigmore and Freddie Wilde (2019) "There's a theme which could almost be used by businesses as an organisational psychology piece." Recorded 25 March 2023
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: Duncan Hamilton fears for the future of cricket writing, and Australia's test players learn from their predecessors via the media "Ian Healey sets himself up in front of the pedal bin in the SEN Office, and did a piece for camera that looks suspiciously like it was filmed on a phone." FROM THE ARCHIVES (11'50): The Rise, Fall and Rise of Chris Schofield "This is the feature that Andy has just admitted he has been looking forward to for several years..." THE REVIEW (22'10): Crickets All (1949) "This remains utterly bonkers to the point I thought that it was a wind-up, but at the end of the day some poor man has to go and set off some rockets: two for a draw, one for win. I have so many questions about this..." Recorded 26 February 2023
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: Ricky Ponting has a plan to save Test cricket, and the MCC take a mis-step when issuing their clarification on the Mankad. "It goes back to that thing called 'the Spirit of Cricket', and the MCC don't contribute towards a debate pro-actively about the Spirit of Cricket when they use language like this" FROM THE ARCHIVES (12'00): Pakistan vs Bangladesh in Multan, 2003 "They decide not to call the batsman back - which is odd, given that it's the captain who has dropped the catch." THE REVIEW (23'15): Cricketing Lives: A Characterful History from Pitch to Page by Richard Thomas (May 2021) "Archie MacLaren was a limousine salesman later in his life. "By all accounts, what he tried to sell to his customers what they wanted or needed." A wonderful way to prick the pomposity of a man who is very much seen that way...." Recorded 29 January 2023
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: Listening to the Aus SA series from an English winter, and re-learning cricket's self-control "When you're watching cricket, you can swear at the umpire as much as you like. But when you're on the pitch, you have to switch to see the umpire in a very different way." FROM THE ARCHIVES (11'00): "An innings played with one eye and one leg" - The Nawab of Pataudi's 75 "As well as having double vision from childhood, he's nursing an injury from the first test - he comes in with a runner and can't play front-foot shots." THE REVIEW (21'50): Ben Stokes: Phoenix from the Ashes (Amazon Prime, 2022) "I don't want to labour this point (while slightly labouring this point), but you need to enter into the experience of watching a documentary like this with the understanding that a deal has been struck: access has been traded for a certain narrative." Recorded 09 January 2023
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: Andy welcomes a legspinner into the world, the test debut of Tagenarine Chanderpaul, and a promising tour match from the South Africans "As yet, she hasn't displayed the level of patience and self-control required of an opening bat." FROM THE ARCHIVES (11'10): DRS' test debut "Every referral that had been sent to the third umpire in the Friends Provident Trophy had ended up back with the on-field umpire's decision." THE REVIEW (21'40): Long Shot Summer - The Year of the Four England Captains, 1988 by Neil Robinson (2015) "Viv Richards wins the toss and says to Cowdrey 'I'll have a chat to my team and let you know what we're going to do'." Recorded 11 December 2022
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: cricket in the rain at the Oval, and Shomit Dutta's new play Stumped "It's a very liberating thing to take a day off work to go to the curry house and the pub, and you wouldn't do that under other circumstances." FROM THE ARCHIVES (08'40): Simpson 'Sammy' Guillen - the man who played test cricket for the West Indies and New Zealand "Ironically it was Guillen who was responsible for New Zealand's first-ever test victory - in a game against his old team." THE REVIEW (19'00): Jon Hotten - Bat, Ball and Field: The Elements of Cricket (July 2022) "I was astonished to read the section on Shane Warne's mural - including his friends, imaginary friends, and people he admired, all chilling by a swimming pool." Recorded 30 September 2022
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: meeting 'Yorkie' and Australia's new friendship with Pacific cricket "Once you've messed up your own innings, you can take on the umpiring and muck up someone else’s." FROM THE ARCHIVES (10'45): When the President went to the Cricket: Eisenhower at Pakistan vs Australia in Karachi "We hope Biden can meet Eisenhower's standards and make it through a whole day... without yawning." THE REVIEW (20'55): Freddie Flintoff's Field of Dreams (2022) "Anyone who has spent time with teenage boys will recognise those challenging moments, and will recognise that you get to your limits whether you've been an England all-rounder or not." Recorded on 5 September 2022
