The BBC again finds itself mired in conflict after asking people to vote for its cricket podcasts instead of our one. We’re on the shortlist too, you know. How about a bit of balance and fairness?

It’s been a turbulent time for the Beeb. First the leader of the world’s largest democracy attacked it for a bunch of stuff it said. Then a month or so later it attacked Gary Lineker for something he said.

And now it’s shamelessly pushing its own podcasts for awards over The Ridiculous Ashes. What happened to that famed impartiality?

This is just naked self interest, pure and simple.

The Sports Podcast Awards’ Best Cricket Podcast category has 12 nominations. As well as the two BBC ones, The Ridiculous Ashes is up against the Telegraph, Wisden and Simon Hughes, as well as friends of the site, Adam and Geoff.

We don’t want to prematurely sink to “it’s an honour just to be shortlisted” but it’s decided by a public vote. We can see that the sickeningly biased TMS tweet has been viewed 100,000 times, so we’re not awash with confidence. Please go and vote for us anyway though so that we don’t come last.

The Ridiculous Ashes is also one of eight shortlisted in the Best Sports Comedy Podcast category. We have only one BBC rival in this category.

It’s great to be shortlisted. Double great, even. Voting closes in the middle of next month.

About The Ridiculous Ashes

Together with Dan Liebke, we revisit historic Ashes series and try and work out which team was the more ridiculous – England or Australia.

Each episode covers a single Test. We nominate three ridiculous moments from England; Dan nominates three ridiculous moments from Australia; and then we pick out our top three, allocate points, and whichever nation gets most points wins that ridiculous Test match.

We’ve done four series so far. Pat Cummins had a cameo in the most recent one.

• Series 1 (1997)
• Series 2 (2013/14)
• Series 3 (2009)
• Series 4 (2013)

We do a podcast with Dan Liebke in which we revisit the funnier moments of historic Ashes series. It’s called The Ridiculous Ashes and the latest series, focusing on England’s memorable 2013 win, is now underway. Have a listen! (Or don’t, if you’re busy. It’s not going to be significantly life-changing or anything.)

The 2013 Ashes is of course not to be confused with the 2013/14 series, which we’ve already done. This is the one in England that began with Stuart Broad not walking and Australia’s surprise spin pick launching a load of Agar bombs after coming in at number 11.

Those events are pretty central to episode one, which our Patreon backers may already have heard after we gave them early access to it a couple of months back. It’s got Pat Cummins, Australia Test captain, in it too, having his say on the ridiculousness of the match.

Pat Actual Cummins.

We’ll add embeds of all the episodes further down the page, as and when they go live.

You can also subscribe through whatever podcasting thing you use.

• Google Podcasts
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

Here are links to previous series of the Ridiculous Ashes.

• Series 1 (1997)
• Series 2 (2013/14)
• Series 3 (2009)

Episode 1

First up, it’s Trent Bridge for a showdown between two of the most ridiculous moments in Ashes history – Ashton Agar’s 98 and Stuart Broad not walking. A colossal match-up so absurd we need Pat Cummins to drop in and help us sort it out. Which he does.

Episode 2

Lord’s next for the birth of Root Maths, Graeme Swann instigating the ‘worst piece of cricket in Test history’ and decisions that suck ass #bullshit.

Episode 3

Alex and Dan zoom up to Old Trafford for the third Test of the 2013 Ridiculous Ashes, where they celebrate the return of David Warner, Alastair Cook’s easy listening captaincy, belated time Snicko and Stuart Broad walking.

Episode 4

Alex and Dan are off to Chester-le-Street for the fourth Test of the 2013 Ridiculous Ashes, which features discussions on the baggilessness of Australian helmets, Jonathan Trott’s sideways wicket celebration and the Summer of Bell.

Episode 5

The 2013 Ridiculous Ashes concludes with the final Test at The Oval, which gives Alex and Dan plenty of things to muse upon, including the one-Test wonderment of Simon Kerrigan and James Faulkner, the gruesome birth of Steve Smith as we now know him and Chekhov’s light meter.

Subscribe to the King Cricket email to get hectored again whenever future episodes appear.

