Latest / Second Nature / E193 Tim Wigmore: What Cricket Can Teach Us About Data, Business, Talent & Risk

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E193 Tim Wigmore: What Cricket Can Teach Us About Data, Business, Talent & Risk · Second Nature

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: I am whatever the short list is, I'm on the short list of the biggest fans of your work.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's really fine.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I've given crickonomics to more people than any other book.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh wow, got it.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: I I think, and a lot of my questions are gonna be bizarre because I'm gonna take ideas you've highlighted in your books and show you how I've applied them to business.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's fun, yeah, yeah.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's really fun.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'll learn a lot from your questions as well.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the IPL is essentially a mirror of what's happened in my world.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: So my world is natural capital, whereby you've had the environment sector.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: So the environment sector was test cricket.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Slow, laborious, traditional, don't change anything, keep everything the same.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Money's a bad thing, coverage is a bad thing.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Anything that changes is terrible.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Then what we do now, natural capital, is T20.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: So for the first time, everything environmental, no one cared about money, so there was no return on investment.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a bit like before tests even had a limit of time.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: You could just back for as long as you like.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, private capital's coming in, they want to return an investment.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: You need to do an IRR.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: So you need to provide 8% a year or 10% a year to your investors.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden, run rate matters.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: So effectively, and then we've managed to have podcasts and high-quality photography and video, and we've made the environment sector sexy in the same way as the IPL suddenly made it flashy and dynamic and vibrant.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Nice, yeah.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: So literally the echoes, if people know cricket, they're like, oh my god, that's exactly what's happened.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, lovely.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I went and did this speech to uh uh 300 people at a finance conference, and Hart when I went, I'm gonna talk to you a lot about cricket, about a quarter of the room went, Oh god, and three quarters went, Great! So it was it was so interesting in terms of that crossover.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, you do get the parallel, yeah.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, the yeah, rise of injured stuff, but yeah.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd love to hear, so we're gonna start before the books.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd love to hear your background, how you found cricket, how you found writing, how you got to where you are now, and then I've got so many specific deep dive deep you ones.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: Go off on any tangent that you can perfect.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Hit me.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: What's your what's your backstory?
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Where did the love of cricket start and and language and writing in general?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I suppose a very kind of common story came through my dad.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so my first memory of cricket was the 1997 Ashes were bizarrely and very in keeping with the times.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: I remember winning the first test match at Edgeweston, which was obviously the prelude to them losing that series.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: But I initially thought, you know, maybe being beaten Australia is kind of the norm.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: So that's where it began for me.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I very swiftly caught on that I I wouldn't be able to be a cricketer due to a lack of talent.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I had that same lack of talent.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, that realization.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think it hit me when I was about eight or nine, probably older than it does most people.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then but I always loved reading and writing, like not like on everything, not just on sport or anything.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so trying to kind of apply that to to cricket and other things as well at times, it's been really, really kind of fun and stimulating.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: I guess I'm very nosy and curious, which is what you need to be a journalist.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Did the the data side of the sport connect with you to start with in terms of the the stats and the scoring behind cricket?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think a little bit there, because as a kid you play like dice cricket and and things like that.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: So that's there was that I don't I think what I like of one of the great things about cricket is you can especially test credit, so you can enjoy it on all these different levels, you can enjoy it on a kind of aesthetic level, the beauty of a you know, short or cover drive or whatever, you can enjoy the kind of numerical level, you know, every every match, there's new records being set and all that sort of stuff.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: You can enjoy kind of personality led in terms of like following those characters a bit like you're doing a book set, you can also enjoy the kind of the kind of almost macro side of you know the importance that as it often has been for for politics and kind of nature building, everything.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: So there's this one of these four different dimensions that you can enjoy with cricket, with test cricket, especially.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I enjoy all of them, which is great.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I suppose at times you try to tap into different aspects of those, but I think that's something quite special about test cricket.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think the the long-form nature of that game kind of allows that as well.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I I do like the way you can sort of be sitting next to someone and you can be watching the same game in completely different, different ways.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that's actually yeah, that's something very special about test cricket.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: So there's all these these different layers and layers.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: How early did you begin to think that writing might be a professional more than just something you did for fun?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, it's very unfortunate.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: Honestly, I I always wanted to probably age of sort of 12 or something.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: I was yeah, writing was what I wanted to do.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't I've really struggled to do a job that I didn't find interesting and found I think I found boring.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think I would be just not be a good fit with me.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I yeah, I I kind of always was badgering away writing, trying to do internships, just trying to um absorb as much as possible.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, writing was always something that I think writing is it's a creative, yeah, because the creative nature of it, you have to kind of have that extra kind of intrinsic intrinsic kind of desire, because also it's not um you know, it's always very competitive, it's not like the less paid thing.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: So you need to actually really want to do it, have that desire, and that's yeah, that's something that I always did have.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I suppose, yeah, you need to be obviously with the the hours, it's not a job that you yeah, I've always bitten's always been envious of people who you know, you get to six o'clock on six o'clock on a Friday, you have a cold beer, and that's like the full stops your week.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't quite work that quite quite working that way as a writer, but there's certain amazing things that so the trade-off is well worth it for for me.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: But that's um yeah, that's interesting.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: And did you follow the did you go to university in terms of when you studied English there or history and politics?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: History and politics where about did you go?
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Oxford.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and did you enjoy that chapter?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that was great.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, again, lots of yeah, the reading and writing, and very good in terms of um I wasn't writing about the sport board particularly, but it was kind of um good good preferences, seeing things that the bigger picture.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously what I've tried to do in my sports writing is actually connect, often connect the sport to the politics.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and so that was that was really yeah, that that was great in terms of seeing everything.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then you actually do, you know, I remember studying apartheid and actually, yeah, you see the the sort of the apartheid ban, you know, the cricket ban um is a part of that that story.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: So sometimes you you see how this silly and strange game kind of really connects to the world around it.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's it's often a mirror of the world around it, but it can actually be a kind of active player in its own own right as well.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: That was kind of really interesting to start to to see that and sort of see where sports where sport fits.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: And often it it does have this outsize importance, purely actually which derives from its kind of its seen as and the fun aspect of it.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so actually, because it's meant to be an escape, there's times when it's not an escape actually makes it even more powerful because you you kind of yeah, again, the the apartheid example, you know, for the government there, being able to space cricket was so important because it maintained a veneer of you know, we're actually not as abnormal as some people say, you know, we still have these test matches and stuff.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: So when that was gone, that really shattered that image, and that's actually why the apartheid ban was so powerful.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: I had a similar analogy the other day.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: So do you follow cycling at all?
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: A little, yeah.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: So um this year for the first time, two stages of the Tour de France were cut short based on extreme temperatures, and at the same time, you had in the World Cup, you had enforced mandatory drinks breaks for the first time.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: So all of a sudden you saw the impact of climate change fundamentally changing some of the biggest sports in the world.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I actually think that is gonna have more of a cultural resonance than any form of climate protest because it'll go to people who aren't actively looking for it.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, or people's golf courses, local golf courses being affected, that sort of thing.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, yeah, when it's um yeah, and there's there's been cricket matches in India which have been postponed because of smog and stuff in in general, things like that.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: So you can't.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: You've seen some timings for heat before as well, haven't you pushed them later into the evening and things like that?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it's like, yeah, when this kind of safe enclave ceases to be a safe enclave, that almost has this extra, extra power, actually.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think so.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think so.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um when you when you first started writing professionally, what was your writing process in terms of, you know, do you um were you a pen and paper person to start with?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Were you straight onto a Mac?
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Do you visualize it ahead of time?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Do you write at certain times of the day?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: How has that changed over your career?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, my handwriting is terrible, as you'll be learning when I sign a book for you.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um so not pen and paper, but um yeah, my approach was always which I try and stick to, you know, as but was try and find angles or themes or things that aren't being written out by other people.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so as when you're starting out, the say from a creative point of view, the worst thing you can do is go to the Benso Express conference where there's already, you know, fifth-50 journalists who are more established than you.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's because you won't uh what can you add?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas actually if you go and you know, find find a local angle or whatever.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever heard the concept of a red ocean, blue ocean?
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so um, it's in the business world.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: If you're in a red ocean, it's a shark's feeding frenzy.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah you know, there's blood in the water, there's things there.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: You want to be in a blue ocean where you're the only shark that's feeding.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so that actually that managing works perfectly.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: So it was so I wrote a lot on kind of cricket in associate countries, which are basically emerging countries which don't um aren't able to play in test matches.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: So things like the rise of early rise of Afghanistan and things like that were great stories to kind of latch onto and kind of make my own because it's yeah, you're thinking if a lot of people are on the kind of England test beat, what can you do that's different and add value?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: So that was something that I've always yeah, I've always tried to find stuff that's a little a little different.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um I love that so um a way I've thought about that similar concept.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: So lots of people look for a role modeling something, like I want to emulate that person, I want to do that.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: I've never really understood that.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen the absence of role model.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: They're already doing that.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I've seen the absence of a role model as a gap that I could fill.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: I I sensed you might have felt the same way.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it's almost like trying to find you know, kind of trying to find things I wanted to uh read that weren't being written, and therefore I was saying, hey, at least I'll be interested, interested in it if no one else is, and actually almost not more deliberately, but thinking what are the areas that are growing that aren't being covered.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: So T T T 20 cricket was was one of those that was clearly growing but wasn't being covered that much, partly because the main journalists were so busy on the kind of the on the beat of the England.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of them philosophically against the concept as well.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: So actually you're thinking about what's not being covered.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I agree.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you're just trying to do what someone else is doing, but you're 10 years younger and you're not as good, it's and would you have yeah, would you have one idea that you'd then write up, or do you have five or ten that you'll have notes around that are partially written, or do you do you stack that out, or are you one at a time?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, so we're not starting as a freelance, I had to have probably six or seven on the go at the whole, which was knackering but really good process.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's still, I mean, still because I juggle these big pieces with smaller pieces, so it's it's interesting, yeah.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: So now I'll have kind of big pieces that take me a few weeks to do, and I'll have day-to-day pieces that I have to write in a few hours.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: So it's juggling both things kind of different layers at the same time, but probably I probably still have four or five that I'm working on at any at any time, but try and some just try and clear things off because it's kind of the mental bandwidth of having two too many things up in the air is quite tiring.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I was gonna ask.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: So um, so I've had two books out so far.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: First one's dreadful, uh, second one's not bad.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: I quite like some of the second one.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm yet to do that thing where I'm working on multiple things at the same point in time.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'm going to do that for book three is pretty much written.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Book four is going to be one that I'll work on in the background slowly whilst producing other short form pieces, and I've never done that before.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: How do you think about uh do you put a mental box around a piece to make sure they don't creep into one another, or are you happy for them to overlap a little?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's well it's kind of both of you.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: So you want them to be distinctive, but also if there's kind of common ideas or strands that run through your work, it's quite good.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, sometimes some some people say to me they can read a piece of mine and no, it's mine, without seeing my bar, and that's actually a good thing because you don't want to be something that can be produced by AI, frankly.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um and yeah, I suppose writing books alongside journalism, you kind of they fill they fill different spaces.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think the thing about books is that you're sometimes you come back to it after a week or two, and your subconscious can have done quite a lot of heavy lifting, and you can kind of walk around the shower, you can have kind of found your way through problems, which is which is simulating.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you need that that break.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's a different, it's sort of like yeah, sort of running a marathon while running some 800 meters at the same time.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: So that it's it's different things, and I I kind of really enjoy both.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: And um it's almost like the books need to be uh shorter, they need to they exist to be longer than than other stuff.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: So you sort of you kind of the whole portfolio is actually what makes it really exciting and stimulating.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: I s I this only just occurred to me.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the books your test cricket, yeah, and the short form pieces are of course they are.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's the same but different.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Beautiful.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: I hadn't thought about that before.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you're faced with giving a mandate, you need to write 600 words by the end of the day or a thousand.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: What would an average an example piece on a short form turnaround be?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, probably typically like today I have to do a thousand, yeah, doing a thousand words in sort of four four hours or so.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um and when you sit down and face that, do you sketch out a structure to start with?
