YouSaid · the spoken record

Tim Wigmore

lines on the record: 43
first: 2025-11-26
most recent: 2025-11-26
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Yeah, so I mean, England last three seas in Australia been 13 nil to Australia. So a huge chasm there. England, a better team. Now Australia, probably a slightly worse team. But those things can be true and it's still be very difficult for England to win. So my picture would still be three ones to Australia with it raining as it always does in Sydney.”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's image suggests. I think that's one of the kind of takeaways, actually, and kind of the comforting one. So I've probably ended up the project a little more optimistic about the future of Teshwig than when I started.”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think there's this great idea of Tess as such a conservative game. And obviously you see that you go to Norwoods each year and you see members trying to get in there baking an egg ties and they're trying to get in the same seats every year and everyone's in white. Of course, it feels like this thing doesn't change. But actually this is, you know, TessRick has evolved much more than people realize you sort of take a step back. So you've gone from two nations to 12. And also the sheer fatalism, right? People saw about the golden age in the bellipoc just before World War I, but even then people are terrified about attendances and interests and almost like attention spans, right? Things we talk about now. So these fears have always been there. And yet Tess Cricket has actually evolved a little bit more than it's...”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's a kind of a comforting thing, and then you will, when the bits are really exciting, you then fully commit. But I think it's nice. And they might have a sly tab open and they can see the score ticking over. Well, slowly, although quickly, and if it's England in their current inception of playing. And it's kind of a comforting idea. And this is why, yeah, the kind of fandom of Tessrika is a very, very special, very distinct to other games because, as you said, England will play say 15 matches a year. And if each game is five dick, it will say it goes to four days even. That's still 60 days a year of 60 days a year, six, six, seven hours a day. That's like 400 hours. You're not going to be, yeah, no one's able to commit to that.”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Together, also sort of T20 needs to be shortened something else. It's kind of reson d'etre. So test and T20 can kind of help each other. And I think there is a sense that most of the best players on one actually saw the best in another. And I think there is a sense that I think, yeah, more money from T20 should be used to subsidize. The test game, yeah, that is something that Misro should think about more. But I also think, yeah, so I suppose between each ball, you get a gap of 20 or 30 seconds, which does allow for these little thoughts and stuff. But I think a lot of people enjoy, often enjoy test matches as a kind of background noise for a large chunk of them.”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think there's a couple of things going on. I think partly because the nature of test cricket, a lot of it happens when people are actually at work, which is partly kind of economic problem where lots of people are actually big fans of Test cricket and probably don't contribute that much financially to its well-being, which is why I always say that actually that just like if you go to commercial theater, if a few quid of your ticket is going to subsidize Shakespeare, if you don't go to Shakespeare, you're probably actually quite happy with that as a sort of tacit arrangement. I think with cricket, the same applies as well. If you go to a TT20 match and you think a few could have of your ticket is actually going to test cricket and to maintain that, you're quite happy with that as well. And that's why actually, you know, Cricket having three formats is because it has 50 over game, the kind of awkward middle sibling as well. It's often seen as a negative. I think it can be a strength and it should be seen as a strength, but you need all three to kind of to work towards.”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sense of records, and someone is about to get massangries and someone else. So there's this sense also of current figure always being compared to the past. So there's this kind of this common thread through it as well, which actually the players have a sense of awareness of as well. So you have all these different elements. And the tribe element is, yes, it's there and it's certainly there in the ashes. But I think it's a smaller part of test rendom than fandom in most other sports.”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that's part of it, this fear, but I think it's also just a sense that if you like Tess Cricket, the tribalism is quite a limited part of that appeal, I think compared to other sports just because it's to commit to a game that can be 30 hours long, you're not going to be committing to it just because of that kind of that thrill of winning there's so many different layers. I think also the different layers of Tesque are interesting. So you can enjoy on a kind of aesthetic level in terms of just that, you know, the purity of the geometry almost of someone playing a nice drive or a great bowling action, there's the kind of romantic element of underdog victories and so on. There's a numerical element as well, which you get, you know, a bit like you get in baseball, but you get, you can enjoy through the prism of stats. And every, because I mean, every ball has having a little impact on someone's stats somewhere. And in a way, there's not true in play football or something on the screen.”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but even for fans who are going, they want to go and see a contest and you often get an amazing applause from home fans and away player does in a way you don't really get in other sports. So there is this sense of this fraternity of test cricket almost, which is why almost you need to give the fans more credit. I don't think the fans want to watch. It's not fun to go to a game and go, oh, we're going to beat these guys because they're three best players are playing in a league instead of them not playing for them. There's no real satisfaction in that.”