There is a very easy way in which England could have collapsed even more comprehensively in the first Test. They could have picked their two all time greatest duck-makers, James Anderson and Stuart Broad.

It was a missed opportunity, but it’s not like the two men haven’t been involved in a win-the-toss-and-immediately-collapse Ashes Test before. In 2009, at Headingley, Andrew Strauss called correctly, opted to bat and then saw his side rolled for 102 inside 34 overs.

Strikingly, neither Anderson nor Broad made a duck on that occasion. They both made 3. Four other players failed to trouble the scorers however – Paul Collingwood, Graeme Swann, Steve Harmison and Graham Onions.

Ravi Bopara, batting in what feels like his final Test but which actually wasn’t, made 1.

In the second innings Broad was one half of one of the fastest hundred partnerships in Test history. It was a pretty classic Broad Test really and a great early showing from a man who would grow to become the greatest batsman in the world.

No prizes for guessing what the latest episode of the Ridiculous Ashes is about. (Come on. Even if the previous few paragraphs didn’t tip you off, we’ve been covering the 2009 Ashes and last week was the third Test.)

You can find an embed of the episode below (if you’re reading the website and not the email) and you can find the full series here.

Graham Manou finished his career with a first-class batting average of 25.49. He played one Test for Australia.

That Test was the third of the 2009 Ashes series, a heavily rain-affected draw that never really delivered tension at any point. Maybe there was a soupcon when Australia were 52-2 in their second innings and still 50 runs behind, but by God did that dissipate.

Manou batted twice. He made 8 and 13 not out and he also took three catches. His most memorable contribution to the game was probably his utterly perplexed reaction upon being clean bowled by James Anderson.

We’re not mocking here. He played one more Test than we ever did.

This Test – including Manou’s appearance in it – was in its own weird way highly ridiculous and that is what Dan Liebke and ourself talk about in the latest episode of our podcast. (We actually went to this match. We spent several hours at the ground and saw precisely zero cricket.)

There’s no need to sign up or subscribe or pay or download an app or anything. You can listen to the episode simply by clicking ‘play’ on the player thing embedded below. (Email readers: you’ll need to click through to the website to see this.)

You can also find Graham Manou’s Test nestled alongside its Ridiculous Ashes Series 3 brethren on this page.

We’re doing another series of The Ridiculous Ashes, the podcast we do with Dan Liebke in which we revisit the funnier moments of historic Ashes series and decide which side made the more significant comedy contribution. A few people have previously been put off by the fact that Series 1 (1997) and Series 2 (2013/14) both focused on England defeats. Hopefully some of those people will be willing to give the 2009 Ridiculous Ashes a go.

As you may or may not remember, the first Test of the series was pretty ridiculous. It was the one where James Anderson and Monty Panesar batted out a draw.

We’ll add embeds of all the episodes in Series 3 further down the page, as and when they go live.

You can also subscribe through whatever podcasting thing you use.

• Google Podcasts
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Stitcher

Here are links to all the series.

• Series 1 (1997)
• Series 2 (2013/14)
• Series 3 (2009)

Episode 1

First up, we’re off to Cardiff where Dan and Alex discuss era-defining Haustralians, throatward defensives and the match-saving heroics of Monty Panesar, James Anderson and Bilal Shafayat.

Episode 2

Off to Lord’s for the second Test of the 2009 Ridiculous Ashes. Dan and Alex discuss disproportionate emotion, Keystone Cops tributes and Mitchell Johnson bowling to the left and bowling to the right.

Episode 3

Over to Edgbaston for the third Test of the 2009 Ridiculous Ashes. That’s where Dan and Alex examine Graham Onions, crowd participation and interminable centuries.

Episode 4

The fourth Test of the 2009 Ridiculous Ashes sees Dan and Alex head to Headingley. While there, they analyse winning the toss and collapsing, pantomime villainy, and the power of a good old-fashioned ‘sod it’ partnership.

Episode 5

Over to The Oval for the fifth and final Test of the 2009 Ridiculous Ashes. With the series locked 1-1, we are introduced to Jimmy Anderson’s first Test duck, Jonathan Trott’s first Test century and the enigmatic figure known only as Simon Katiche.