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Are you more intuitive and you just flow and you just start writing?
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: No, I tried to have some like I I I could have done both, but I think some structure is helpful and a sense of this is the journey of the piece, even if you don't know exactly what how you're getting from A to B, just a sense of the journey is really important.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and sometimes actually when you take a bit more time structure, then the writing process becomes a lot easier and quicker because you you're not doing that heavy that heavy lifting.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: But I do also, I'm kind of half concentrating myself, but sometimes I I often do find us, especially especially with books, actually, that only by writing do you reveal your own ignorance and what you need to research more.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Oh Tim, that's something that's like that's sort of like when you you get you yeah, and the thing about writing is very intellectually satisfying, is that it you you kind of can't bullshit too much, and there comes a point when if you're not convincing yourself, you're not gonna be convincing anybody, and you you kind of open yourself up and you're like, Oh, I need to research this more.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: But that's I mean, that's good to have those moments, and sometimes only by writing do you get those moments.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a kind of hybrid approach.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: I guess day-to-day stuff will tend to be stuff I'm more in command of, so more able to, but not necessarily, you still might might have that process.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: But certainly with like, yeah, writing book, I you find I find that only by yeah, you do you certainly you structure and you plan, but then there's always points, probably a couple per per chapter, where you're like, no, this is this, I'm gonna write some X's here, which is my thing for base, I need to fill this in later.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that's good, and and actually you you need to that process of writing down, it it it tests what you don't know, which is which is really good, and actually it stimulates you to learn more.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's a really kind of satisfying thing about writing, even it can be painful and frustrating as well.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: You're the only other person I've ever heard articulate that.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I my my backstory couldn't be any more different from yours.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: So um I I struggled with language as a kid, I was in the bottom set for English.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: I had to have special um classes to get me through GCSE in terms of language.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's like me with maths, yeah.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: I was exact other way.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I was always been a data geek.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: My PhD is in data analytics, so I always saw the world through numbers.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was obsessive about championship manager as a kid.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: I did that as well.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: So moving, and I've made a career out of building models like that for the entire world.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: So so I we've built a model that measures every square meter of the UK and values it across a hundred different parameters, and we buy land, we we do money ball for land.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: We shop in the gap between what the market thinks it's worth and what we know it's worth.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: But essentially, I've made championship manager real.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: We've also done that with how we recruit in terms of people.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: So we in my head, when I meet a new candidate, I'm thinking about 20 different stats of what they do, how they can do different things, and how they might improve in future and things like that.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: But um, I came to language late.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Effectively, I got bullied through my PhD, which made me be able to write.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because the thing about the PhD is it keeps coming back until it's perfect.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not like you can put in a bad essay and get a low mark and move on.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Your PhD just comes back.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: So that's brutal.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: It yes, it is.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone who wants to do a PhD, I'm going, are you sure?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't have M me.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I did it to not leave uni, so I was playing American football for the Great Britain team in the US, and this uni said there's only two of you that are playing international sport.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you're still a student, we'll pay.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I was the only one in my year that got first, so they paid for me to go straight into PhD from degree.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I only played it to only did it to play American football.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then was like, I remember it's the last time I had a sleepless night where I woke up in the middle of the night, staying at my parents' house, woke up and went, I've done nothing for 18 months, and I've now got to publish a book in 18 on what the thesis was.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: So smashed it out.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: Fortunately, got that sorted.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but came to writing late.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: So my writing's really been the last five or so years since we started the business.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason I started was I'm pretty good at talking.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: So if you ask me a question, I can give you a smart ass answer.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't know if I believe it or not.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: So the other thing that informed my speaking, big fan of professional wrestling as a kid, and they talk in sound bites, all of it's a 60-second sound bite to hype something up, so that's what I can do.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas if you want me to tell you what I really think about something, get me to write about it.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'll sit with it, I'll suppose that truth.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because chat, yeah, yeah, the chat in there can be a it can be kind of an out sometimes.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's a performative element of it, and and I like language, I like phraseology, like I love yes, minister, a comedy as a kid, because the way it was written and the flow and the feel of it.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas if I'm sat there, one only my laptop, and you ask me an answer, my brain will give me six, but I'll really be able to drill down into the thing that um I know I should ask you as well.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, let me give you an example before you give me your answer.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna ask you how a thought moves through your mind.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: My examples are we've got a board member who is the suavest, he's like James Bond, okay?
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: If he expresses a thought, it's like a beautiful sine wave.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's perfectly formed, he'll tell you the whole thing and it's elegant and perfect.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: One of our marketing managers, she describes that she thinks like a tube map.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: She goes somewhere, she goes, Oh, that's left or right, it's left or right.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: Very linear thought progression.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: You give me a word, my brain goes, ooh, exciting, and shoots off in 50 different directions, and I have to grab one of those things and think about it.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: When a thought enters your mind, how does it move through your head?
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: Great question.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um give me a thought, and I'll um I I think I like to see like connections between things, and I like to I think the b bigger picture, I think the bigger picture I really like is sort of um like why does this thing actually matter?
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: Why should people care?
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I I I like trying to um well sorry, the dream with kind of writing and and kind of expressing is how to make something equally relevant for someone who knows a lot about a topic and someone who doesn't know anything about it.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: So that is hard to do, but that's what I kind of I do aim to do.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so actually the book I aim to do it in terms of the best compliment someone can pay me is like I didn't know much about cricket, but I read the book and I really enjoyed it.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's like the uh and also people who are who know that.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: I've literally given crickonomics to people who actively dislike cricket and made them read it and they've still enjoyed it.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's lovely to hear.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, just yeah, I'm trying to think why, like how something fits into the sounds like it's almost like concentric circles, like you're going to what's a bigger question?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: What's a bigger question?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: What's a bigger question?
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: A little bit, yeah.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: So why is this silly thing relevant?
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: Why has it got this importance beyond just it it being what it is, kind of thing?
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: D do some concepts and ideas seem stickier with you than others, they kind of attract you in for whatever reason they stay in your mind longer than one of the ones from and forgive me, I will I will mix my metaphors between whether it's crickonomics or test cricket, which of your awesome books it is.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: You I it maybe it was crickonomics.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: You talked about the art of um old ball bowling in the England World Cup winning white ball team, and it was um I can't remember the bowler's name.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: Liam Punkett.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um for whatever reason, the idea of making what was kind of a dull part of the game that everyone just accepted go by, to make that a weapon, has stayed with me as such a fascinating concept since then, and I've no idea why.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's sort of that was England challenging the received wisdom that this is a kind of almost a phony war passage.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we're going to try and own it ourselves, we're gonna bowl.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: Liam Plunkett was basically, well, without going to cricket, he was bowling fast at people's heads, and then Ada Rashid was uh leg spinner, was turning the ball away.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: So you have two very different and kind of yeah, two two very, very different uh methods of attack which kind of complement each other.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: Also, one makes the other more effective because of the contrast and so on.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then the old thinking was you just kind of bowl defensively and you accept this kind of gentle trade-off of not too many runs, and you're not gonna get a lot of a lot of wickets.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: So that was yeah, that was really important to do, otherwise, you just end up um yeah.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: Also, again, so we're thinking kind of in one equipment historically, they were almost taking the defensive option thinking that protected them from pressure, but actually, if you take the defensive option, you're not I'm not putting you under pressure, which is actually what what you what you want as well.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: So, actually, by taking the defensive option, they were actually increasing pressure on themselves, even if they didn't realise it.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: Have you read how to win the Premier League?
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, by Ian Graham.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, do you know him?
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh no, but I've I've my my dream scenario is to have a four-person podcast with Ian Graham, you, and Sam Larna, who wrote Attack the Space in Rugby.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: So we had Sam on the podcast yesterday.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: He says hello, by the way.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'd like to meet him.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so for me, it's just every and I love borrowing analogies from your world to make business concepts easier and more accessible to people.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: One thing we talked to Sam about was um his view is where you have a counterintuitive way of doing something.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: So exactly as you described with Adil Rashid and Liam Plunkett there, you had two very different styles, two very different physical people, very different attributes operating at the same time.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: When you do something counterintuitive, you get two benefits.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: You get the benefit that the other person hasn't experienced it, a bit like we saw with left-arm seamers and left-arm spinners in the IPL.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: You also get the efficiency of recruiting for talent that other people don't want.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: So you get the value for acquisition in that way.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's something we've massively applied in business.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, in my sector, everybody wants someone with a huge amount of experience who's done the job before and they overpay for it.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: What they do is they try and make young talented people work for nothing for several years, then pay them really terribly for several years, then tell them, now you can get a job because you've been doing it 10 years.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas we say, no, no, let's find really talented people and let them play from day one and give them proper jobs.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's helped us accelerate.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: But no one else is just.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: They basically go from being very underpaid to probably being overpaid in terms of what they're earning per year, because they end up kind of being paid as a thank you for what they've done before, which is not an efficient model at all.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: They absolutely do.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: I I completely agree.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, when you think about and and I I should have brought my copy of Criconomics as well.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: See how doggy it was.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: When when when you sit the two on the table, how do you feel differently about the journey and the experience of writing test cricket versus criconomics?
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, so different.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, most obviously one was with a co-author, Stefan Schemanski, who was great to work with.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: How did that one come about?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: Did you know each other already?