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think there's also something unique in terms of the fandom of test cricket where I think more people who watch Tess Cricket secretly are not so secretly, they're quite like the oppositions to win, or at least to do very well than in other sports.”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because in the amount they can earn and so on. So this all needs to be addressed. And actually, yeah, Tessriket should learn from American sports, which is another thing to be saying, but American sports have always recognized the boards of competitive balance. And that basic sense of jeopardy and excitement about what you're watching because it's not a foregone conclusion. I suppose also with the fact it's such a the kind of, yeah, we talked about the long nature of it and stuff that actually means if it's one-sided is really tedious for a long, long time. It's not fun seeing a team get 600 for four and a ball opposition out for 200. That's just not actually fun for anybody.”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A structure that encourages all the best players to play in it. And actually, it shouldn't be that difficult. You need two or three months a year. You just have test matches. You have a fund where you guarantee players kind of the minimum wage to play in these games and you say everyone plays eight games a year say when they're at full strength for the league and then other countries can play extra games outside this structure and get each other to earn more money. But there's this kind of cool framework in place. It shouldn't be that hard to devise, but there's been a complete kind of lack of will from the bigger countries in devising this, which means you threaten to get the hollowing out where the kind of odd paradox where the weakened, the teams who are weaker anyway are more likely to be weakened further by having players who are unavailable. So the strongest teams in England, you're never going to have players who are unavailable because their players will always be able to play and want to.”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, because they don't have people to play against who they can make money off this year basically. And they're playing some shorter format stuff instead. And it's a real real mess. And these sorts of...”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And sort of, if a game doesn't involve Australia, England, or India, most test matches lose half a million US dollars, if not more. So you have this incredible thing where most matches are losing money, which is just like, yeah, really an extraordinary fat. And revenue is not really being shared around in a meaningful way. I mean, yes, there is some, but not in a way to actually allow countries to play enough. Now you have a world test championship, which is a really good innovation launch in 2019. So for the first time, you have like a funnel every two years, like a World Cup kind of, but which that's an improvement, but it's a complete mess how you get there. So some countries like England might play twice as much as others in the league stages. And the point system is a complete mess, like unfathomable, even to me to work in this thing. It's just, it's so confusing. And then you have South Africa actually won it this year, but then.”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so the problem that Tesserick faces is it's never really the easiest comparison to make would actually be American sports. So at the NFL has its motto of any given Sunday, which is basically that anyone can meet anyone on any given day. And the idea of competitive balance is kind of wired, wired into that competition. And actually all American sports. Tess cricket has not, through things like revenue sharing, equal fixture lists and all these things. Tess Rickett has never taken that approach at all. It's always really been organized on an ad hoc, quite acquaint basis where Ing or Pedi Ash is over five matches, but they'll only play New Zealand over two matches or whatever. It doesn't really make much sense, any richer situation where the biggest countries just want to play against each other really as much as possible because that's where they earn as much money as possible. And you don't have any symmetry in fixtures or in what people are paid and so on.”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This now a few years ago, you saw this with Joffre Archer. He hits Steve Smith at Lord. Yeah, I think people do, yeah, I think the image of cricket test cricket sometimes people forget there's this gladiatorial aspect to it with the fastwellers and the batsman. And that is quite different to the stereotypes of cricket, but it's often produced some absolutely unmissable action. And the Etos Cricket has this odd balancing act where no one wants it to be dangerous, but there is this kind of uncomfortable truth that a bit of danger can often make some of the most exciting viewing. And this is the kind of true people don't really like to acknowledge necessarily.”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of walk a bit taller and just actually help people in their lives, and actually, yeah, often in pretty tough lives, in not being treated well after moving across the world. But this sort of sporting team doing so well was a real source of joy. So that was fascinating interview, plus also from a more crickety point of view, the kind of just the kind of thrill of bubbling fast being able to bowl 90 miles an hour. And what that feels like and actually the knowledge that you can inflict this great, I mean, great physical peril on people you're bowling to it's quite uncomfortable, but often the best and most compelling test cricket that has been this sense of kind of physical threat, this fear, because until the late 70s, people didn't wear helmets even. So you'd have guy boy nine miles out and you have to straight out the way. It's really, it's terrifying, but it's compelling to watch.”