
Andy Zaltzman was born in obscurity in 1974. He has been a sporadically-acclaimed stand-up comedian since 1999, and has appeared regularly on BBC Radio 4. He is currently one half of TimesOnline’s hit satirical podcast The Bugle, alongside John Oliver (The Daily Show with John Stewart). He also writes for The Times newspaper, and is the author of Does Anything Eat Bankers? (And 53 Other Indispensable Questions For The Credit Crunched).
Zaltzman’s love of cricket outshone his aptitude for the game by a humiliating margin. He once scored 6 in 75 minutes in an Under-15 match, and failed to hit a six between the ages of 9 and 23. He would have been ideally suited to Tests, had not a congenital defect left him unable to play the game to anything above genuine village standard. Aged 21, when fielding at deep midwicket, he dropped the same batsman three times in fifteen minutes, and has not been selected by England before or since
Zaltzman’s World Cup blog is here
« Players with pairs lasting two or three balls XI | | Multistat: 4 »
December 2, 2011
Posted by Andy Zaltzman on 12/02/2011
Australia have fluffed their chance at immortality
Also: why Test cricket is like The Wire. And is Phillip Hughes really made out of a chunk of Ayers Rock? Andy Zaltzman discusses these and other thrilling topics (among them: why he is an eternal Chemplast and Napoleon Einstein fan) with Daniel Norcross of Test Match Sofa
Download the podcast here (mp3, 25MB, right-click to save).
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Posted by: Dagz on 12/02/2011
Yes! Cannot wait to jump on the bus and give this a listen after work. Welcome back Andy! I'm going to go and give my face a scrub so that it's nice & clean for when you're ready to hit me with another filthy statistic~
Posted by: Niall on 12/02/2011
I should'nt like a furiously baldy man with really no cricket credentials, but i do.
Posted by: Bored Mathematician on 12/02/2011
A series is the limit of a sequence of partial terms. In fact, if a sequence consists of just one term, its associated series will consist of a single term. So, my point being that the Two match test "series" are still series regardless of what any former cricketer might think about them
Posted by: Farhan on 12/03/2011
Andy,
I anxiously wait for your vivid commentary on cricketing issues. I would appreciate if you get somebody to include a transcript so I can read it at work or on my phone while travelling. Here in Canada, the mobile data costs are astronomical due to tri-monopoly of phone carriers.
A fan,
Farhan
Posted by: Umair Hoodbhoy on 12/03/2011
Andy, I can't believe you went 35 minutes with:
* the only mention of the words 'Sri Lanka' being when talking about a weak English side in the 1980's
AND
* no mention of the word Pakistan, with the only reference to a Pakistani player being a dishonored Salman Butt.
Was that contest really that boring? 5 ODIs, 3 Tests. How about some stats about the exciting scoring rate of Pakistan in Test matches? Or about Hafeez owning left-handed openers (I was sure he and Darryl Tuffey had something in common)? Or about the last time Sri Lanka won a Test without Murali? Or some unheard stat about how cool Sangakkara is?
Come on!
Posted by: david on 12/06/2011
Thanks for the fun, Andy, you're a gem.
One thing though, on which I would love to hear your opinion: Why is it that Ricky Ponting is so mercilessly dissed? Is it simply that one mocks what one fears? In that case why is not the same treatment dished out to Tendulkar? Ponting is the greatest cricketer since Bradman, bar none, and I do not understand why the ritual deriding of him does not at least come hand-in-hand with any but the most grudging admiration.
Remember, ultimately England never overtook Australia at the top of the Test game: We got a bit better, yes, but basically had to wait for a great team to get old.
Does that knowledge still rankle?
Posted by: Craig b Kirsten 0 on 12/06/2011
Fat batsmen? No-one is better (or fatter) than Inzamam-ul-Haq
Posted by: IPLisdull on 12/07/2011
Darren Lehman and Inzamam-ul-Haq are both better batsmen, and better fatty boomsticks than Jessy Ryder, however, i know potential is a dirty word, but there is a lot of potential in the big Kiwi!
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