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: We we talked to each other a bit for us.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: I was writing, we had a few coffees, and obviously I read his soccer nomics book, which was excellent.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: With Simon Cooper, and we and he's a big cricket fan as well.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then we kind of got talking.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we forget which.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was his idea.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, he thinks it was my idea.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was his idea.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's the nice way for it to be.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: So um, yeah, we're all anyway, it's all it worked either way, and then it's sort of um, yeah, that collaborative process was really fun.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, uh, academics and journalists, there is a bit of creative tension there.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's all part of the fun.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: And again, actually, I mean that was a good example of like you write something down and then an academic will go, but you know, that's not factually correct.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what is the actual evidence for this?
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: And again, it can really, really push you but in a very like stimulating.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's annoying when it's a lovely sentence, though, isn't it?
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: When you write something beautiful and kill your babies, that's that's part of writing, unfortunately.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that was good.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: It was kind of came, I mean, ended up with him really yeah, because he was in Michigan at the time.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, so we ended up kind of not really meeting up in person, but just a lot of zooms and kind of late-night email back and forth.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it was good, it was, it was, yeah.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh also I think coming at it from different angles was very was kind of similar to for both of us.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then Tess Greek was the first book I've written kind of off my own bat without a co-author, big different experience.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: And again, it came from yeah, it came from actually once wanting to write the the book that I wanted to read because I couldn't find that book.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that reads like a romance to me.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: Reads like a love story of the sport from like, and you could tell how much you enjoyed discovering new things.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: I love discovery stuff, but there's obviously plenty of bad stuff about cricket in there and the politics, yeah.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: But it was um, yeah, one of those where you kind of with hindsight, you sort of uh sort of odd that no almost, yeah, because there's so many great books on cricket history, but there wasn't this kind of big narrative of 150 years of test cricket, which I was trying to do.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that was yeah, what was the time period of that written over?
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: The idea, I felt the idea was 2020, and I started writing it really 2021 and it came out in 25.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: So probably three and a half years of actual writing.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: So it was a long, I mean the bibliography is 300 books I researched, but obviously tried to to cut, cut, cut.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, although it's long, you know, it's there was a lot of books about one country which were longer than this, on which is on everything.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: So like it could have been a lot longer, so very you know and your editing process, how much of that is you versus others that are editing for you in terms of cutting?
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, I I like I do align like friends to look at stuff, but I'm pretty I'm quite ruthless at cutting down my own stuff.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: And and again, with a book, what the great thing you can come back to a chapter after two, three months, sometimes after six months, and you can actually think, you know, what's the point really?
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: And you can end up losing 500 words in a chapter, and you feel that you've lost no no actual me, which is is it is satisfying actually to lose these, yeah.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and again, you can do it on a micro level, consensus by sentence, and also you can sometimes think this whole section, we don't we don't need it there.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, again, it was trying to think what's what fits into the story.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and the story is not about giving everyone a certain level of credit, it's it's about trying to tell us as a narrative history and and and kind of have that readability really.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: So you know, you you get that you you get you get the story, and yeah, some characters are kind of drive that story, and some of you can be a great player but not really be part of the story, and that's that's kind of the way it is.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, that was uh Is there anyone who features less than you expected, and anyone who features way more than you expected?
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, a lot of it.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh Shivron Chandapor, for example, from West Indies, you know, fantastic.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful 11,000.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, he bats like a crab, wouldn't say beautiful, but very you know, idiosyncratic batsman, but tenacious, dogged.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: And they had yeah, there was a beauty in that.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: But because he I've never heard the crab description before, yeah, um, okay, but because he was a great player in a declining side, he sort of didn't fit in with the narrative too much because the story of what's in his is their rise and it's their fall, and someone didn't quite like he's one of my kind of favourite players, but it didn't.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think I might have put an apology to him in the intro, and then you have someone like uh yeah, yeah, has Abdul Qadir from Pakistan who you know stats-wise is a very, very average player indeed, but he's captained a really important moment.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: He's really a uh you know, pivotal figure in the pack in nation building in Pakistan through through cricket.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: So he's a he's a he's a transcendental figure, really, even though as a cricketer, he's so it's so that's so separating that so it's not it's not kind of giving credit to players based on how much Ali didn't test cricket, it's who is part of a story, really.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: Your your ability to reach for the social and cultural impact of the cricketers was really cool in that part of it as well, because it's that secondary story.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um love it.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um the layers is always what I kind of love in my writing.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: I try to do that a lot in the book.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have to stop yourself?
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: There's that concentric circles again.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have to stop yourself going an extra one?
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because you could always leap another, couldn't you?
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: You could say, okay, so this has taken us to um you know the um what's the apartheid example?
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: What is the the sort of knock on political effects of this?
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: You could take that another stage further.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's how how far do you let yourself wander away from the pitch?
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's that is a discipline.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I try to yeah, wandering is good, but if it's too much wandering, it's it's sort of self-indulgent, right?
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: So it's that balance was yeah.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: So try to kind of be faithful to the story, and uh yeah, so it's it's a story, it's how Tetrika intersects, it's not it's not three, three, three, it's not three layers of travelling because then you you lose two here, three there, one there, none there.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then you're just kind of writing about interesting things and kind of ceasing to have that.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that is a yeah, but obviously stuff like you know, when Nelson Mandela's asking if Don Bradman is still alive.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's just that was a great story.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: And again, that's great because it shows the how this strange game does have this this kind of outside's importance at times.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Did it um did it so for me the the Crickonomics is an economic in a business book, masquerading as a cricket book?
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's a fair um did did it feel different writing about the the business and economic side of things as you were exploring it, or was it just that obviously that was that second concentric circle?
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh no, it's a very different type of book uh to to write as well, in terms of looking so you know, rather with this, I was looking for anecdotes and stories, uh and bigger stuff, but uh and with crickonomics it was looking at kind of academic papers and stuff a lot.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: I guess it was um yeah, I guess crichonomics were definitely kind of nice when there was a clear kind of analogy between what was happening here and what was happening in other sport or even a business or whatever.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that was yeah, and it was very different, and yeah, that's kind of cricket as a a kind of window of the world around it.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: Do you um as a sweeping generalization, do you think the sport is better now as a result of the influx of of money in T20, or did you prefer it when you were watching the 97 Ashes?
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so I mean the best sport for everybody is always when they were a kid.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh Satestric and Lunch is as good as it gets.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um some ways it was actually very special because you have a kind of you have nine pretty strong teams, you have also you have kind of professionalism, which is sort of bringing up all countries without creating this huge financial you know gulf.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: So you have you know what season stuff are really strong, you don't have this huge amount of money in in India.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: You have you know, England actually, yeah, they're not very good, but um occasionally competitive.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but you just have quite a number of strong teams.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: You don't in Australia are very good, but they're not this sort of super team as they become later, which is partly because of professionalism and stuff.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: So it is actually it's a kind of is a compelling era, but um, in terms of the I mean the quality of cricket we see on the pitch today is better than ever before.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: You can the democratisation of talent is amazing.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can be a great critic from Kabul now, you can, you know, all the all the way around the world, you can get chances in T20 leagues and stuff.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, the kind of if you are talented, you can rise from almost anywhere now, or certainly you have not much more chance.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, you have more chance if you're from Australia than you know if you're from the middle of nowhere, but like you that is still um yeah, the game has opened up to a lot more of the talent, so that's been a really good thing.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: I also think having three different formats, uh it can be confusing and strange, but it can also be a big strength as well if that's kind of marketed and packaged in the right way.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I just think the you know things like the obviously fielding range of shots have been completely have changed, changed beyond all measures.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, one of the themes of the my book is yeah, well, unintentionally one of the themes really is how much people love to moan.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: So the first reference I could find to the game start was because it used to be they all play for money nowadays, not the pride of the badge on the shirt was 1884.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: It was setting results to the first test match.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: So there's this strange sense that the thing that we love is always been uh being getting worse right from the very start.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that's this strange thing about kind of test cricket fandom that yes, fans love the game, but they also love to moan about the game as well.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that I've found in exploring so I love and the order of these bounces around, but uh so I'm not a football man, I don't really like football.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: I like the transfer market in terms of the economics, and I liked football up until 2001, probably.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: Well, since 2001.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: I got into rugby and American football and couldn't cope with the behaviour anymore and the attitude.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think that was a change.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I love cricket, I love American football, I really like Formula One, but that's been the last five or so years I've I've got into that.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the more I've learnt about it, the more I enjoy it.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um I love elite cycling, love lots of sports.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: In each of those, when you read the right books, you find a period where it's and it's almost described in the exact same way it goes.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then we professionalized, and the strength and conditioning coaches arrived and it transformed how we were as athletes, and then that team suddenly gets good for a period.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I remember the dominant Australian team of the uh the yellow-shirted white ball crickets when you had McGrath and Warren, and yes, they were playing really well.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: Bevan, I think, as well.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: I must ask you about the Bevan Tendulka comparison, but we'll come on to that in a sec.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I just think I keep about these ideas, I keep trying to drag that back to the business world because there isn't the equivalent of a strength and conditioning coach coming into business, but almost the fitness of business athletes.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, our team, if you see we're we're 54 people in our company, everyone 80% of people are athletes of some kind.
• 34:02
  unknown: Yeah.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: We've got weightlifters, and we had a lady who almost went to the Olympics as a swimmer, and we've got elite runners, and we've got cyclists, and because we're trying to bring that same athletic prowess to the business world as we do the sporting world.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: Have you seen it cross over anywhere else outside of cricket where you'd see that that same cycle of where you know you saw the Australians with this the strength and conditioning arrive?
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: As is that a thought, or where did that thought spread when you read about that?
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: You probably saw that with Arsenal with Arsenal Menger became manager, you know, that's right.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: So obviously, that was the the Tuesday club because they didn't train on Wednesdays and they're just they'd have a long, long session on Tuesday afternoons that could go into well into Wednesday um and and stuff like that.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, he's yeah, and it's kind of so basic, kind of looking back, but of course at the time it's a revolution, it's a game changer completely.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: So that and there was so much benefit to be gained at that point because no one else was doing it.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so you talk about Marshall Games of sport, actually, that those weren't Marshall Games, they were these huge, kind of open goals that weren't being, you know, Wenger being the first one to be like, oh, we could sign players from France.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what a revolutionary concept.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: And now, you know, you have mid-sized Premier League clubs with special scouts in Eurogrove or whatever.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: So that that, yeah, I guess one of those things is as sports evolve, those games become a lot smaller, actually, because everyone is now doing a certain level of analytics and SNC work and stuff that yes, there's new things to explore, but those the kind of benefit from that is less than it was before.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: Sam said yesterday that uh six years ago when he sort of started, um, it was rare for an analyst to be in a team.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now every head coach has their preferred analyst that's with them.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: So again, the the possibility like the the revolutionary kind of value added is probably less than it used to be because Ian Graham said the same thing like that.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone is doing these certain level of competence that you can yeah, so that's um and yeah, cricket.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: So you you started off when no, yeah, with Ing with when Andy Flower um was head coach in 2009, you know, he he reads Moneyball actually, and that becomes a huge and and then uh and Nathan Lehman's the analyst and England are kind of the first to be be kind of doing this properly, um, and that and then it it is really important, and now kind of everyone's doing it to a certain level, so yes, you can still be the best at that, and that's still like a great thing to be, but it's sort of like yeah, I don't know.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: There's something where I know with Sun Sports, I think with and that's it, it's almost like people are doing it as a kind of due diligence thing or to kind of cover themselves rather than because they actually completely invest in it, so it's an interesting kind of dynamic, yeah.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: Which are committed to it and which are um are there um leagues or teams around the world that you think that's where the next exciting iterations are coming from?
