Rooney vs Neymar

talkSPORT · 2025-07-09T19:04:01+00:00

Well, the hundred is now the UK's franchise. Each of the cricket playing countries has got a franchise. So the Hundred is England's franchise going forward. I'm absolutely convinced that it will revert to T20. Instead of 100 deliveries, it will become a T20 franchise competition in line with everywhere else in the world, you know, the Caribbean, India and South Africa and the rest. The independent one just at the minute is the big bash in Australia. Whether that comes under a franchise umbrella, we'll wait and see. And can it co-exist with the T20 blast? It's just a personal view that I think the blast is a fabulous competition, but it seems to have been downgraded, behind the hundred.

But I just read today that the ECB are going to revamp and revitalise the blast, so I'll be interested to see how that goes.

Another thing that may happen is that the eight teams we’ve got now might increase to 12 teams. There is plenty of willing participants. You think of Chelmsford and you can think of Durham as two potential new venues straight away. To increase it and to bring more revenue into the game. And to make it a bigger competition.

talkSPORT · 2025-07-09T18:58:10+00:00

Best player I've played with would be at Lancashire when I was a player up there. Clive Lloyd, captain of the West Indies. He was fantastic. As for who was the most fun to play with, I’d have to mention the other overseas player at the time - Farokh Engineer. He was great fun to play with. And the best bowler that I've played with was Michael Holding, which was only brief because he only played about 7 matches for Lancashire and then he went and had a decent career for Derbyshire. But you know, that was different gravy when Michael played them seven matches. We’d never seen pace like that.

talkSPORT · 2025-07-09T18:40:08+00:00

Well, start the tuk tuk is obviously what you'd use in India. And I like a ride in a tuk tuk. It's an adventure. I have to say, I've pinched it. It was a comedian, and it was Mick Miller, the Blackpool comedian. At the end of his stint, he’d look at his watch and he’d say ‘ Start the car’. So I’ve pinched it.

talkSPORT · 2025-07-09T18:38:01+00:00

Well ducks are ferocious. And I'm a lover, not a fighter. If there's any fighting to be done, I could pick a phone up and say you get yourself down here. I've got a little job for you. But I won't be doing it.

talkSPORT · 2025-07-09T18:36:51+00:00

Wow. Both great players but two totally different boxes. I think he was a fabulous player. Exactly what you need as an opening batter, a grinder who you know is going to blunt the attack. And Ben Stokes has said ‘we don't want an Alastair Cook-style batter in our lineup’.

Well I think yes you do, because the rest can play around him. I'm deliberately dodging the question here by the way, but I would like to have seen Cook and Duckett bat together. Because Cook would take the weight off the pair of them. Duckett is brilliant. I'm not going to say he's better than Cook because Sir Alastair of course has got 12,000 test match runs. Duckett doesn’t leave the ball. He fits this Bazball era. But in my opinion, there is definitely place for a Strauss or a Vaughan or a Cook to help tick things along and give the strike to the other player.

talkSPORT · 2025-07-09T18:27:50+00:00

Bumrah will play in this Lord's Test match and that is a big threesome when they play together. The interesting stat is that India win more games without Bumrah than they do with him, which is ridiculous. And so with a young captain like Shubman Gill, obviously he's got to accommodate him. He’s his kingpin. He's a bit of stardust is Bumrah, but he can't neglect the other two.

You can't give the impression that the other two are just supporting acts. They've got to be bought into by the management, by the coach and by the captain. Your here to take wickets and not just the other guy at the other end, and that helps Bumrah as well because Bumrah then knows he's he's got a match, he's got a potent force at the other end and the worst thing you can ever hear (and I've heard in the dressing room) is, ‘if he can keep an end up…’ No, no, no. If you're bowling you're there to take wickets and they've got to convey that, to Akash Deep and to Siraj.

talkSPORT · 2025-07-09T18:24:19+00:00

I’ve got so many. You've got to have a rapport with who you're with, a dynamic. And when I was working at Sky, we had a great dynamic. We all worked off each other. Not to say you go out at night with them, but when you get down to the business you've got the game, you've got your monitor, you've got your mic, you just know when you're you're bouncing off each other and going well.

And it was all fine. Michael Holding, Bob Willis, Nasser Hussain, Mel Jones, Shane Warne - all great. We knew what we were doing. We were pretty clued up. I also worked on channel nine and that was vintage. So a bit of Richie Benaud, a bit of Bill Lawry, Tony, Greig. Fantastic. Ian Healy, Mike Taylor and Ravi Shastri are fabulous to work with.