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Michael Holding was a fantastic person to interview. So Holding was one of the kind of great West Indies players in the 70s and 80s from great fossil from Jamaica and also very acutely aware of the team's wider importance. So when it was Indies had this kind of all conquering team in the 1980s, it was very important. It had a deep, important importance for back empowerment. And he said actually especially oddly when they were in England, this was particularly the case because they would have often often friends who had moved to England Windrush in 1948 and after and experienced really bad racism there. And so when he would go to England and crush England, it had this deep kind of resonance really. And that was very moving to hear about that and the sense that actually the deeds of his cricket. Team were helping people to”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Deeply sinister political edge to it. CLR James, who Historically, the most obvious sign of that. And it's also this odd continued discrepancy in cricket where you tend to have the captains are batsmen. And yes, it's true that bowling is more tiring and so on, but it almost goes back to historically being a batsman, kind of less hard work. And historically, you'd get more privileged people would want to be batsman and get other people to be bowlers. So you see this in England where you get traditionally the batsman and often the captains are kind of from the south and so on. You get in West Indies you have historically when you had this the white campsy policy you'd normally have the captains the captains would the white captains would be batsman as well and so yeah you do get strands of society where you do play out and test cricket in very odd odd ways but undeniable ways”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, you only have a Western who's in cricket and you have a university of Westernies, and that's it. So it is this sort of artificial construct in many ways. But the people who run West Indies cricket, they maintain this white capancy policy until 1960. And again, they're picking people that, you know, I've shown the book that they are picking, the White House on average are a lot worse than the non-white players, but they want to pick at least sort of four white players in the team because they want to maintain this control, basically, and they hate the idea of basically a team with a black captain going on to beat England and so on. So when they do beat England in 1950, they still have a white captain. And this is seen as it's almost used by the, I guess the old plantation class as a sign that maybe West Indies, they're not ready for independence as nations because they still want the white people to be in control. So it really has this.”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hurt themselves because they pick again and again people who aren't even worth their place in the team to be captain and say Australia do not and that gives Australia this disadvantage you know it's said that England picked the captain first and then the rest of the team whereas Australia picked the best 11 players and then picked the captain from that and there's a lot of truth in that so that's from England's point of view West Synne's is where this is most sinister really and most obvious so until 19 so we're Sindies play their first test match in 1928 but until 1960 they have a policy of white captains basically so they only pick white people to be to be captain and the reason is yeah is is blatant which is that the people who run west indies cricket so west indies I should say is you know it comprises 16 nations and territories”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, capancy has been incredible political thing. And I think the reason is if you think about what a test rig tool is or something would have been historically, it's not just a cricket tool, right? It's a diplomatic exercise as well. And the people are thinking about who they want to give all these speeches at the cocktail parties and so on. And so you see again and again, people are obsessed with class and even with race in terms of who are they picking as captains. In England until 1952, they had amateur captains and amateurs are basically kind of upper class people who are in theory unpaid, they often receive expenses that are worth far more than professionals, but you have this sort of two-tier system where amateurs will have different changing rooms and so on. And they are seen as the sort of right sort of people in inverted commas to be the captains. And it actually really...”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was, yeah, it was amazing how much, yeah, you can almost tell so many wider political stories through the prism of Tess Ricky. And it has really has had this huge importance on nation building and identity and relations in quite a peculiar way, but it's always been there from the very start.”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“African cricket is exiled and they don't play test matches again until 1992 and after the end of apartheid and cricket has this huge huge power and one of the amazing stories as well I found out so when Nelson Mandela meets the Australian promotion in 1986 when he's still in prison basically the first thing he asked is is Don Bradman still alive so Don Bradman was is the sort of greatest test cricket of all time has his average of 99 which is incredible but he'd also as chairman of the Australian Australian board he had been instrumental in stopping at all from the South Africa in 1971 and therefore really starting the boycott of the South African team so Manzella yeah remembers this and is very grateful for this so there's this yeah this strange connection between you know maybe the best aspect of all time and Nelson Mandela so yeah again you”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was a little act of resistance. So the thought that this boy from the cage might actually be actually in the middle would be just incredible. But a South African government, they refused to allow the tort to go ahead if Oliver is selected. And you have the incredible hypocrisy of John Voster, the Prime Minister of South Africa, who attacks England for bringing politics into sport by selecting with selection of Dollar Vera and then so the tourist cancelled South Africa pay one further series in 1970, wouldn't they, of a very strong side, and they whitewashed Australia 4-0. But after this...”