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, so the the IPL just because there is that's where the money is, that's where the ideas are, that's where the concentration of talent on and off the field is, um I mean that is you know clearly the best selling league by a long way.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and we're we're sort of gonna see what IPL teams are investing in teams around the world, including in the in the hundreds as four that are owned by um kind of uh IPL adjacent owners, basically.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so that's where that a lot of stuff will come.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Nepal at the kind of other end of the spec is you know rising very, very quickly, huge kind of passionate fans.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and your cricket is the most popular, pop, most, most popular, popular sport in the country there.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and yeah, you kind of that's something where you think 10 years it could be huge, huge leaps.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but yeah, I'd like the kind of boring answer is you probably follow where the the money is and the money is in.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: And and I think um I remember this correctly, um, reference to how the women's game is giving us a future view in terms of what's coming.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so the the history of um often to kind of know what's about to happen in the men's game, you see what's happening in the women, what's happening in the women's game now.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: So the women uh women's had the first World Cup in '73 before the men's.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um women's had kind of pioneered a multi-point system, like for the for the Ashes, where you have different formats alongside each other.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um the first, I mean, the the first actually 100 game was a women's game as well.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the the the first to have a kind of uh a structure for an international cricket uh as well, first T20 international as well.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: So lots of lots of things, and I guess that's because the kind of burden of tradition legacy has been less, so it's actually easier to innovate and and and do stuff.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that that's uh so potentially you see, you know, and I yeah, what's it you now you're seeing different countries rise in women's games?
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: So you had Thailand have been very popular, they've done very well in women's cricket, but it's not in men's, so you because before you had the kind of hierarchies were quite similar, now which would be quite exciting, like you have women's football, you have different, you don't just have the same teams who are good at men's football, you have different.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: So that's something that's it's kind of exciting as well.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: How have you um, as you were sort of chronologicalizing the timeline, how have you seen the recognition and identification of talent change and bring us all the way through to the way IPL finds talent now?
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the key, yeah, for the kind of to go back to probably the yeah, 2000 or so, is basically so India's probably the best example of this.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, talk with Rao Drago, the great Indian player, and then India coach about this.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, you know, when he was growing up, I mean he made his debut in 96 for the testing, but the only eyes that mattered were your state coach.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, if a state coach didn't think you were good, then you couldn't break in, you couldn't break into professional cricket, therefore you had no chance of going into the national team or whatever, and that was your only path.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was that that was it.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: And now there's probably through a four different path.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: So you still have the the state coach, but you also have um you have these state-run T T20 leagues, so these kind of small T20 leagues, they'll be looking for talent.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: You'll have the actual IPL teams as well, sometimes that they look for talent beyond what's in the state system.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: You also have these private academies, but like you have in tennis, where so you have private academies that most people there pay to be part of the academies, but they also sponsor people because they want to help people who've got a chance.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, that's in their interests as well.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um are they ultimately paid by professional teams that receive the players?
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: No, no.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: So what happens is that like parents and stuff will will pay for the uh will pay for their kids to be in the academies and then in the hope that they'll become pro cricketers, but then that the academies will themselves kind of sponsor players to be who they think have done because they want to that helps them find more people to come through.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because it's actually in their in their business interest, right?
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: Or or sometimes even the team, the teams will kind of sponsor someone at an academy as well.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: But the point is you had from from one pair of eyes, you now have four pairs of eyes.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so what that means, if you're good enough, you're less likely to slip through the cracks.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: And those eyes are looking for different things sometimes.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they are they're looking for the other thing about the IPL and T T20 is we talked earlier about the the value of difference.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, if you borrow the wrong foot have a strange action, that can be really, really so valuable.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas before, if you're going through a very kind of a first-class system with an old school coach who wants you to have your kind of your coach to be the same, your elbow to be high.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you want just about in a very classical way.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't, if you're kind of you know reverse sweeping, he doesn't might not approve of that.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas now you've got these different eyes, so the point is uh that fun is much, much lar, it's much wider.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: So if you have the talent, there's more, there's more chance of of being given an opportunity.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: Other thing is, especially as a batsman in cricket, you know.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if you're picked for one trial game, you get LBW first ball to a bad decision, and you're that that could be it, you're you're finito.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: That that's happening, doesn't really happen anymore.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: You you explored at some length the the impact changes in a technology abroad in terms of LBW and the knock-on effects that had to the sport.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: Could you talk about that a little?
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it's usually kind of the unintended, the kind of unintended um effects which you see in business and and so much.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, historically it was um basically if you went on your your without getting too bad.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: If you went on your front foot and you were hit, it was sort of seen that you'd gone down a certain way.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't know what was happening to the ball.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: So you you can you kind of weren't given given.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: And what what the um ball tracking as it's been introduced has shown is actually those balls which were you were hitting right in the middle of your stumps, even if you were a few metres away, they were going to carry on to hit to hit to hit to um knock out your stumps.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: So it's shown that actually um more people were out LBW in, yeah, so more people now given LBW in in that way.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um but the same, but the other thing it's done oddly is it's shown that we often people didn't think about the bounce as a factor.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: So if you were hit on the back leg, people would assume it's hitting your stumps when it's actually going to be bouncing over.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: So it's had these two different effects.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: So spinners have got more LBWs, but fast bowlers have got fewer LBWs.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: So it's almost shown that stumps were both wider, but were wider on one level, but also were shorter on the other.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_01: So it's helped it's helped spinners, but hurt hurt fast bowlers.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: So it's had these two different effects.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: There was this stigma for umpires of being seen to give people out while this got with this kind of perceived uncertainty.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: But then if you see on a screen a minute later with the projected it's smashing the middle of that, so that actually changes your human behavior.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: So the umpires then react to not how they've been trained or conditioned, they they then react to what they see on the screens and then they become more likely to give people out.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, they all and also because a thing of knowing how you're you're being watched, and things like you know, some umpires were too as you didn't like to give LBWs, but actually it turns out they were just not doing their job, job in a very effective way, plus the fact that everything is decisions are all logged and and and registered now.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it has it's changed the elements of the game massively, and and people I think you have technology, and I think the point is it doesn't exist in the vacuum, it actually doesn't you induce you with with technology, you don't just record behaviour, you actually change behaviour.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's one of the things that would have been the bit the big takeaways.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: Great quote.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, just before we leave uh talent and and difference too much, do you think there's a a skill?
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Set and attribute a type of bowler or a type of batsman that's particularly undervalued still today.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: The middle order T20 is a very hard place to bat.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think there is awareness of that.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: But I think sometimes because of what a volatile role it is, again, the samples are pretty small.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, an IPL 14-game season, you're probably only a very good batsman in the bats at four or five, you're probably only succeeding three or four times.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I think sometimes teams chop and change too much and kind of mistake randomness and small sample size for bad form or not being as good as you know.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_01: If you bought them three months ago, it probably is still that that level.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it just had some form.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's the things with T20 that's interesting, is that you want to be effective as a team, especially as a batting team, you need people to play in a pretty high-risk way, but you can't say go and play in a high-risk way, and then you get out three times cheaper, and you're being dropped, and you're being psychological safety is really important.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: It is, yeah, really important.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: And that um, I think that's if you look at the kind of history of the franchises that have done well and badly, recognizing creating that dynamic has been such a big differentiating factor.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's all well and say to well, it's all well against the go and express yourself, but if you're doing that with a gun to your head, um, I think T20 is interesting because the when it's not really true in test cricket or only occasionally true in test cricket in T20, there can often be the differences between uh basically your personal interest and your team interests.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: That I mean if you know lots of teams in other, because remember there's all these different competitions, and in a way, everyone's always playing for a gig in another league, and if other lose are looking at players who score the most runs in this league, well actually, as a batsman, you might think I'm going to maximize my run scoring, but score in quite a um low-risk way.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: But by doing that, I'm actually maybe not, I'm not taking as many risks as my team needs me to do on this day.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: So actually, so you need a very safe environment to stop people being that risk averse and accept, you know, you can go out, you can play in the right way, it's the right process, but it just doesn't come off.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, yeah, the T2 anything.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: The weird thing is sometimes, you know, some very famous innings where players get quite a lot of runs, but they score them slowly, and it actually hurts their team, it's actually probably worse their team if they've got out first ball for a golden duck.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a whole new way of kind of calibrating and thinking about cricket.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_00: How um I I completely agree.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I my brain went back to some of the early like one-day games where people had bat for like two runs and over or whatever, and think they'd done a good job, and it's like, no, no, no, that's not that's not the right, that's not the right way to do it.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we we talked about technology there and the impact it had.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what do you think some of the future impacts of technology are going to be?
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: Have you thought about how it might impact the game moving forward?
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so one of the things that is interesting is that you tend to get um players when they come out to bat, even C2010s need a few balls to get in.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like, how do you make that process easier?
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_01: So talk about having like a batting case that people are preparing in before they come out to bat baseball.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and so you kind of you come out as if you've got 20 runs already rather than starting from zero.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: But that kind of thing is is interesting.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: Does anyone do that at the moment?
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: Is there anywhere that you're aware that's happening?
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's with the structure of people being the dugout, it's actually hard to do that because you have to go onto the pitch so quickly.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: So it's kind of how do you is there a way to make that?
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_01: You can people practice a bit, but not just such a thing.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: People don't realize you could can you presumably the timed out rule still applies in T20 as much as it does tests.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 75 seconds, yeah.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_01: So you you need to be on it.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: Is it 75 seconds in T20?
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, two minutes in test?