We’ve done a special Ridiculous Ashes podcast about Michael Clarke stemming from our coverage of the 2013/14 series. We got writer, broadcaster and podcaster Adam Collins on to help us because he knows more about Michael Clarke than we do.

We never really ‘got’ Michael Clarke. The thing that baffled us most was that there seemed to be fairly widespread distaste for him in Australia that only barely receded when he was relentlessly knocking out double hundreds to prop up an otherwise fairly crap team.

It’s almost forgotten now, but he was sufficiently good in 2012 that we were forced to name him Lord Megachief of Gold. If you read that piece, you can perhaps detect that we weren’t delighted about this. But that’s how good he was. He forced our hand. And yet no-one ever really talks about that period any more.

Clarke is not a forgotten man; but he is not a particularly celebrated man. And that’s weird.

He also had this whole peculiar performative zaniness that he sometimes wheeled out and which didn’t seem to fit the rest of his character at all. What was that about?

That’s pretty much what the podcast is about. Trying to work Michael Clarke out. Adam – who you’ll surely have come across at The Final Word, Sky Sports, the BBC, the Guardian, or any number of other places – is there to help us out with that.

You can find the episode below.

You can also subscribe to the Ridiculous Ashes through whatever podcasting thing you use.

• Google Podcasts
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Stitcher

We’ve done series two of The Ridiculous Ashes Podcast with Dan Liebke. It’s about the 2013/14 Ashes and we’ll add the episodes below as they go out each week.

If you don’t already know, the Ridiculous Ashes is an alternative trophy awarded to the side that produced the most hilarious and absurd cricket across an Ashes series. We first did it as a written thing over at Cricket 365 for the 2019 series and then we went back and covered the 1997 Ridiculous Ashes as a podcast.

The 2013/14 Ashes was truly ridiculous. We’d argue that even its mere existence was ridiculous, as it arrived mere weeks after the 2013 Ashes. (We cover that a fair bit in episode one.) As the series wears on, you’ll hear about freakish sixes, inexplicable leaves and slapstick run-outs with plenty of contributions from those twin titans of ridiculous cricket, Stuart Broad and Shane Watson. We even throw in the odd statistical anomaly. (Well, Dan does.)

You’ll find embeds of the episodes in Series 2 further down the page.

You can also subscribe through whatever podcasting thing you use.

• Google Podcasts
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Stitcher

Here are links to all the series.

• Series 1 (1997)
• Series 2 (2013/14)
• Series 3 (2009)

Episode 1

The Ridiculous Ashes podcast returns to cover the existentially ridiculous 2013/14 Ashes. First up, it’s the Gabba Test, in which Dan and Alex discuss 27-year-old English medium pacers, needless arm-breaking threats, the absent parts of Michael Slater’s brain and much more.

Episode 2

Off to Adelaide we head for the second Test of the 2013/14 Ridiculous Ashes. This episode features a sun-smart Stuart Broad adjusting sightscreens, Ben Stokes previewing some of his future greatest hits, Alex revealing his greatest fear and much, much more. Plus, we reveal the true function of Mitchell Johnson’s moustache!

Episode 3

Over to Perth for the third Test of the 2013/14 Ridiculous Ashes. Alex and Dan’s coverage of this Test is mostly limited to an absurdity-rich period of about twenty minutes and includes discussion on conceding 28 runs in an over, meta-funk, the cruelty of Ryan Harris and much more.

Episode 4

Boxing Day at the MCG welcomes the fourth Ridiculous Ashes Test of 2013/14, in which Alex and Dan discuss moon-walking exploits, The Greg Ritchie Threshold, the audible despair of Michael Vaughan and much more.

Episode 5

It’s the fifth and final Test of the 2013/14 Ridiculous Ashes. This time around Alex and Dan are talking about a myriad of nonsense, including the very ridiculous sacking of Kevin Pietersen, the Bradman of win-loss ratios and… Glenn Maxwell?

Last month we asked which series we should cover next on our Ridiculous Ashes podcast. The results are in. (The results were in a month ago.) We’re going to be doing the 2013/14 series.