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: the joy of cricket writing (writing cricket writing, not reading cricket writing); watching Glamorgan's record-breaking innings "Most undeservedly, I ended up interviewing the curator of the London Transport Museum." FROM THE ARCHIVES (9'40): When a stump became a weapon: Rashid Patel loses it "The batsman has his bat horizontally across his chest in an unusual fencing move." THE REVIEW (20'10): The Unforgiven: Missionaries or Mercenaries by Ashley Gray (2020) "The pursuit of the players become interesting stories in themselves." Recorded on 24th June 2022
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: an update from Lord's and England annihilate the Netherlands "As someone who has today had champagne sprayed over my back, my feelings are now rather more nuanced. The behaviour at Lord's may not be better, but the product dumped on you is certainly of a higher calibre." FROM THE ARCHIVES (7'40): When a captain sent his fastest bowler from the field "Something exploded inside me. I couldn't go on. All I wanted to do was get off the pitch." THE REVIEW (15'20): The Ball that Changed Cricket (2018, SevenPlus) "The laconic Kim Hughes comes up with one of the best lines I've heard: 'Built like Tarzan, bats like Jane'." Recorded on 24th June 2022
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: watching baseball, and Bangladesh host Sri Lanka "The first pitch of the game was sent straight into the stands for a home run. That raised my and my wife's sense of what normal drama would be in baseball. It turned out to be very rare." FROM THE ARCHIVES (12'00): Andrew Symonds at the 2003 World Cup "There must be a psychological credit to Symonds: you come in knowing that if you don't score there's the next player waiting, and scoring under those circumstances is difficult." THE REVIEW (22'40): The Test by Nathan Leamon "Cricket is lacking in fiction compared to other sports, and this is a rare attempt to take on top level cricket in fiction - and it's done really well." Recorded on 30 April 2022
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: all change at the top for English cricket "Many of us fans are attracted to the idea of the specialist captain." FROM THE ARCHIVES (9'30): The Sir Walter Lawrence Trophy "For Sir Walter, his money was well spent: his legacy has been preserved by this trophy, while it's hard to find out much else about him other than the description of 'master builder'." THE REVIEW (19'15): Howzat for Hollywood (BBC Sounds) "If you were a British actor in Hollywood at the time, and you got the message from Aubrey-Smith, you were pretty well obliged to play." Recorded on 18 April 2022
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: how best to remember Shane Warne, and a cricket-inspired name for a new member of the Reverse Swept Radio family "In 40 years time they'll say that he was named after three West Indian greats, and then defined the name Chadd as the finest English opener the 21st century has seen." FROM THE ARCHIVES (8'30): The most expensive over ever bowled in first-class cricket "After all, the whole thing was a complete waste of time: they could have played out the draw and still won the title." THE REVIEW (18'25): Archie Jackson: Cricket's Tragic Genius by David Frith "There is reference to the late cut as his classy trademark shot, while often with stylish cricketers we go straight for the drive." Recorded on 15 March 2022
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: Marnus Labuschagne prepares for the subcontinent, and Toby takes a rare catch as keeper "I remember a player reverse sweeping in a village game, and the keeper was so offended by the reverse sweep that he gave the batsman an uncharacteristic send off." FROM THE ARCHIVES (8'50): The most consecutive test maidens ever "Many of the team were suffering from The Times rather wonderfully described as 'internal misfortunes'." THE REVIEW (17'15): Shane: The King of Spin "If you have never heard of Shane Warne, we would heartily recommend this film." Recorded on 22 February 2022
