The 2025 TMS Awards

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By Grainger for the ones who get it done. If you're an H Vac technician and a call comes in, Grainger knows that you need a partner that helps you find the right product fast and hassle free. And you know that when the first problem of the day is a clanking blower motor, there's no need to break a sweat. With Grainger's easy to use website and product details, you're confident you'll soon have everything humming right along. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done. You're listening to the TMS podcast from BBC Radio 5 live. Hello and welcome to a very special TMS podcast looking back at the cricketing year via the now traditional TMS annual awards. It's the second time we've done it, which in this fast moving world qualifies this as a much loved age old tradition. I am TMS statistician Andy Zaltzman and joining me to gaze backwards through a now defunct crystal ball at the year just gone, Daniel Norcross and Henry Moran. Happy old year to you both.

Thank you very much, Zoltz.

What a pleasure it is to be.

Here in this now annual celebration of all things cricketing.

Well, I mean, yes, it's about as much of a tradition as the Boxing Day Test match and the new Year Test match. Which became a tradition after one Test match, did they not, in about 1991?

Yes.

Is that not how all traditions start? Just with one that becomes a second and a third and a fourth and a fifth?

Oh, yes, I suppose like the longest journey begins with a single snap. So the oldest tradition begins with the first Test match and then everybody becoming really, really unnecessarily wedded to doing it. Forever and eternity.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Well, what a year 2025 has been in cricket. A year that will surely go down in history, as indeed do all years, of course. But for the first time in the basballistic era, England's men have lost more tests than they've won, falling Short and dropping. Short and dropping and not batting long in Australia after a dramatic summer series against India that they very, very, very nearly won but didn't. So we've had one all time classic series and one for me, this Ashes that is right down there on the anti list of cricket's biggest anti climaxes. England's women had a bad year. Demolished in the Ashes in January, then under new management, beaten by India and losing the one match that really mattered in the, in the World Cup. All in all, not a vintage year from an English international cricket point of view.

No, but we're going to, I think, try to move away from the English international cricket point of view. I mean, this year is not just about English women's and men's serial failures, disappointments and absolute catastrophes all down under. There have been other things that go on and we're going to touch on domestic cricket, we're going to touch on women's cricket that was good. As opposed to the women's cricket that was terrible. It's not all just about making memories for close friends and family. As Nat Silverbrunt famously said, with England 12 nil down and one match to go, it's about much, much more than that. And I think there are plenty of things for us to get our teeth into. It was still in some ways a vintage year.

It was. There was great moments, iconic moments. I think we'll talk about Chris Woakes and his arm.

Oh, yeah.

We will talk about big innings, small innings and everything in between mediocre innings.

There's been plenty of them. Yeah, but I can't talk about catches because I just can't remember them all. Don't ask me about catches.

Well, let's start with, with innings. Since you've cued that up nicely, we're going to go for our best innings of the year. Dan, what is your nomination for this?

Well, it is a crowded sort of scene, isn't it, really? Because there's an awful lot of people that bat and there's a heck of a lot of cricket. So if you win this, you really have done brilliantly. And I'm choosing one that I saw live in Guwahati. And I'm not telling tales out of school if I say that we were 100% happy to be going back to Guwahati. We'd been in Guwahati for quite a long time, quite looking forward to a semi final in Navi Mumbai. But no, England ended up going back to Guwahati to play against the South African Side that they had demolished destroyed in their opening game in Guwahati. In Guwahati they bowled him out for 60 something won by 10 wickets. It was amazing. A perfect performance from England's women. So now they go back to semi final against a South African side you may remember, who are renowned bottlers, right. And you would hope that they would bottle at this point if you're an England fan and, and especially if you're out there to cover England's ruin. And rather than bottling, South Africa's captain Laura Wolfhard played an innings of quite a startling brilliance. She began going pretty hard in the power play, but allowing Tasman Brits to do a bit of the hard work with her as well. They were going on around five and a half, six and over. Then she moved into a kind of third gear wicket. Suddenly felt Annika Bosch went for a duck. Soon Elise went for one. Marizan Cap came to join her. At that point South Africa were in more than a spot of bother, perhaps on what was a very good pitch. She then found a level that I have never seen in women's cricket. People talk in reverential terms about Chamri Attapattu's innings in the 2019 World cup and 2017 World cup, beg your pardon, and Holman Preet core against Australia, which I didn't witness. I saw this firsthand and it was, it was fantastic. She just took England apart. She cleverly played Ecclestone, got rid of Ecclestone. Then the last 10 overs they went to nearly 12 and over, 117 runs they got, which in women's cricket does not happen. She ended up with 169from 143balls, 20fours, four sixes. And it got to that point when you're watching this innings when you know like when you're sort of like watching things on a PlayStation and what have you, where you know that this next ball is going to be pumped for four or six, it just is, it doesn't really matter. And there's going to be a bewildered looking Lindsay Smith and a slightly downcast looking Natsiva Brunt and a completely almost disinterested Sophie Ecclestone somewhere at long on going, what's going on? And everybody's just going to be absolutely like shell shocked. It was that and the crowd went berserk. And although it was disappointing from an England point of view, it was the best women's knock I have seen and it was the best knock I saw. Live by quite a distance, I think.