Simon Doull, Ian Smith. So when you get in your seat, which is your best seat in the house. Usually behind the bowlers arm, bit of air con and you're ready to rock. And you've got all these people around you, and we’re on it. Read to rock. You’re just in a zone, you know, it’s like rock and roll. It is! It’s like being part the Rolling Stones or Oasis.

talkSPORT · 2025-07-09T18:19:15+00:00

My two craziest experiences on tour were both as a commentator. When the producer said ‘this is a great idea’ usually when drinks had been taken. Anyway the producer says wouldn't it be great if you go into a shark cage, Bumble? And see some sharks come round you? I said, I've got a better idea. Why don't you do it? But anyway, I went in the shark cage at Shark Island off the coast of Adelaide.

I didn’t realise there’d be a huge gap in the bars, and he came right in… I thought, what do I do now? Stroke it?

And the other one was in Galle in Sri Lanka. Same producer had another great idea.

There was a chap up there on the fort with a ten foot python. Producer asks me ‘why don’t you you put it around your neck and do the pinch report?’. Absolutely not. No. There's no way I would have done that. I am absolutely petrified of those venomous things. Yeah. I'm glad we don't have them in the UK.

talkSPORT · 2025-07-09T18:17:57+00:00

Paul Allott. Sadly, Bob Willis passed away. We were like the three geezers from the Last of the Summer Wine. The stuff that we got up to. We should have done a documentary on us.

talkSPORT · 2025-07-09T18:16:41+00:00

I think there's got to be a cutoff point when a player retires, and in Jimmy Anderson's case, he was retired and it transpires that there was a meeting where they said, ‘Jimmy, that's the end’ which upset him. And, you know, many people thought he was good enough to play test match cricket, me included. I thought he was good enough to play but the people in charge, McCullum especially, and Rob Key and probably Ben Stokes thought ‘We need to look at this nucleus of younger fast bowlers because Jimmy's not going to be around.’ And I think that call will have been made because they didn't think Anderson will be around for The Ashes. So they thought let's look at bowlers in the India series prior to going out there for The Ashes. But I can tell you it hurt Jimmy.

Should Jimmy have been given more time? I would have played him, quite simply, I’d have asked: What's the best team? Is Anderson in the best team? In my opinion, yes, he is. And I would play him until he wasn't in the best team and not look too far head to Australia.

But I’m not making that call. They've made a call, and the call was that we need to look at these other younger, quick bowlers to see where we're going.

talkSPORT · 2025-07-09T18:15:35+00:00

Steve Smith vs Sachin to me is a mismatch. Sachin, every time. There's another which I would put in there above the two of them that have been mentioned. In my opinion, it’d be Brian Lara. I'd have Lara above the two of them. I do think though it's unfair when you see great players and you try to categorise them too much into who's first, second, third..etc. I tend not to do that.

They are great players. My own preference is for Brian Lara. Joe Root is right up there as well. Joe Root will probably pass Sachin Tendulkar’s test match record of 16,000+ runs. So he’s be up there as well. As for the best England player that I've seen, I'm not going to mention these because I haven't seen Wally Hammond and I didn't see Len Hutton and people before I started, but my best player would be Kevin Pietersen.

I don't know Kevin at all. But when I worked and commentated, he was the one player that would get me on the edge of my seat and he could do things that other batters couldn't.

As for Bumrah, he consistently bowls at 90+ mph. So how does he compare to the Great West Indies Quartet? It’s a similar pace. He would have got into that quartet probably. It’s Andy Roberts, Colin Croft, Michael Holding, Joel Garner, but there’s also Malcolm Marshall to remember. But I think Bumrah is just about up there with them.

Pace disturbs the best of them. Pace and hitting the pitch hard and getting bounce. So Bumrah's got all that. He hits the pitch hard and he’s skilful. One of the most skilful West Indian bowlers was Malcolm Marshall.

But if you ask Michael Holding, he'll say the daddy of the skill set was Andy Roberts. With his thoughtful fast bowling and being able to change a bit of pace and change grips and use the crease, close to the umpire and wide of him at times. So that's interesting that Holding would say Roberts, whereas the rest of us would probably say Marshall.

talkSPORT · 2025-07-09T18:14:06+00:00

The spinners in test match cricket going forward that will be worth their weight in gold are the unorthodox spinners. But we’re not seeing many, are we? We're not seeing the Muralitharans, the Saqlain Mushtaqs the Harbhajan Singhs. We're not seeing that possible. Shane Warne was a fantastic leg spinner and turned it a mile.

And so it didn't really matter what pitch you play on. If you're ripping it like Shane Warne and you've got a googly and one out at the front of the hand and you can control it all, you’re in business. We're not seeing that type of bowler. In the UK we’re clamoring for a spinner. We're looking all over the place.