We nominated 2009 and 2013 as the other possibilities and for a long time the three were running neck and neck and neck. But in the end, the results were clear, 2013/14 got 36.5% of the vote, ahead of 2013 with 31.9%.

There will be England fans who are less than happy with this outcome, but the whole point of the Ridiculous Ashes is that it is about taking joy in those aspects of cricket that are less immediately obvious than the result. It’s fun to go back and revisit matches with a fresh eye and without the bowel-shredding anxiety about how your team will perform.

It’ll be great. Honest.

Series two of the Ridiculous Ashes will go out ‘at some point’. (You can quote us on that.)

If you want to subscribe via your preferred podcast app, you can do so here.

And if you’ve no idea what we’re talking about, you can find series 1 – which covered the 1997 Ashes – here.

As we’re sure you’re aware, the Ridiculous Ashes – the parallel England v Australia competition we first ran over at Cricket 365 for the 2019 series – is now a podcast. Series 1 was about the 1997 Ashes and we thought you’d like a say on which series we cover next.

For those that don’t know, the Ridiculous Ashes is an alternative trophy that is awarded to the side that produces the most hilarious and absurd cricket across a given Ashes series.

We do it with Aussie writer, Dan Liebke. He nominates Aussie ridiculousness and we pick out English ridiculousness and then we decide which team came out on top. We do an episode for each Test and then the series as a whole is decided by the Test results, in much the same way as a normal Ashes.

It was a bit of a voyage into the unknown doing the first episode, but we’ve settled in a bit now.

We thought we’d do a more recent series next and we’ve nominated three for a Twitter poll.

If you want to vote and can’t, feel free to leave a comment below and we’ll factor your view in if the results are close.

We wouldn’t worry about it too much though. We’re hoping to get to all of these series in time.

Hopefully you’re aware that we (Alex Bowden and Dan Liebke) are doing The Ridiculous Ashes Podcast. Series 1 is about the 1997 series and you can find all six episodes below.

The Ridiculous Ashes is an alternative trophy that is awarded to the side that produces the most hilarious and absurd cricket across an Ashes series. We first did it as a written thing over at Cricket 365 for the 2019 series.

You’ll find embeds of the episodes in Series 1 further down this page.

You can also subscribe through whatever podcasting thing you use.

• Google Podcasts
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Stitcher

We’ve done a couple more series since too.

• Series 2 (2013/14)
• Series 3 (2009)

1st Test

In this premiere episode of The Ridiculous Ashes Podcast, Dan and Alex revisit the 1st Test of the 1997 Ashes. Surprise hundreds, Nasser Hussain having a go at himself, Jason Gillespie batting with a runner – it’s all in there.

2nd Test

Dan and Alex return to Lord’s for the 2nd Test of the 1997 Ridiculous Ashes. In between all the rain, they discuss the fair-mindedness of Ian Healy, a heroic lack of Alec Stewart action, some Waugh-Warne Hindsight Corner and much more.

3rd Test

Dan and Alex brave the hot Manchester sun to bring you ridiculousness from the 3rd Test of the 1997 Ashes. This episode features the art of the collapse, pointlessness from John Crawley, the filthiness of Michael Bevan’s bowling and plenty more.

4th Test

It’s the 4th Test of the 1997 Ridiculous Ashes and Dan and Alex are here to lay some truth upon you about pantomime cow hostility, Australian street hustles and awkward discussions with one Test wonders. Plus: how Curtly Ambrose could have been one of Test cricket’s greatest batters.

5th Test

Dan and Alex revisit the 5th Test of the 1997 Ashes to bring you tales of madcap team selection, pitch doctoring and one very elegant forward defensive. Plus: Shane Warne’s definitive off-field moment.

6th Test

The sixth and final Test of the 1997 Ridiculous Ashes, in which Alex and Dan compare England favourably to peak Simpsons, discuss whether replicants should be allowed to play Test cricket and heroically resist the urge to make jokes about Shane Warne’s overnight groin injury.

Series 2 of the Ridiculous Ashes covers the 2013/14 series. You can find that here.