I'M also going South African Zalts. And I can't decide if this is the best innings or the worst innings of the year because Vern molder is on 367. He's captaining south Africa for the first time. This is the second test between South Africa and Zimbabwe at Bulawayo in July. And at 367, having faced 334 balls, found the boundary on 53 occasions, going at a strike rate north of 100. History beckons. Brian Lara is quaking in his boots.

Well, so are all of us, to be brutally honest with you. Yeah.

What does he do? He declares, that's it. He says, no, I've had enough. I'm gonna sacrifice things for history. And you think, well, fair enough. Okay, well, obviously the match situation demands this because there's got to be enough, you know, time in the game to make sure that you win it. That is your primary concern as captain. They won by an innings and 236 runs. He could have scored 600.

How long left was about day, Day.

And a bit left, probably definitely more than a day left at the end.

Of the game, I think, certainly. And so you're thinking, wonderfully selfless, admirable. Looking at history and thinking, well, I can't possibly take that. He's on 367. The messages are going around the WhatsApp groups and the various nerdy chat rooms across cricket folklore. This is about to happen. Tune in to Bulawayo. All eyes on the second test between Zimbabwe and South Africa. Vian Molder. Not a bit of it. Interval comes 367. That'll do me nicely. And don't think like, also, oh, how selfless. How. Still have to watch 367. It's not. Do you know what I mean? Is it going to get that far?

To me, this is one of the great acts of sporting humility in the history of all sports. I think we should give him an award just for declaring on himself as a player. Wernwald's had quite a good year, but he still averages. You take out the weakest teams he's played against Bangladesh, Zimbabwe. He averages under 20 against the higher ranked sides. He was take. He could have taken the record off Brian Lara. He took it off Matthew Hayden, who'd taken it off Brian Lara, who'd taken it off Garfield Sobers, who'd taken it off Len Hutton, who'd taken it off Don Bradman. That succession of some of the greatest names in batting history.

And you've left out Wally Hammond.

Wally Hammond as well. Yep, Wally Hammond's in the. That was against a pretty weak New Zealand team, but let's get Wally Hammond in there. This, this, you know, these are the. Some of the mighty immortal names are batting. And I think the world should applaud Wean Mulder for having the humility to say it's very nice scoring 367, but I have no business being top of that list. And to me, that was magnificent.

I can't decide if it's magnificent or magnificently annoying. Let's not forget the bowling attack.

Did you want him to get 500?

Oh, yeah. By that point. It's a bit like when a football team's 7 nil up at half time. You think, oh, you wait for the second half and then they win 71.

And you're like, oh, well, no, no, no. Because then it becomes impossible ever to break that record, doesn't it? Because no one can ever do that yet. Unless you can line up eins. Unless we can give like the Cameroon team test status and allow for Brian Lara to come back and play against them in a one off game at Antigua.

My nomination is also a South African, but innings of rather greater weight for South African men's cricket. Aidan Markram in the World Test final at Lords. South Africa winning their first major global trophy slightly ironically, in the format that they'd almost abandoned. And it's one of the great stories I think of of the cricket year. South African, the South African men's Test test team. It was the fourth innings. Australia 212 all out in the first innings. South Africa 138.

Australia.