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think it's 90 seconds, yeah.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um double check that, sorry.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it doesn't happen very often.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I that I'm calling that from a book I read like 30 years ago, so your number will be back.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: But um yeah.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh obviously, we're yeah, it's interesting.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_01: You see the kind of yeah, the kind of matchup data is so specific on you know, so and so doesn't do well against left arm spin and stuff, but then the argument is always that if they know that, then they're gonna practice against that and does it flip, and then the value of difference is interesting, and like surprising someone with more on the face of it might be a super tactic, can that sometimes be effective?
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's like Do you play chess?
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's it, no, no.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a book called How Life Imitates Chess by Gary Kasparov.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, interesting.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: And he talks beautifully about how every action has a reaction, yeah.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: And almost um, I love the idea of whatever situation you uh encounter, what opportunity does this now give me?
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_00: So if the bowler adjusts, you need to adjust, and vice versa.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: The the thing I think about technology, and it was it was while you were speaking, so the um the Washington Commanders, American football team, they've got this amazing young uh quarterback.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: I I should frame this with actually the quote and the story from you that made me go there.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_00: So um you've written about how uh the amount of practice under the age of 16 is often the most a prominent determiner of the success of a player.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_00: What could we do to accelerate that learning and that experience prior to 16?
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_00: Or what could we do to effectively, given the amount of experience they've got at 24 at 16 years of age?
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the problem with sport is it takes a physical, mental, and emotional toll on a person.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_00: So uh the NFL's a great example.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_00: If running backs have carried the ball too many times in college, they say, ooh, too high risk of injury, too much physical toll.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: We we start seeing that with fast bowlers now sometimes, right?
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: Recovering from injury, they've bowl too much.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in the NFL, they've now built the equivalent of a really advanced F1 simulator.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_00: So the quarterbacks have like the Apple Vision Pro setups where they're using real footage from all the games.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_01: They can get that without physically without physically getting any damage at all.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: So you could almost in the dugout, you could have the headset on.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you could be and you could literally have the camera footage showing you in virtually real time what the bowler is receiving with the crowd and everything to get more in tune to the pace of the game ready to go.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's interesting.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it would depend on yeah, both teams agreeing and they've got on the IP stuff, but it'd be a fascinating.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_01: We'll get it in the women's game first, and then and then iterate it out.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_01: It'd be great TV for sure.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then have you started to think about the impact of AI on the quality of data we get or how that might impact scouting moving forward and the statistics around the game?
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think obviously the so the barrier to kind of entry of and be able to access the data was gonna be lower, lower than ever, getting lower and lower.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_01: So it's actually gonna kind of flip to how you interpret it again.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_01: So it's almost, I think, gonna go full circle where everyone will have the you've kind of gone from everyone having nothing to everyone will have everything, but then how you interpret that becomes the big the kind of the key thing, which is you know, in the old old school it was like you didn't have anything, but it's how you interpreted kind of with your eyes, and that's almost gonna I think it's always go go back to that because you'll have you'll have heaps and heaps and heaps of stuff.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: So how do you work out what's actually important and and also I suppose it's the data is kind of backward facing inherently, right?
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's working out what elements that you can yeah.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: I I sometimes think with with data and sport, the danger is you focus so much on it, you lose sight of your job as a coach, which is to actually make your players better, right?
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_01: And and again, if in in some ways it's if if you know that if you know that everyone knows that your player has winced against a certain type of bowling, that actually that's actually quite good knowledge for you to know as your own coach.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_01: You can say if you improve against this, that's that's your due diligence on your player, right?
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, you're gonna face a lot of this, but if you improve, but actually they'll take a while to toss on that you've improved against it, so actually you can get an advantage from that.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_01: So there's there's these kind of being ahead of, you know, you I think you can work out what you're likely to face and then use that to your advantage.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, yeah, this odd thing.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: And and obviously thinking about um T20 cricket, especially, you know, these guys share dress rooms with each other and then they play against each other, so they might be playing with each other for two cops a year, and then playing against each other for two cops.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_01: So it's uh yeah, I might be playing against you one week and then with you the next.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: So that kind of dynamic of how much you share information with each other is interesting, and also you'll be in a team meeting where you know, oh yeah, Tim always gets out to this, but then suddenly you're on the same time the same team as me.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: So do you tell with information when you're gonna be against the next?
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's all these different levels, it's very interesting.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_00: One of my rules in business is a phrase everybody knows.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_00: So everyone knows who works really hard, everyone knows who's a bit work shy.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, within the test teams, everyone will know who's crap against a short ball, everyone knows who dreads when a left arm spinner comes on.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_00: They all know, they all know, and it'll be that nuance that's that's different.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_00: One one thing I loved about um those England white balls, there was lots of things I love that we'll we'll go into, but was the prevalence of all rounders, yeah, how they overstacked the middle order with all rounders, and that's something I've sought to do in business.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_00: So often people will if they if they're recruiting for a media person, they'll want a person who just does media, and almost they'll view any additional skills as a negative and they'll want all the focus.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas I hate that we try and go for great human beings who have multifaceted skill sets and talents, and it it means you can plug in and play to an extent.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and you're buying lottery tickets.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so with that England team, you almost had eight chances of someone getting a great day with the bat.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas if you actually go with a six and four split in a wicket keeper, yeah, you've got six lottery tickets, not eight.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I I I love that.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_00: How do you think that might change?
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because all these sequences they come and go, right?
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: They become fashionable, people follow and then it adjusts.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_00: How do you think we might see the composition of teams change moving forward?
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I think almost so that that kind of picking things with 2022, the World Cup in Australia, Twenty World Cup when they had, yeah, they had all these all rounders, like people like Sam Curran, Lim Livingston, Moen Ali, Ben Stokes, they had all these options.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, we should totally talk about Sam Curren as well.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_00: He's a fascinating cricket, yeah.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I think even since then, what's happened?
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think basically as the standard increases, which it is, it's actually hard to just be really two two be really good at two different things, eye bat and bowling at the same time.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: So actually, we're seeing all rounders, and also partly because analytics, and just because against standards, um, if bowlers are a bit weaker, now the teams are actually targeting them harder and harder, so it's getting harder to go.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because you've got to actively choose who are we to like there's no good options at an elite level.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_01: So that the kind of balance question is is interesting.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_01: So obviously all rounds are great if you can find them, but there's a thing, if you have a I would say like a good around is is of perfect for any team, but a battle rounder is actually worse than not having a rounder because you're a battle rounder, you're actually not getting good much with the bat or the ball, and you're kind of in trying to balance your team, you risk imbalancing it in two different ways rather than just saying we're the extra bats and we've got weaker bowling, but we have the you know, so you end up you can try and be too clever with these things as well.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's that dilemma is very is very interesting.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think as sounds arising, rounds will become rarer and more precious, and obviously there'll still be some great ones, but they'll become but teams will kind of tie themselves in knots trying to generate rounds who don't really exist.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's fascinating.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_00: I love that as an idea.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um in the NFL, they did an interesting piece of work whereby so squads are like 50 players, and they did a hierarchy of the value of position.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_00: So um now some people might assume oh, the value of players just runs as a batting order, one to eleven.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_00: But that doesn't recognise, you know, if if you have the first pick in the draft, and certainly the IPL has brought this to fruition in terms of paying for players, you know, where is the value now in terms of spot?
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like what is the most if you were drafting a side tomorrow, are you picking a top order batsman first?
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_00: Are you picking a bowler?
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_00: And where do you think the best value is found in terms of players or positions that are undervalued?
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, so I think so.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_01: T20 is such a batting game that paradoxically, I think bowling is kind of the most valuable thing because if you can, it's harder to find really good bowlers than it is to find batsmen who are really good.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_00: And does that reflect it in the pay at the moment?
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_00: The better bowlers are paid higher.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_01: So the bowling is sort of a kind of hyper pyramid where there seem to be so few very, very outstanding bowlers that they're paid a lot.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_01: But then even if you go down to one, it's almost like you have this sort of super elite of maybe 10 bowlers, and then beyond that, it's almost a bit of a much remoter.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost like the lottery tickets thing you said, and sort of people will pay for the very, very best, and then beyond that, they're a bit more he might, he's good, but he might get whacked anyway.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to have my battery in better.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_01: With Boomerrah whatever, Jasper Boomer is like you'll pay whatever you know, they are completely, completely worth it.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_00: Can you explain Boomer to me?
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because it doesn't he doesn't pass the eye test.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_00: You objectively watch him play, and you're like, I don't know why you're as exceptionally good as you are, because he's not the fastest bowler in the world, he might be the most accurate, and maybe it is that maybe it's the control that it comes down to, but just seems to overperform the physical abilities that he comes to play with.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_01: One thing's about his action the way he bowls, he has this sort of hyperextension, which basically means he releases the ball from kind of beyond uh from kind of later.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_01: So he he has he probably releases the ball from half a metre or a metre closer to the batsman, so the ball therefore has less far to travel, which also helps with his accuracy because if you're and will make it perceive it as faster, probably.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, because it's got less time to lose its speed basically in that in that journey, and a different release point in because the players who have prepped and adjusted to a bowler of a certain height having an expected release point, anything that deviates that again.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_01: There's no bowler who bowls in the same way as him, which means the kind of act of lining him up as a batsman is is much harder.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, lots of bowls are very good, but if they bowl like someone else on your team, you can practice and do it.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's easier to change.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember Paul Adams?
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's the first one that I remember coming.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_00: I must have been nine or ten when that happened, maybe.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_00: How old are you?
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_00: I am 35.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_00: 35.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I'm 43.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_00: So you might not have even been around.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_00: Do you do you remember him playing, or just after the fact?
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that because I remember the bender.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_00: What a phrase.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_00: Double jointed everything.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's no one, and this was before YouTube and video footage.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_00: So the England players he and he had like a bag full of wickets on his debut because no one had any idea how to play that.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_00: That was the most dramatic of that type of arrival, I think.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_01: You come, I mean, you had uh Janta Mendes from uh Sri Lanka had this yeah amazing array of variations and it kind of crashed a burn after maybe three three years or so.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um even Jay Dermot with England actually had a you know loads of slow balls and he did very well initially in the cricket, then he kind of fade out.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_01: So you do see these types, you know.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_01: I always think with these types, um you kind of need to maximise their impact, and what I mean you shouldn't be a tight window, but you shouldn't play them in a random series, you should be like, Can we win a World Cup with you?
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's interesting.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that hasn't always happened with these guys.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_00: So it's is there a is there a player out there you'd point to that could have that type of impact now that you would keep and wait?
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh no, but look at so Sean Tate from Australia, you won the World Cup 2007, he was he hadn't played very much before, but everyone kind of knew he was special.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the fact teams hadn't played against before made him more effective in that World Cup, and he won the World Cup for Australia, for example.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, to sort of extend that point forward, are we overexposing and overusing Harry Brooke?