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: The county fixture list is published, and falling back in love with cricket thanks to the women's Ashes "In the next episode of Reverse Swept Radio, we'll be providing advice on the best way to cook a cricket ball." FROM THE ARCHIVES (8'30): When Alastair Cook and James Anderson played darts "Maybe this moment at Ally Pally can be credited with rescuing the career of one of England's greatest ever batsman." THE REVIEW (18'45): Who Only Cricket Know by David Woodhouse "We read lots of books that we enjoy, but this is a book that matters: what it says about cricket, about the politics and history of the time, and about writing." Recorded on 1 February 2022
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: Andy reviews his highlights of 2021, and enjoying Iceland on Twitter. "The memory of sitting in the sun, at the top of the Radcliffe Road stand, stuffing my face with Scotch Eggs, will be one to keep me going through the winter months." FROM THE ARCHIVES (7'45): Chris Martin, the King of Tailenders "Seeing a tailender desperately backing away to leg is perhaps the only thing that we can all relate to in test cricket. So thank you Chris Martin and Alan Mullally for giving us that." THE REVIEW (18'05): Project Ashes (BBC podcast) "The problem is encapsulated in the title of the podcast itself. We shouldn't have a Project Ashes, after all." Recorded on 11 January 2022
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: Listening to TalkSport's coverage of India vs New Zealand from a covid sickbed, and Tom Latham's remarkable innings. "You often think that you have to reinvent yourself to do well in the subcontinent. Latham's great skill was to do less." FROM THE ARCHIVES (8'30): Betty Wilson: the first test cricketer to score a century and take ten wickets in the same game "Her father was a cobbler, so it was only natural that he should make her a pair of cricket shoes." THE REVIEW (17'30): The Cricket Match by Hugh de Sélincourt ""'The seats bore the strain very well, awaiting without impatience the quiet, steady contract of elderly posteriors.' Whatever your views on flowery language, your tolerance has to be considerable to think that's an acceptable way to describe sitting on a bench." Recorded on 3 December 2021
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: Tim Murtagh returns for another year, and Australia's plan to return to Pakistan "The England and New Zealand cancellations seemed to reinforce the idea of the haves of the game treating the have-nots with disdain." FROM THE ARCHIVES (7'45): The First Six in Test Cricket "Get Joe Darling into the same team with Graham Onions and you'd have a headliner-writer's dream" THE REVIEW (16'30): Sport's Strangest Crimes: Allan Stanford, the Man who Bought Cricket "The parties, the yacht, building a castle in Florida which he then pulled down: there are big themes in this podcast, but there are plenty of salacious anecdotes as well." Recorded on 14 November 2021
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: The retirement of Gareth Batty, and Shikha Pandey's wonderball "There's a lingering attitude that large swing is vulgar, somehow." FROM THE ARCHIVES (8'15): Cricket at the Olympics: Paris, 1900 "The British team was a bunch of amateurs on a jolly to the Continent, and they ended up playing in the Olympics purely by accident." THE REVIEW (17'30): Cricket on the Continent by Tim Brooks "If I was the president of the Vanuatu cricket association, I'd sit down with this book and use it as a blue-print." Recorded on 15 October 2021
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: Andy finally makes his Trent Bridge debut, and Toby enjoys a flight of fancy about a rule change. "I was wondering whether it was Sherwood Forest in the distance. Which may be completely geographically inaccurate." FROM THE ARCHIVES (6'45): The cricket career of Lord Byron "His captain wrote 'Byron should never have been in the XI had my counsel been taken'." THE REVIEW (14'00): One Test Wonders podcast, hosted by Brian Murgatroyd "Tony Pigott comes up with the wonderful assertion that if he had been playing in the previous test, England would have won." Recorded on 21 September 2021
THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: Back at Lord's post-pandemic, and rediscovering the joy of net sessions in lockdown "It's the grabbing by the scruff of the neck that I particularly like. It feels like exactly the right way for an MCC member to express their disgust." FROM THE ARCHIVES (8'00): Cricket and excuses "The match reports talk about the excellence of the bowling, not the fact that none of the batsmen could lift their arms because their shirts were too tight." THE REVIEW (19'05): Cape Summer and the Australians in England by Alan Ross "Describing the pitch, Ross reaches for an unexpected metaphor: 'perhaps as for tired businessmen who like a night out, a single frolic sufficed for a long time'." Recorded on 30 August 2021
