Charlie Cooke Cricket Podcast · Charlie Cooke

Leicestershire are the best red ball team, Englands XI vs WI and a 2025 T20 Blast preview!

·51 min

It starts busy. The hosts set out a week of cricket that runs through the county championship, the England ODI XI, and the blast starting this week, then spend the rest of the episode teasing apart what that mix says about form, selection, and timing. The Blast is already closing in. Before they get there, they stay with the county game, because that is where the arguments feel most grounded: who has been steady, who has handled the conditions, and which sides are actually built to keep playing well when the calendar gets messy. Warwickshire get the deepest treatment. At New Road, weather turned a game that looked as though Warwickshire had controlled it into a draw, and the hosts work through why the low scoring mattered, why no batting points were scored, and why 280 felt like a high total in the conditions. That still counts. From there, they keep circling the same point, which is that Warwickshire's top six or seven has become quietly serious, with Yates, Davies, Latham, Hain, Webster, Barnard, Malik, Smith, and even Wokes deeper down giving them a line-up that can absorb trouble and still leave a match alive. Wokes at nine is a bit rude. The title race is not treated as closed, either, because the hosts keep checking the points table, note that the gap is still manageable, and make the fairly blunt case that one bad game from the leaders can drag Warwickshire right back into it. That is the county-championship bit. They then widen the lens to the England ODI side, using the selection picture as another version of the same old cricket question: what balance do you want, and what are you giving up to get it? The blast preview follows in that same register, brisk and practical rather than hype-driven, with the hosts sounding more interested in squad shape and county form than in pretending a first-week table tells you everything. That is probably the right instinct. The whole thing moves the way this show often does, with one result opening onto the next selection problem, then into future tournament planning, then back to the county table. It assumes you already know the names. If you follow county cricket closely and want selection talk that is dry, specific, and a little argumentative, this is the sort of episode that settles in well.

As heard by us

County cricket, England ODI selection, and a rain-hit Warwickshire draw shape the discussion.

It reads as a brisk county cricket roundup, moving from county cricket and England's newly announced ODI XI to the Blast starting this week and the latest County Championship round.

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Why you'd press play

County cricket, England's ODI XI, and Blast preview in one dry sit-down.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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