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean, I think so.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_01: Physically as a batsman, it's just as much as Mary as a bowler.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, and the kind of the no secret thing.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't think that's I think yeah, he needs some rest as well, but he you know he's a and it doesn't matter if people see him bat, it's not like he's gonna get found out, whereas with a bowler you would yeah, I just think there's certain types of bowlers because bowlers kind of set the terms of the con like the bowlers are the ones who answer who asked the questions, right?
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because they they have the ball, so they have that.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's like a server in tennis, right?
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and the batsman's a return.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I do think the that point of difference is more you kind of with bowlers, you do get it more, and it's like that's often like how I think how you can you use that in a way that's most advantageous, and you're gonna it's about trying to trying to pit your your moment basically.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um so we extend the the value point from positions to to countries.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um my feeling has always been that New Zealand overachieved with the density of population and what they were working with.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_00: Is that what you found in your your research and study?
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, so for the interesting thing, but New Zealand is a until 2000 they were doing pretty pretty poorly in, especially in in test cricket.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and there's been kind of a number of and and now they're you know, we saw them, that they've just beaten England, they won the Worcester Champions 2021, they've got to, I think, four ITC finals, uh, men's at Doston Mall.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but they yeah, they won a Women's World Cup a few years ago as well.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think the the kind of the kind of quick proof thing there is kind of using their kind of paradoxically, using their small size as an advantage.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, it means that they do things like so in England we have 18 different counties and they have different incentives and motivations.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, New Zealand is much simpler, so their um governing body pays a portion of each head coach's salary in their domestic, which means um what's happening again and again is the the national head coach will just call up um uh domestic coach and say, you know, we want so-and-so to be wicked to to be keeping wicket, make it happen, so and so and so be opening it, it happens immediately.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_01: Similar principle in Irish Rugby without unique exactly the same, very same model, and also with New Zealand rugby as well.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, New Zealand cricket, I've learned from New Zealand rugby.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_01: So you have that seamless, so everything's geared towards interest of the national team.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_01: In a way, it's just not in England because you had example with um with with with um with Pope with Oli Pope for England, he was batting three for England in a test match when he'd never done it for Surrey ever.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's New Zealand that just wouldn't happen because they would you know recognise that was the thing we wanted him to develop there.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_01: So that's been a big thing they've done there.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_01: They've invested a lot in their kind of pitches, um, conditions to make them more like international cricket.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, invest a lot in their A team, so they've actually cut they cut some of their domestic structure to fund more of their A-Team programme as they're kind of the the pitch thing echoes Norway in football.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_00: So they spent 20 years investing in facilities in Iceland as well.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, so New Zealand also invests a lot in their A-team to kind of that bridge between domestic cricket and in the international game as well.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the kind of their board structure, they changed their board structure before it was um well, a couple of reps from each of their six provinces who are kind of what can I bring back to a targo?
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, the board were Turkey's race for Christmas, they they raised themselves out of position and were replaced by um just a slimmer board who were chosen on on merit and expertise, so rather than saying so or actually doing what's in the interest of the national cricket rather than for their provincial cricket, so that whole mentality has has has really shifted, and you have you know, most cricket balls are very poorly governed.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_01: So New Zealand uh by being governed and kind of put comp competently have had this huge advantage basically, and then that uh kind of following of talent has been very, very smooth, um, and that's and so able to, you know, more or less to to get yeah, it really max was their resources that they have, um and and kind of players don't get lost there is kind of happening in England as well.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think there are are there lessons we could take from there and apply them here, or is it culturally too different to do that?
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I do think the the dialogue between the national team and the provincial teams or counties or whatever could be a lot a lot better.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um that is something, and even the the physical thing of you know, if some if someone's paying a bit of your salary, that does make you answerable to them.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_01: So that's almost a structural thing that would lead to a so I do think the things where we can learn like that.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think um I think I think the kind of the board having enough expertise in cricket on it, which New Zealand's has England's has really struggled to have, I think is a another big thing as well.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think there's a lot a lot there and kind of uh yeah, New Zealand will kind of work with you know, say this this guy is of interest to us internationally in a few years, but right now he's not playing for Christ Richard or whoever, and kind of work with him to go on loan for a year or whatever.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, I think England don't necessarily do that as as well.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot, yeah, there's a there's a lot a lot there um with the caveat as well that that kind of cultural piece is probably the most important and also the hardest to to replicate and import somewhere else.
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm pretty obsessive about sequencing and timing and my calendar.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_00: So um this is a quiet week for me.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_00: In terms of that.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I'm booked all the colour coding I like.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, appreciate that.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um 12 hours a day, seven days a week, yeah, booked with a lot I I like, I I like I like being efficient.
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_00: We are stacked out in terms of what we do.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of focusing attention on the international cricket calendar.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_00: How has that evolved over time and how successful?
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there you go.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think the problem is that it hasn't, in terms of it's done such an ad hoc basis, and there's been more and more that have been uh created, and you just have one condition on top of another and on top of another.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it's completely it's so chaotic and confusing.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_01: And what you need is you need a system where you have a few windows a year where you just have international cricket and it has a bit more time, bit more of a chance to breathe.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_01: But when you have international cricket clashing with franchise cricket, you have players being pushed in two different directions, and if international cricket ceases to be you know if you if you see a West Indies test match and half their players are playing for a franchise instead, then it that takes away all the magic at that point, and that's very dangerous for international cricket.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_00: Is that is that battle lost?
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_00: Are we ever coming back from that in a world whereby you know, if if we were young West Indian cricketers, we'd be aspiring to play T20 because that's where the money is?
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think what you need to do, or that that is true, but what you need to do is you need to uh have three other winners a year where there's only you can't there's no T20 cricket, no franchise cricket.
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_01: So you have these windows for test cricket, and in that period is when you um so as a player, your option is to play test cricket or do nothing, which say test cricket will become more attractive, and you use the money that is in the test game to sort of subsidize.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because England the thing is England needs when Wiss Indies come here, England needs them to be a certain level of competitive, otherwise they're not going to be uh selling tickets, their broadcast rights will be worth less and so on.
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_01: So test cricket uh it it is different to a normal Like as a business, you want to just you know, if you're Tesco, you want to destroy strange resets next door, but test cricket is not like that, even football.
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, it's also fan.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if man you come, you win 5-0, that's great.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_01: But actually, as an England Test cricket fan, if you go to Laws England thrash resilient in two days, that's actually a rubbish spectacle.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want to so there is that kind of collaborative element, and Test cricket, I think, is not a zero-sum game.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_01: You you need every country benefits from others being a little bit stronger because it creates more of a narrative and more reason.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you you want yeah, Pakistan are coming here, you want people to be excited to watch Pakistan, not just thinking England will win, and that's to be expected.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_00: Is the struggles of oh, in fact, let's do this first.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Bas Ball good or bad for the game?
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it was good for the game.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, England, it was also good for England team.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_01: England won 117 before and then had a you know one eight of the first nine on the Bas ball, and you know, they they did brilliantly initially.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I think a net just about a net positive for the yeah, the net positive for the team and certainly spectacle was often amazing, but yeah, there was you know clearly the last probably two two years, being honest, from the start of 2024, was a sense of there could be the need for refinement was pretty obvious and probably not been being done enough.
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um you talk about as a strategy, right?
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_01: So it the the value of it initially was this such a radical different strategy, but then when it becomes predictable, it loses that, and people can just just plan for it, and it becomes a kind of a caricature of itself at times.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_01: So that was the the kind of the full the full circle of it.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_01: But I remember that first summer, and one of the interesting things was um the amount of injuries that the opposition bowlers suffered, and basically what happened is because they were being hit targeted so much by England batsmen that they had to keep on bringing on their best bowlers who then inevitably got injured, and teams weren't weren't kind of so there were these real benefits that Baseball brought for the team, and then obviously they were we would have got these games as well.
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um but then when it became too predictable, then that was the problem.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_00: So two two important things come to mind.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_00: The first being you're absolutely right.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um and we we try and characterize the um end of something as the quality of the decision that was made at the start.
• 1:08:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um you ever read Thinking in Bets by Annie Dukes?
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that book.
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um so we did a whole coaching session around it with the team, and I think people uh it's called resulting, isn't it?
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_00: You blame the quality of the decision on the result that happened.
• 1:08:16
  SPEAKER_01: And you retrospectively everything fit the analysis, and life's more complicated than that.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_00: 100% so uh or 99.11 as the preferred answer would be.
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I I think it was the absolutely the right thing to do.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was a transformative thing.
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_00: People don't remember, as you articulated the the failures beforehand, the step change that had been achieved, but they expect that to be linear forever, and it's like, well, of course, there was a lot of luck in that first eight or nine or what have you, and there was going to be a regression, and others were gonna count, were gonna catch up.
• 1:08:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but really, and also there was no recognition of he effectively overachieved in a test environment with what was a white ball team because that's all we'd built for 20 years, yeah.
• 1:08:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because we were so bad at white ball cricket, Strauss et al.
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_00: did a great job of transforming the white ball game, but left us very slim on the ground in terms of Red Bull players.
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so what other choice did he have?
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_00: If he'd tried to play a traditional approach, it wouldn't have worked anyway.
• 1:09:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that was the basic thing about a lot of the initial how well Baseball was doing was onities the shakers with old players with Johnny Bester, James Anderson, Stuart Broad, and so on.
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but then when new players were coming in who needed the coaching, they didn't really have access to that.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_01: So it's sort of like it's like it's not one size fits all, right?
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_01: What's what's better best for someone at a certain point in their career also these guys have been through COVID and all the all that was different to what they needed in the next phase.
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_00: I love I love the aggression side of it.
• 1:09:32
  SPEAKER_00: One of the themes that comes through from all the books in and around the statistical transformation of sports is um the stats play out the more aggressive teams do better over time.
• 1:09:42
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, yeah.
• 1:09:43
  SPEAKER_01: And we remember there's always a bit of glee when you remember, oh, they were too aggressive and they then they lost, but you don't remember the time that uh a team was losing one nil in a match, they didn't do anything and they lost one nil anyway.
• 1:09:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's always safer to lose in a defensive way.
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's absolutely true.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_00: So the business example is it's easy to fail in the predictable way.
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and there's a John Maynard Kane's quote about how no one lost their job by failing conventionally.
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um and people kind of cover their asses when they're under under pressure as well.
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, they do.
• 1:10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Psychological safety again, if you can provide it.
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it just made me think about the um are you a football man?
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_01: I like football, arsenal fan.
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_00: So uh congratulations, um yeah, yeah.
• 1:10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um where I was going was the England Argentina game.
• 1:10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the cultural resonance of that is going to cause a hell of a reaction about attacking football this year.
• 1:10:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think you're right.