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Especially sort of England, they tacitly agree with South Africa's policy. So there's a number of very good players for England. Ranji Singh being maybe one of them, he's a kind of almost an engine aristocrat that goes to pay for England and then brilliantly around 1900. But England just tacitly agreed to not pick him against Africa, basically not to upset South Africa as they see it. And so this culminates in the 1960s as the, you know, sort of as the apartheid regime is.”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, so Crickens Africa has been really, well, it's been completely intimately connected to race from the very start. And actually one of the things I learned beyond cricket through the prism mode of cricket in the book was actually well before formal apartheid, South Africa was still completely the racial divides in South Africa were still completely rigid basically so South Africa Yeah, they start playing in 1889 as a test nation but they refused to pick any players who aren't classed as white They also refused to play against anyone who is not white so there's only one player who yeah one player who's not white who pays against Africa until 1992 in test cricket so in the over the first century so the way in which England Australia and New Zealand”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For a country or playing in a domestic league instead. And so that's why basically the schedule of cricket has been a complete mess because it's not really run by anybody. So you have this kind of Wild West where you might have five leagues at the same time and then also test matches. So these are, yeah. So the administration of cricket looking at the history, it's always been terrible, but never has that poor administration left the game as exposed as it does now.”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, absolutely. And this is one of the questions for test cricket is how it can exist alongside the IPL. What I would say is the IPL has been going now since 2008. So 17 years. And yes, it's expanded, but it's still only two and a half months. If it doesn't expand beyond three-ish, then there is still plenty of time for test cricket to be played. It just needs to a few windows a year of a bit like Evan International Football, actually, where you have maybe two or three, you maybe have three windows a year of three weeks each, where you have only Tess cricket is being played, and you know that if you go and see West Indies or whoever, that should be at full strength, because nothing, you know, even that this was a name, the Tess Ricket, it conveys a certain gravitas. And that gravitas is completely lost if people go to a game. They know that half of the players should be playing.”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, they've been docked a fifth of their matchery on a kind of perata basis because they'd won in four days. So they've been better off winning in four, they would have been better off losing in five days than winning in four, which is very strange. But actually, because of the lack of money in Indian Cricket before, lots of very good players were actually retiring very early from domestic cricket or even just not pursuing cricket seriously as a career. And now cricket, even if you're not near the national team, you can still make a really, really good living from the game.”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were a pretty poor team, and they didn't win a lot of matches. And that was one, they did win against New Zealand at home test match, and their kind of match freeze were 250 rupees each for a test, really not very much, and they beat New Zealand, but they beat them in four days. And so afterwards, the players get their kind of the envelopes with their money in, and they are thinking, was there going to be a bonus? We actually had a victory here, which is pretty rare. Instead, they only found us 200 rupees, not 250, and they'd been basically doll.”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It kind of opens up its team to players from all the talents and basically it's Indian economy grows there's more avenues for players to actually rise from relatively obscure places. And of course, you know, look at these are often titles of like a million people. Ranchi, for example, where MS Stoney came from is seen as like a small city, but it's got a million people live there. In Indian kind of cricket terms, these were small places and now they are getting serious investment. You have a competition called the Indian Premier League, which formed in 2008, a T20 competition. And even though it's a different format of the game, basically it's contributed to a huge improvement, huge improvements in infrastructure and talent idea and so on. Suring is now starting to become the sort of superpower that it labor is always destined to be. But yeah, one of the incredible stories I found from the book was that in the 1960s, India...”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not really even a mid table team, they are. They're generally pretty appalling away from home. So Sash and Tandorga, for example, one of the greatest, maybe the most famous Indian player of all time, it was like I get to talk to. He only wins one of his first 44 test matches away from home. So India basically, they can't win away from home. And the reason is they don't have fast bowlers, basically, because they are basically relying on players, middle class players in a few cities for the bulk of their talent. And what happens in Indian cricket is basically you get a huge, huge improvement in infrastructure, in talent, ID and everything outside of the biggest cities, the traditional centers of talent. And so you begin to get, so India basically actually starts to use its population, you know, which is this incredible asset it has, it actually starts to use, or not the whole of its population, but it...”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Terms of the national team. Yeah. Yeah, it is remarkable. So, really, until this was one of the things I was kind of aware of, but the extent of it really shocked me. So until 2001, India lose basically two tests for everyone that they win. So they are a really...”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Cricket again and again has been this kind of this political tool and this sort of very silly strange game has had an outsized importance really.”