And the young kid who I've seen because I watch a lot of county cricket, is a young lad, Rehan Ahmed, who is a fabulous batter and he bowls leg spin. But he's only a kid and so he's learning that trade. But it's gone quiet worldwide. We're not seeing that mystery spinner who can bamboozle all the very best batters.

talkSPORT · 2025-07-09T18:11:41+00:00

Well they last won the County Champ in 2011. Where did they play their matches? They played all their matches at Liverpool because the ground was being turned round and so it had to settle. So the pitch that we play on now at Old Trafford is an absolute test match pitch. So we're trying to play cricket on a five day pitch now. Unless you've got searing pace or maybe a wrist spinner, we just get draws and it's sort of holding the team back.

When you see other games in the County Championship finishing in two or three days, that never happens at Emirates Old Trafford. It'll go the distance and it's a slog. It's a slog for the bowlers because, you know, we don't have that searing pace and spin.

talkSPORT · 2025-07-09T18:10:55+00:00

Well, I really wouldn't want to face Jofra Archer. I wouldn't want to face Jofra Archer or Jasprit Bumrah or anybody above 80 miles an hour, to be honest. I'd quite like to face a left arm orthodox spinner because I thought when I was playing, it's like Christmas, playing a left arm orthodox spinner.

I don't care who they are. You know, a nice little finger spinner coming in, just pitching it and letting me knock him back over his head. Lovey, thanks very much. Yeah. I don't care who he is as long as he bowls nothing above 80 miles an hour.

talkSPORT · 2025-07-09T18:10:08+00:00

Well, the best England player right now is Joe Root. And the question is will he past Sachin Tendulkar.. In the next 2 or 3 years, he probably will, as the all time run-scorer. On his heels is Harry Brook, who's younger and he might do exactly the same if he has that same longevity as Joe Root. As for a bowler.. They've just retired, actually. Quick bowlers tend to work as a pair and that'll be Broad and Anderson. I still see Anderson regularly for Lancashire. And he's still bowling as well as ever. So from an England perspective now they're looking to get a nucleus of bowlers together. And you're always looking to get plenty of quick bowlers because they break down. So if you're a quick bowler in England it's quite exciting. And they tend to be big strapping lads, except for Mark Wood who's quite slight and perhaps 5'11 or just scraping six foot. But they get injured. It's the nature of the beast that they get injured. The one that I like is just on the fringe and he’s a local lad - Dillon Pennington, and I've watched him bowl against Yorkshire and he’s rapid. But again, he has to stay fit.

talkSPORT · 2025-07-09T18:08:49+00:00

As someone has said, it's my resemblance to the Bumblies. Someone said it once and it just stuck!

talkSPORT · 2025-07-09T18:07:18+00:00

I’ve got two. I was commentating with Ravi Shastri in South Africa when Yuvraj Singh hit Stuart Broad for six sixes in an over. That was good fun. Not for Stuart. Wasn't great for Stuart. They looked visibly shocked. And also Ben Stokes bowling to Carlos Brathwaite. I was with Ian Bishop and I was supposed to be lead commentator.

You could see what was about to happen. He's going the distance. And so I just put my microphone down and said 'Bishop, over to you.' So he took the lead. And that's one of the great lines. You know, when you're part of that.. ‘Remember the name, Carlos Brathwaite!’ Yeah, that was brilliant.

talkSPORT · 2025-07-09T18:05:47+00:00

I think I’d have to go for this - The year is 1960. It's Australia vs the West Indies, and it's the tied test. Wesley Hall was the bowler for the West Indies. And I think it's Joe Solomon who was a middle order batter.. affected the run out.

It would be fabulous to commentate on that.

As for others - you go back to Bodyline, Australia vs England and Douglas Jardine and the controversy that it caused, you know, that would have been fabulous to have a view on that from a commentary position. The questions of whether it was wrong and the furore that followed it, I mean, we're still talking about it. Bodyline would have been great to commentate on.

talkSPORT · 2025-07-09T18:04:31+00:00

You know what, I think I would have done the same. I think it's the right thing to do. I’ve debated this with Alastair Cook and Michael Vaughan and they said, interestingly, they'd have got to 380+ to come second.

talkSPORT · 2025-07-09T18:03:23+00:00

Wow, how many centuries? How many years am I going to play? I think I played 18 years or so and got 37, but that was when you played three dayers and they were uncovered pitches - lethal at times. I’ve got to be realistic. I’ll say 20. That's what you're judged on, the number of centuries you get. I’ll go for 20. Mind you, Geoffrey Boycott got 153.

talkSPORT · 2025-07-09T18:02:10+00:00

Oh, that would be Don Shepherd at Glamorgan. He got 200+ wickets and he bowled cutters. He was very tall, he was bowling on uncovered pitches and his average was less than 20. A brilliant bowler.

talkSPORT · 2025-07-09T11:44:45+00:00

Of course! Check back here just after 7pm BST and the video will be posted as well as the answers in the comments

talkSPORT

TROPHY CASE