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but Brentford, who probably the most data-informed team in the Premier League, you know, they've always said I'd argue Brighton, but fair.
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_01: But one of the topic, whatever the game state, almost always the right thing to do is to keep on attacking.
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_01: If you're one-up actually at second goal, you you kill the game.
• 1:10:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost like you if you're one-up and you take off all your attacking players, your route to you've actually just narrowed your route, your route number of routes to victory.
• 1:11:01
  SPEAKER_01: But actually, when you're on a up and you keep attacking players, maybe we can win 3-3-2-3-1.
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_01: But if you only win one-nil, then one thing goes wrong and and because actually when that game goes to one-all, there's basically no way for England to win that game apart from on penalties, and it's England lying on penalties is not going to go well for them, probably anyway.
• 1:11:17
  SPEAKER_01: So you kind of, yeah, that was the issue.
• 1:11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Completely agree.
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_00: The uh that that was where I was recalling it, the uh it's one of the first chapters of the Brentford book, isn't it?
• 1:11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in terms of them advocating exactly that, you just got to keep attacking.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's the same principle we have in business.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_00: So um we we did some work with one of the the biggest fund managers in the UK, and they had a 40-person marketing team, and their view was your four-person marketing team produces more than ours do.
• 1:11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yep, because we haven't got 15 sign-offs, we haven't got a huge amount of bureaucracy, we are playing attacking football.
• 1:11:48
  SPEAKER_01: And there's probably an element of if you have a big organization you think there's going to be cuts at some point, you want to make sure you're not the most vulnerable to being cut.
• 1:11:57
  SPEAKER_01: If you have four four people, you're kind of all sink or swim together.
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_01: So you probably will both do that age for a little bit.
• 1:12:03
  SPEAKER_00: People be more conservative because they don't want to be the one that's different and stand out.
• 1:12:07
  SPEAKER_01: If there's two people being sat out of the 40, they don't want to be the one who's made the bad decision.
• 1:12:10
  SPEAKER_01: Genius.
• 1:12:11
  SPEAKER_01: So they ask their manager to approve it.
• 1:12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I sensed in in both of your books a certainly an appreciation, if not a love, for leg spin bowling.
• 1:12:22
  SPEAKER_00: I adore leg spin bowling.
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I was a left arm wrist spinner when you weren't allowed to be one.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_00: So it was like, well, no, can you just finger spin instead because we're more comfortable with that?
• 1:12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um whereas now I'd have more of a chance of playing a Shamsee over.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Talk to us about the the magic and the iconic nature of leg spin.
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_00: And also what I picked up in the in the test book that I didn't appreciate was that it was a beautiful art form that was almost lost in time and then came back again.
• 1:12:51
  SPEAKER_01: So, like, so there's two types of spin bowling: there's finger spin bowling and leg spin bowling, uh, wrist spin bowling, wrist spin or leg spin.
• 1:12:59
  SPEAKER_01: But so finger spin is um you are using your fingers, not your wrists, so the ball's easier to control.
• 1:13:06
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna so the trade-off is you get less spin, but you get more control, uh, and that's the trade-off.
• 1:13:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so to be a wrist spin, you should be a little bit mad, you need to accept it's gonna be a very volatile thing.
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_01: You can get smash, but in return for that, you can actually get a lot of spin and ball these amazing balls.
• 1:13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so you so wrist spinners center uh their economy rate, which is like runs pro, they can see it is generally quite a lot higher than for than for fingers than with finger spinners.
• 1:13:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's a more aggressive pursuit, uh, therefore cabs can distrust it because you can you can win a game, you can lose a game quite quite fairly quickly as well.
• 1:13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um does the data support that view that leg spinners could lose your games.
• 1:13:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean they they they go they are more expensive than with the finger spinners.
• 1:13:47
  SPEAKER_00: No, wonder if it's transformatively expensive.
• 1:13:50
  SPEAKER_00: It almost feels like it's a perception that oh, you'd lose a load of games, but actually, one, two, three, four.
• 1:13:56
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder what the statistically significant runs per over more needs to be to change a game.
• 1:14:02
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe one for book two.
• 1:14:04
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, another one, another challenge.
• 1:14:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um so in T20, but people thought because of that um that aggressive nature that it people wouldn't touch Legspin.
• 1:14:14
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, Legspin did so well in T20, and the reason is because they it's good at taking wickets, and as a bowl team, you need to take wickets, kind of paradoxically.
• 1:14:20
  SPEAKER_01: The only way to defend T20 is with with is through wickets.
• 1:14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the value of the wicket is far greater than it is in a test context because you're limited because you've got the um limit of time.
• 1:14:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I suppose as a bat as a batting team, you lose like wicket is less bad, but it's more that as a bowling team, if you don't take wickets, you can't defend, so you it's your only route to defending is taking wickets, and so the value of so some of the points of the volatility of leg spin, um, terms of it's hard to bowl everybody in the same place, becomes an as an advantage in 220.
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_00: And and the taking of wickets almost now bear with me because this is a conceptual graph in my head.
• 1:14:53
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you listening on audio, this might be a challenge.
• 1:14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um you the potential scoring rate of a ball bowled at the best batsman is going to be much higher than one bowled at the worst batsman.
• 1:15:05
  SPEAKER_00: So the more wickets you can take, the the expected runs you're exposed to will fall off a cliff.
• 1:15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, because your worst batsman is facing more balls.
• 1:15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:15:14
  SPEAKER_00: I love stats.
• 1:15:16
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, so that yeah, and so that risk is it's risking, yeah, it has a risk, but it the outcome can be really, really can be very positive.
• 1:15:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then wrist spin in Tess Ricket was kind of floundering, was really floundering until early 1990s.
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_01: Then have uh Shane Warren, Annual Kumley, Mishtak Ahmed all come around and and um show the value of leg spin and do really well.
• 1:15:39
  SPEAKER_01: Leg spin is still pretty rare just because it's just bloody hard to do, but there is a real magic to it.
• 1:15:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the thing about leg spin is it can transcend the conditions, it can be effective in all conditions in a way that with finger spin you tend to need more assistance from the pitch as well.
• 1:15:51
  SPEAKER_01: So it's the very ways in which it's so difficult also mean it's so valuable as well if done right.
• 1:15:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's the only I just I just adore everything about it.
• 1:16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I am ever so slightly mad, so that that resonated.
• 1:16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, I think the thing people don't realise about um wrist spin bowling is people think it's deviation left to right, they don't recognise it's the amount of drop and drift and flight.
• 1:16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sorry, before it pitches, yeah.
• 1:16:20
  SPEAKER_00: And pace and and all like all those nuances.
• 1:16:22
  SPEAKER_00: The ball of the century is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
• 1:16:25
  SPEAKER_00: It almost defies the laws of physics, and it is just I think that how that didn't how that didn't create oh, because of the coverage?
• 1:16:34
  SPEAKER_00: Something like that happens now for the first time.
• 1:16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, ten years later, the number of leg spinners explodes.
• 1:16:41
  SPEAKER_01: But obviously, the no, so I I I I I don't think the coverage was a problem.
• 1:16:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think the problem is that Shane One was so good, it's so hard to replicate.
• 1:16:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I think there's loads of people who tried to be Shane Warren, but it was so difficult.
• 1:16:50
  SPEAKER_01: I don't yeah, I don't think that I don't think the coverage was a problem because it was so large.
• 1:16:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there was the ability to never a concept of the Broad of the Century before.
• 1:16:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the thing about Shane Warren is that for all his excitement about his turn and everything, he was just so consistent.
• 1:17:02
  SPEAKER_01: That was his actual secret.
• 1:17:04
  SPEAKER_01: Was leg spin is kind of baited in your ball, bad ball and over.
• 1:17:07
  SPEAKER_01: Warren just did not do that.
• 1:17:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so no, I I just think I think Warren actually paradoxically he showed both how amazing leg spin can be and also how difficult the art is.
• 1:17:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great point.
• 1:17:17
  SPEAKER_00: And and the other sort of you go to a Molarithan type approach, but that is a physical difference that offers him a range of you know, you had double-jointed wrists, elbows, and you know, so much challenge as to whether they he was legally bowling a lot of the time, even when he was, or what that even means.
• 1:17:36
  SPEAKER_00: You can't really apply that to anyone though.
• 1:17:37
  SPEAKER_00: No one can come and practice having a double-jointed wrist.
• 1:17:40
  SPEAKER_01: No, they can't, but yeah, again, a point of difference, incredibly valuable.
• 1:17:43
  SPEAKER_00: Incredibly valuable.
• 1:17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, speaking of different styles of things, we mentioned this on the counter the way past.
• 1:17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember it?
• 1:17:49
  SPEAKER_00: It would have been, and you'll you'll date this better than I will, but there was a real debate about one day cricket at the time about Michael Bevan, he was averaging north of 50, and I think it was Tendulka at the time who was also averaging north of 50.
• 1:18:01
  SPEAKER_00: And they were describing the difference of Tendulka being like a God-given, graceful batsman and Bevan being like a messy agricultural fight for every run batsman.
• 1:18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember that debate that was that was ongoing with there?
• 1:18:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Did you have a preferred style?
• 1:18:15
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and does the visual presentation of a batsman matter to you, or you just look at the numbers and the effectiveness of it?
• 1:18:22
  SPEAKER_01: The beauty of a batsman comes in different forms, and sometimes there's a kind of beauty and ugliness if it some of tenastin and stuff talked about.
• 1:18:32
  SPEAKER_01: Chanderpool, exactly.
• 1:18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there was a kind of, but there's uh I always have a lot of kind of uh admiration for bats who was so kind of dogmatic that they refused to bat in the sort of the so-called preferred way or yeah, the way they're they're meant to in a vertical commerce.
• 1:18:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's a real and that again, watch a game, you want you want that kind of range of styles, right?
• 1:18:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Steve Steve Smith and people have always said, Oh, he bats, and um, you know, the way he he holds his bat out to Gully and stuff, he shouldn't be doing the way he shovels across the stuff.
• 1:19:00
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, you know, yeah, one of the best batsmen since Don Bradman.
• 1:19:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so, and even John Bradman, the greatest batsman of all, uh, people said, Oh, actually, his you know, his style is not not is not not quite right because the way um Smith and Bradman actually bat in ways are quite quite kind of a little similar way.
• 1:19:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I think I think part of the kind of fascination of cricket is you can have all these these different styles.
• 1:19:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's uh I just I suppose, but yeah, I think historically in England we've probably been a bit too rigid and a bit suspicious of difference.
• 1:19:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's a good thing.
• 1:19:29
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna ask you in T20 actually the the value difference is is greater.
• 1:19:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I think we are seeing I think a cultural kind of cultural shift in terms of the coaching, but I think I think historically there's been a thing that you have to bat in this certain way and bowl in a certain way.