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“300 years ago now. And then the Colcata Cricket Club is formed in 1792, which is the first cricket club outside Britain. So, you know, before any in Australia, say. But cricket initially in India is played by the British population, the European population. And actually, the parsis are the first community, the first Indian community who really get on board with cricket and they start to play against British teams in Bombay from 1877. And out of this sort of competition morphs into a kind of multi-faith competition in Bombay. So you have a Hindu team that's added in 1907, then you have a Muslim team, and you have a team called the Rest, which makes that we just kind of seek and Christians in India, via the Europeans. And so you have a time when these matches are playing. Pentangla, as it...”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, to cricket, you know, so the early story of cricket around the world is really being exported through the British Empire. And so the first record of game being played, of course, being played in India is it was played in Gujarat along a beachfront by British merchant sailors in 1721.”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They lose in three days. That's actually not good for England either because it's bad for their broadcasting rights and so on in the medium term as well.”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Competitive balance is so, so important, and that's something administrators have better sort of in the book. So you used to have, when Versidney's came to England, for example, they used to get about a fifth of what England would earn from the series in broadcasting rights. Now, Vesindi wouldn't get anything for that. They would get England to come in return, but because the economies are different, Ing would earn 15 times as much from posting Western asinique is earned from hosting England. So this is the kind of, these are the fundamentals of problems with the game, which lead to players from smaller countries with smaller economies. They're more likely to retire early from Tess cricket to play in other forms of cricket. T20 is the shortest form of the game in domestic leagues and wanted to do that because it's a short career and they need to earn as much money as possible, which is understandable. But I guess the point is, with the more collectivist thinking, you'd be able to actually have more teams that are stronger, which actually is in everyone's interest as well, because England, if using his come to England, they...”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was great, although the kind of fundamental challenge the test ricket faces now is it's very vibrant in Australia England, India. And the question is really what about the rest of the world, which comes back to things like fixture lists, also just how the money is shed around. There's a lot of money in cricket, but people don't really want to give up what they think is theirs. But there comes a point where you need competitive balance. I think competitive balance is almost more important in Tesserick than other sport because as a football fan, if you go into your team win 5-0, that's actually really, really fun. Whereas if you go to a test match and it's just a slow, you know, evisceration of an opponent who has no chance over to draw it out over three, four days that doesn't have the same, it just doesn't appeal in the same way. I mean, good test cricket, exciting test cricket, needs two good teams, basically. And so the kind of”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Freezing cold leaves or whatever. It requires a huge kind of adaptability of players it demands. And I suppose the series element, you know, the ashes now, there's five matches. Again, like in football, you have a farmer as one-off match in multi-minute and so on. So to have a, you know, five games paid over six, seven weeks. It has been even longer in the past. It's almost like for that period of time, it's his own kind of world. It's like, I don't know, like a box set or a drama you need to binge. And it's kind of all consuming. And the way that the plots just kind of simmer and simmer and develop and develop.”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Test tricket of the strange kind of nature of it is there's two innings per each side, so there's four innings in total in the match. Matches can last, well, they can last five days, although actually historically some have been timeless. And I mean, there was one match once that lasted nine days and then England had to leave South Africa to get a boat home. And it was still at a draw. Yeah, so it's got, I suppose, sort of separated from most other sports is the multidate element and the idea of this sort of second chance is kind of is built as well into the game and there is a certain kind of romance to the idea that you can get out for naught as an individual in the first innings and then the second innings you might get a century and you know from despair you get this brilliant achievement and that's something that's quite distinctive about tess cricket and and i think that the sense that and that's sort of the conditions vary so much you know you have to you know to be good in perth in chennai in you know”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, yeah, the first test match was in March 1877 in Melbourne between Australia and England. So it's been going for 148 years now. And it's, you know, it's sort of been a game that's almost out of time from its inception. The Victorians were time poor. They were worried that people wouldn't go for day after day after day. And yet here we are, 148 years on. We now have 12 countries playing it and there's been a 2,500 test matches. And yeah, there's something odd about the sort of psyche of test cricket where, you know, fans kind of love nothing more than worrying that the thing they love is about to die and actually look at the history that's always been this way, you know. So the first reference I could find to basically the game's gone, the players all play for money, not the badge on the shirt anymore was 1884.”
2025-11-26 · Intelligence Squared · What Does Test Cricket Reveal About the Legacy of Empire? With Tim Wigmore · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT