Posted by Do you remember the Ridiculous Ashes? It was a thing we did with Dan Liebke over at Cricket 365 for the 2019 series. It’s an alternative trophy that is awarded to the side that produces the most hilarious and absurd cricket across an Ashes series. Just to let you all know, we’re doing it as a podcast now.
Obviously there isn’t an Ashes going on at the minute, but that’s okay because there have been a great many Ashes series for which we haven’t yet determined a Ridiculous Ashes victor. This means we can go retro, which is very exciting indeed.
We’ve started with the 1997 Ashes. The first episode, which covers the first Test, features Nasser Hussain’s double hundred, Captain Tubby, Mark Ealham, runners, Carter USM’s tour manager, a first visit to Hindsight Corner and plenty more.
We’d not done a podcast in a long time when we recorded this, so we were feeling our way a bit. Dan’s more of a veteran though so he held it all together.
Episodes in this first series will go out weekly and then at some point down the line we’ll do a second series.
We’ll flag each episode here, but please subscribe through whatever podcasting thing you use and also leave us what Dan unfailingly describes as, “your honest five-star reviews.”
Yes please. Love it. Mind you, right now I love anything which will drown out the crushing existential anxiety and deafening screams of three children off school and the world going to hell in a handcart. But if I had to choose one thing, laughing at Mark Taylor would be it.
Pretty confident it qualifies as ‘escapism’.
Low stakes escapism, at that.
Very enjoyable listening, KC, although I do think you need to stand up to Dan a bit more in championing 1990s England cricket’s ridiculousness.
It will be interesting to see if the Ridiculous Ashes Rule that I have observed holds true for the other tests in this series, i.e., that the losing side in each real Ashes test match tends to win the Ridiculous Ashes equivalent. (I suppose it would be truly ridiculous otherwise.) So I am predicting a Ridiculous Ashes series win for England, even though they’re already one down.
I don’t use any of the podcast links provided (I’m not generally big on podcasts, truth be told) and so have nowhere to leave my honest five-star review except here.
*****
Well here’s good too. Thanks.
Can I just go back to the topic of Kyle Jamieson. He seems to be New Zealand’s wonder man and somehow every left handed batters worst nightmare. His stats for the 2020-2021 season are remarkable. With 3, 5-for’s in the current summer.
His stats are as follows; 2/42, 2/25, 2/43, 5/34, 3/35, 2/35, 5/69, 6/48 which are figures that only get better. He has taken 36 wickets from 6 Test matches with an average of 13.27 and at the strike rate of 33.3. I can’t find his stats but I think he has got more left handers out than right handers.
Moral of the story try not to be a left hander when facing Kyle Jamieson, actually just don’t face Jamieson.
I have subscribed, but in the interests of full disclosure, the current ‘only allowed outside once a day and maybe an extra time if you have to go to the supermarket or if your leg is falling off’ rules in England are cutting into my walking (and hence podcast-listening) time to the extent that I will probably be listening at 1.4x speed.
We’re not averse to going up an octave.
Having listened, I can confirm that the pitch does not change, just the speed. Listening at half speed makes you sound like you’ve just rolled out of a pub after about 8 ‘substantial meals’.
Can you make two scores, One which is the one that you are already covering, which Australia have taken the lead in and one made up of the ‘hindsight corner’ ridiculous moments. It would be interesting to see if that spells out a different story.
Ah jeez, it’s hard enough trying to keep track of the conventional score and the ridiculous one. We haven’t the capacity for this level of mental gymnastics.
I have subscribed through Apple and tried to leave an honest 5 star review although I cannot see the review yet and might have fallen foul of some unwritten rule of on-line reviews which tends to eliminate any review that actually says something.
Not for the public domain, but I fell asleep the first time around and listened again when i woke up. Might have something to do with the sleep deprivation that US politics has inflicted upon me of late. But it might be that Ridiculous Ashes could become my personal equivalent of The Goldberg Variations.
Glad to be of some sort of service. As a man with a baby and a toddler, we see sleep-enablement as a higher calling.
Gave it a listen and rated it on Apple. Good stuff!
Cheers Micko!