• 1:19:41
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a reason you know Sri Lanka had these guys like Melinga, Murreley, Jasari as as a batsman, um, very aggressive, and and England weren't reproducing those sorts of players.
• 1:19:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of that is kind of comes down to kind of culture of coaching, which and arguably just overcoaching at times as well.
• 1:19:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think about them and um I'd like to take us on to reverse swing bowling.
• 1:20:01
  SPEAKER_00: What what did you what do you remember from your study and um looking into the evolution of that?
• 1:20:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so reverse swing is this kind of amazing but kind of yeah, beguiling and also concept, but it's also something that is uh intertwined with kind of controversy and being close or even above the line.
• 1:20:21
  SPEAKER_01: So basically uh the idea is you know, swing with a new ball, you're you're you're bowl in a way that it curves normally out away from a right right-handed batsman, reverse when the ball is is old and kind of uh tacky, uh tattered, it will then move, move the other way.
• 1:20:37
  SPEAKER_01: And kind of out of nowhere, you have a ball that's just going completely straight and then suddenly it'll stop moving the other way.
• 1:20:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's the test of camera effect.
• 1:20:43
  SPEAKER_00: Pakistan bowlers, you miss an acronym.
• 1:20:45
  SPEAKER_01: The New Yorkers of Yeah, unbelievable.
• 1:20:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, this this phenomenon really, and it kind of inverts the rhythm inverts the rhythm of a test innings where you'd have, you know, maybe after 50 overs, which is meant to be the easy time to bat, suddenly becomes the hardest place to bat because these balls are booming in towards your toes, taking out your still stumps and everything.
• 1:21:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you've ideally got middle order or lower order batsmen at this point as well.
• 1:21:06
  SPEAKER_00: So you're getting the less able batsman to face the most challenging deliveries.
• 1:21:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um and as a spectacle, it's it's amazing, and it and kind of the faster you bowl, the more effective it is, which is not always true of swing, actually.
• 1:21:16
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, really compelling spectacle, but it's also linked, you know, it when the ball is um one side of the ball is is kind of very abrasive, that's uh that's conducive to to generate some reverse swing, and this obviously led ultimately leads to the the the sandpaper affair 2018 Australia, you know, um Cameron Bancroft there is basically trying to make one side of the ball very uneven and make that kind of you want to create that contrast, and by raising that contrast, you then get the ball to kind of boom around back.
• 1:21:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um so it's how did it go that far?
• 1:21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like but I think I think the truth is that everyone was doing something, and that was an extreme example, but I think everyone was was doing something, and and you had this paradox where it's also the the most compelling spectacle in test cricket, one of the most compelling spectacles is the ball reversing in in this way.
• 1:22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um two stories come to mind.
• 1:22:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, have you ever heard the story about so Dave Brailsford, the cycling coach?
• 1:22:08
  SPEAKER_00: They discovered that there was something like a 70% chance that all elite cyclists would break a collarbone in their career.
• 1:22:16
  SPEAKER_00: So they worked out that it was Ed Clancy, who was the lead-off sprinter in the men's one of the men's uh Velodrome events.
• 1:22:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:22:23
  SPEAKER_00: He was pound for pound the strongest athlete they'd ever come across, but he had a big frame, so he provided it uh it wasn't very aerodynamic.
• 1:22:30
  SPEAKER_00: And they worked out, well, hold on a second.
• 1:22:32
  SPEAKER_00: If he's gonna break his collarbones anyway, if we shortened his collarbones medically by like 20%, he would be unbeatable.
• 1:22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 1:22:40
  SPEAKER_00: So they literally had a meeting.
• 1:22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Do we surgically narrow his collarbones?
• 1:22:44
  SPEAKER_00: And Brailsford tells this story about how the team doctor comes, they literally they get Ed in and say, Ed, we're thinking about this.
• 1:22:50
  SPEAKER_00: What do you reckon?
• 1:22:51
  SPEAKER_00: And he went, All right, let me go home and think about it.
• 1:22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Came back the next day and went, Yeah, let's do it.
• 1:22:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the doctor had to say, Dave, could I have a word?
• 1:22:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's completely unacceptable.
• 1:22:59
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot physically alter the bone structure.
• 1:23:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's mad.
• 1:23:02
  SPEAKER_00: And he went, Oh yeah, that is a bit mad.
• 1:23:04
  SPEAKER_00: We shouldn't do that, should we?
• 1:23:05
  SPEAKER_00: But it's the pushing to get those marginal gains on things.
• 1:23:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, he did that on a key, I think he was doing like a TED talk keynote when he talked about doing that, but it's looking for that last element you can find.
• 1:23:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, unbelievable.
• 1:23:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the sample the win at all costs is a thing as well, of course.
• 1:23:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's better too.
• 1:23:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's where it is where that line is that's interesting, isn't it?
• 1:23:26
  SPEAKER_00: And people always trying to find it.
• 1:23:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the other thing that came to mind when I was thinking about that was we've just seen the enhanced games happen in the US.
• 1:23:35
  SPEAKER_00: Almost I wonder what um cricket would look like if you could do whatever you wanted to the ball.
• 1:23:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:23:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the sort of spin and the DBA.
• 1:23:42
  SPEAKER_01: It would probably be pretty in terms of people worrying about um batting being too dominant, it would change that.
• 1:23:47
  SPEAKER_01: And it would it would be pretty exciting.
• 1:23:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, the bott stops and stuff being applied to balls, yeah, it would be be hard to bat, and you could say it would be a you know, T20 suddenly would be an equalising factor when you know we see these huge hits and everything.
• 1:23:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so, but yeah, it's do you have a list of or thoughts of rule changes you would implement if you were in charge of the game for a day?
• 1:24:07
  SPEAKER_00: Are there changes you'd like to see?
• 1:24:08
  SPEAKER_01: The biggest things I would do with with overrates and test cricket, I think you could you could fix those so easy.
• 1:24:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we have we have three sessions a day.
• 1:24:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure you need three sessions a day.
• 1:24:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think you could have two sessions a day.
• 1:24:17
  SPEAKER_01: I definitely think you know, the last every every day we see this sort of charade of um basically it's always in the interest of either batting team or the bowling team to not bowl this extra over.
• 1:24:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I would like to well do a few things.
• 1:24:28
  SPEAKER_01: I would actually empower umpass to do their jobs and say, you know, we have six minutes, we're gonna actually have two overs, whatever happens.
• 1:24:33
  SPEAKER_01: As you know, you you often see guys who are asking for drinks or new gloves at every ball.
• 1:24:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a crap spectacle if you pay a lot of money for it for a ticket.
• 1:24:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um would you start play earlier as well?
• 1:24:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you could do that to make up extra time, but yeah, I think I think the time thing is something I would I would be big on doing.
• 1:24:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'd actually I'm actually open to four-day test matches allocated as an idea because then you could have every test from Thursday to Sunday, and that might be a way you can have more three-match series, and you know, teams like New Zealand and South Africa, they'd probably better off playing more playing three three games or four tests each four days each rather than two or five.
• 1:25:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean the history of test cricket is of NS evolution.
• 1:25:05
  SPEAKER_01: You used to have three-day tests being the norm in England, so it's not always been five by any means.
• 1:25:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh yeah, I think stuff, yeah, the overrate stuff is definitely something.
• 1:25:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think the World Test Championship, which I do really like, I'd like to have that just a point just the people can understand.
• 1:25:18
  SPEAKER_01: So sort of everyone playing, yeah, making that much much simpler and kind of more more coherent because having it percentage of points contested determine uh the table is just a yeah, it it gives me a headache just to think about it.
• 1:25:31
  SPEAKER_01: So it's you want something that can be explained on the back of a bus ticket, don't you?
• 1:25:35
  SPEAKER_00: Love it.
• 1:25:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um what about uh kit and the evolutions we might see in equipment that comes?
• 1:25:42
  SPEAKER_00: Anything in your mind that we're gonna see in terms of evolving in the future of that?
• 1:25:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think we might see the pink ball become if it gets better, become more silent and test-trick, and that would mean you can you can you can have kind of hybrid day matches and day day night matches and things like that.
• 1:25:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's something that's the what's the um explanation of why it isn't as easy to consistently produce it as it is the red?
• 1:26:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think it's it's I mean, there's just been a lack of in investment basically, and then the the the ball seems to kind of go very quickly from doing a lot to doing nothing at nothing at all.
• 1:26:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but and the ICC in my view should probably invest in a company themselves because you're relying on a couple of companies to do the work, but the ICC should invest in the company themselves and should say this is hugely important for us.
• 1:26:22
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna sort this ball.
• 1:26:23
  SPEAKER_01: If you sort the ball, then you make the product really work.
• 1:26:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that would be something that I would definitely be keen on doing as well.
• 1:26:29
  SPEAKER_00: Nice.
• 1:26:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and in terms of um we we're starting to see more evolution on the the presentation of the game in in India and the um the the camera angles and the footage and the visualizations that's coming.
• 1:26:42
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think we're gonna see that continue to evolve?
• 1:26:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 1:26:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think those sorts of things.
• 1:26:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't when you have players being interviewed during matches, I don't I'm not actually during a game, I find it a bit of a gimmick.
• 1:26:54
  SPEAKER_01: So it's what do we expect them to say as well?
• 1:26:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like it just when interviews between boards, I find it a bit, yeah.
• 1:27:00
  SPEAKER_01: So these things are all to be balanced, but clearly obviously the the timeouts, strategic timeouts as they're called, are basically a way of getting more advertising breaks in.
• 1:27:09
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it's the the kind of the the commercial aspects, it's hard it's hard to escape.
• 1:27:14
  SPEAKER_00: Tim, we have done almost 50 questions across the course of that.
• 1:27:17
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
• 1:27:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, is there anything on the list of things I haven't asked you you wish I had?
• 1:27:22
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you've done.
• 1:27:23
  SPEAKER_01: This has been a very, very fun.
• 1:27:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm not I think I'm all out.
• 1:27:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'll I'll have a think, but no, I've uh I I I think you've hit a century not fun.
• 1:27:32
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
• 1:27:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've I've adored everything you've written.
• 1:27:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's been an absolute privilege to to meet you and get to explore some of the books with you.
• 1:27:40
  SPEAKER_00: I will continue gifting them.
• 1:27:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you've brought so much pleasure to me and to the team that you're writing, so I just it's great to be able to say thank you.
• 1:27:47
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, thank you very much.
• 1:27:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's so fun.
• 1:27:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's really, really fun to chat.
• 1:27:49
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, all sorts of questions haven't been asked before, so thank you very much.
• 1:27:52
  SPEAKER_00: Love it.