Australia 207. We've seen quite a lot of low scoring games actually. It's a bit of an advantage to bat in the fourth innings knowing what you've got to do. 282 the target. Rickleton was out early on and Marcram made 136 against Stark, Hazelwood, Cummins, Lyon under, you know, having the weight of the knowledge that South Africa had not won a world title before. A chance to do something that will live in South African cricketing immortality. And he played just beautifully with a great deal of restraint throughout his career. He's been a talented player that maybe is one of the victims of the modern cricket schedule, hasn't been able to focus on test cricket in the way that he would have done in previous generations. So his test career has been quite up and down. But he's done a few amazing things in his career and this will always be the pinnacle. 136 off, 207 out, just. They just needed another six to win when he was out, which, which is ideal when you've played innings like that, you want to be able to walk off on your own and lap up the applause.

I was very fortunate enough to commentate that for an Australian radio station. So it was really good fun because he did it against Australia and to be on their radio crowing massively at how this had happened. There were a couple of things that were slightly to his advantage. One of them was that it was a classic Lord's pitch where Australia had batted first and it was spicy to begin with and they'd made a fatal error. They bowled South Africa out too soon in South Africa's first innings, if you recall. So when Australia went back out to bat, the pitch still had something in it. The way you've got to do it in those ones is you're better off letting the side batting second get a tiny lead, you know, get ahead a little bit, bat a little bit longer instead. Unfortunately, it all went, it all went a bit pear shaped for them, but it was so much fun to watch. And there was this lovely moment when he got his hundred, you remember, and he actually sort of paused and drank it all in. And he talked about it afterwards, didn't he? Said that he did. He knew that they were going to win at this point. He knew the pitcher flattened out. He was completely confident and he was just going to soak up the atmosphere of knowing that he got South Africa basically over the line.

We've got to choose one from Wolfhart, Mulder and Markrum.

Yeah, I'm not even convinced by my knot.

Next.

So that rules it out.

I'll tell you what, I would say that. I would say that because Markram won the World Test Championship, then he get. He would get the nod from me over Wolfhel.

Well, there we are, we have a winner. Aidan Markrum, I know you're listening. Congratulations, you've won the TMS Best innings of the year. I'll make a little trophy for you. Right, our next category, Favorite wickets of the year. Now there's been a lot of wickets in cricket. You mentioned there's been a lot of runs in cricket. Also a lot of wickets. So often the case. And a year's worth of cricket, a lot of runs and a lot of wickets. But just choose your one moment. Henry, you take the first one this time.

I'm going to go. Gus Atkinson bowled by Mohamed Siraj at the oval to win that test match for India by six runs because it had it all. There was the drama of wokes at the non strikers end injured, there was the closeness of the match and there was the celebrations because it was pandemonium. And as always when India play anywhere in the world but particularly when India play in England, it's brilliant support home and away and it's a fabulous atmosphere and you know it's. And I know you'd agree with this Daniel, it's not quite the prestige of it happening at Lords which would be the most sort of.

Well, the second oldest test ground in London. Yeah, I suppose, yeah. Easy to wind up.

Yeah.

Oh yeah, yeah.

And yeah, it was spectacular and it was just one of those very I think special moments that you could see what it meant to the Indian side, you see what it meant to their supporters and it was just high drama and everything that we love about test cricket.

Do you know what was amazing about it as well was that do you remember the night before and there had been just a bit of rain and there was only whatever it was, 30 odd runs to go and, and I remember being livid that they couldn't find a way of getting back out there and finishing because the atmosphere had been so incredible on day four. You know everybody had been really seized by the drama and the narrative of what was going on and to have them all have to troop off with this uncertainty with whatever it was, three or four wickets left and nearly 30 odd to win. But I was so wrong because the following day there were slate race guys and it was packed before the start, wasn't it? The first ball and I was outside with Ellie Aldroyd doing the five live stuff and the noise was unbelievable. It was just so, so exciting. It was frustrating as well because you thought if Chris Wilkes had been able to bat and bowl in that match then England would have won it easily. And then this nonsense about how they haven't won a five test series against the big side would have been completely forgotten but that way we would have missed the incredible drama. Rick Napkinson had batted so well to kind of farm the strike and do the right things. And woke's running that two. You remember when he ran the two to get back and he was almost.

And you're rolling up six. Yeah, that nearly won it. That was his only boundary 17 from 29 he's got. It was.

Yeah, it was high drama. It was fantastic.

It was I think up there with the greatest hours of cricket I've seen and I've watched a lot of hours of cricket and yeah, just it encapsulates like you say, everything that makes Test cricket great. Because not only was the end of a you on the fifth morning of that game, but the five tests that have preceded it and the amount of cricket we saw and the contrast between the summers cricket, these long games on quite flat pitches and what we've seen here in Australia of very abbreviated games on difficult pitches for batting. And I think we had a much better contest in the summer. And it was the closest ever finished to a Test series in terms of the final Test when the series has been live. There'd never been a closer finish than that in the final test of a still live series. So that was unquestionably a great moment, Dan.

Well, for me, I think it was the silliness of the dismissal that I've chosen here, but it also won a Test match in the same series. So this Test match at Lors followed a very different pattern from most laws Test matches in that both sides scored heavily to start with. England batted first, got 387. India weirdly got 387. That was that got us all on our toes. Then England bowled out for 192. It didn't feel like enough, you think 193 in a fourth innings at Lords. But England bow really, really well, picked up early wickets got injuring Torto to bother 82 for seven, leading 193 to win. You think they're going to win this. But Jadeja then did this 181 ball epic. And he just defied them and defied them and the ball was getting softer and softer. And England was struggling partly because Shob Bashir, who was going to be vital, you thought on that last day had broken his hand and badly as well. I mean, he was out for the rest of the summer with it. It wasn't just like a pinky that had gone. He had a really bad fracture.

Appears to have been out for most of the winter as well.

He has been out for most of winter, Yeah. I don't think it's because of that, though. So he came out to field and there was this wonderful bit when he fielded. Remember he took one out that deep, deep square leg along the ground and the wince of pain when it touched that hand. So he was this sort of like injured hero and he's bowling and bowling and bowling and I mean, I suppose the logic would have said that England were going to get this final wicket anyway. 22 runs feels like a large enough margin of victory. But Jadeja was never getting out and Siraj had Discovered a way of batting. He was at his 30th ball and Bashir bowls this thing, and it's completely innocuous. It's back of a length. It's been basically perfectly defended by Siraj, except that he's angled his bat ever so slightly. And then the path the ball took from the bat onto the crease, it went to the leg side. And then, for reasons that I will still to this day never understand, presumably physics and geometry, which I was never any good at at school, it diverted itself between his legs and hit the base leg stump. And the bale just flicked off to consternation. Madness, mayhem. And Shah Bashir running around like a lunatic, at the same time trying to protect a morbidly broken hand from thoughtless large English men who wanted to grab him in bear hugs and give him high tens going, get off. No, no, don't touch the hand. But yes, it's brilliant. It's brilliant. It was wonderful. It was a really, really hot day as well. And everything about it was just drama, theatre and magnificence. And for it to be show up to win the Test, it always is. You know, he's kind of a sweet, cuddly kind of guy, so. Wanted it, liked it.

My wicket of the year. I'm going to go for Marco Janssen catching Muhammad Siraj to seal South Africa's victory in the second Test in India in a series victory. 2 nil. It was a comfortable victory, so they'd have won anyway, but he took this ridiculous running diving catch near the boundary, kind of over his head, stuck out a hand and it's. And it stuck in. And it was just a. A glorious moment from a fantastic cricketer. So we got to choose our winner. So we've got Siraj bowling Atkinson, Bashir bowling. Cira Seres is involved in all three of these. And then Ciraj being caught by Marco Janssen. Well, I'm. Since I was going to choose the Atkinson wicket myself, I'll be that.

Isn't it.

I think, for the moment, for the actual moment that it happened and for the pandemonium that it unleashed and the tension that built up to it. Yeah, it's got to be. It's got to be poor Gus being sent on his way.

So do they share that? They share the trophy that they have to, you know.

Yeah.

To get them together. Yeah.

Yeah.

It seems only fair, doesn't it?

Next category, Worst shot. I feel there are a lot of candidates here. I'm going to put mine forward first. I'm going for Jacob Bethel. Shot at the oval in that run chase.

Oh, yeah.

Which is a bit harsh on Bethel, but I think that showed a lot about maybe some of the fractures that we've seen in the Stokes, McCullum, England this year. That Bethel finished last year, magnificently batted brilliantly in New Zealand at number three, then ended up not playing in the summer because it was the ipl. Then being brought back with no cricket. Finding himself in this incredibly tense situation with the series on the line and it all got tense. Even rooted, already scored 100 at the other end, started looking a bit edgy and Bethel just took a massive MO and was, and was bold. And it felt like the moment that the doubts just exploded in England's, in.

England's market, it was horrible. But they were all doing that at that point because they were, they were exhausted in their own different ways. If you think Jamie smith played about 19 of the worst shots of his entire career in that innings because his feet were stuck to the ground after having wicket kept, let's not forget, for longer than anybody in England since 1960.

Oh, well, it was one of the most overs England had bowled in a five Test series since 1951 at home.

At home since 1951. So he was exhausted. There was mental frailty everywhere. The difference between Bethel and Smith was that Bethel just hadn't been allowed to play cricket because it was decided it was better for him to wander around like getting the vibes, wasn't it? Rather than actually playing cricket. Whereas Jamie Smith was told, yeah, you don't normally keep wicket, so can you please keep wicket for hours and overs. And then at a really, really crucial moment, you know, get on with it.

Henry, what's your worst shot of the year?

I'm going to go. Harry Brooke at Lilac Hill in the warm up match because it was the sort of shot that did the rounds on social media, charging down the track, bowled the third time he'd attempted it and it just belied a sense of such a lack of care and respect to the one warm up match that England had ahead of the Ashes series. And you think, oh, well, that's how I'd play. Well, time in the middle is so precious. What are you doing? And it just, for me, it created noise around the England team that has followed them all the way through the Ashes. After all. It's just, it was a horrible. Yeah, ultimately it was a meaningless shot in the context of the game in the sense that it had no long term impact. However, I just feel that it was such a horrible visual and if you're Australian at that point you're thinking, who are these guys? That is absolutely ridiculous.

Well, I've got Harry Brooke, but I think this is a superior shot of awfulness. Honestly, if I could get somebody to invest in a museum of stupid and I could open it in central London and have a big turbine hall, it would be Harry Brook playing his first ball in the twilight against Mitchell Stark at Brisbane. We spent Nothing but about 11 days talking about how crucial this test match was and how the single most important moment of the test match was going to be Mitchell Stark, the best bowler with a pink ball, bowling in twilight. He faces his first ball against him with England 177 for 3. I think in really quite a decent position. It is 6ft wide of his off stump. Mitchell Stark can bowl 30 balls, probably in this period. He might face 15 of them. You're supposed to say at that point, 14. Fetch that. Bowl me another. Make it straighter. I'm not going to touch it. Harry Brook said afterwards he thought maybe he shouldn't have tried to hit it for six. Maybe he shouldn't have tried to hit it for six. It was the single most appalling act of stupidity I've ever seen on a cricket field. And in my museum of stupid, an AI generated Orson Welles voice is explaining the exact circumstances on a continuous loop as pour encourage les autres. May that never happen again.

Yeah, that's a. That's a good shout. I mean, you could, if you could go for more than one shot. The Pope Brook root, three wickets and six balls at Perth.

If they were all packaged as one.

Driving outside off stump at a cruise.

I mean, those would be biased possibly, but Gus Atkinson at Brisbane, that's a.

That was absolutely abysmal. But I'm telling you, the circumstances of Brook in that moment, I think they were back in the series and then they were instantly out of it and, you know, had to come in next, Ben Stokes. And you know who he has most trouble with? Mitchell Stark. And when was he bowling in the twilight. I cannot express enough how fundamentally situationally stupid that shot was.

Right, well, we've got to choose one of. One of those.

Don't you dare.

Right.

Don't you dare choose a different one.

I'm scared. I think we're gonna have to.

We'll go with that.

Daniel. And you know, he's. He's had a year that in classic Brookian style, has mixed the unfeasibly brilliant with the unfeasibly inexplicable. Moving on, best Bowling spell of the year. Dan, what's your.

Well, I'm going to go a little bit leftover because people haven't talked about county cricket enough this year and. And I'm. I'm saying this with a heavy heart because many people will be aware that I'm a SAR fan and SARI were after the quad Pete, if that's even a word. The. They'd done the three peat the year before, they'd done three out of three and they were. Big talk about trying to emulate the great 50s team when Surrey won seven in a row and Nottinghamshire sort of came not exactly from nowhere, but a bit of a surprise package, brilliantly led by Hasib Ahmed and they were taking Surrey all the way. Surrey went into this game against Nottinghamshire top of the table. Had they won the game, they would have won the championship. It was a tight game. They conceded a first in, exceed a 58, but they needed 315 to win on a pitch that gets better, as we all know. And Josh Tongue produced a magnificent spell of bowling from a position when Surrey were right back on top. Tom Curran had come in and put on a big partnership, partnership of 51 with Dan Lawrence and it looked like they were going to get over the line and that would have been the end of it. Tongue came on and wrapped it up as he had done this summer, wasn't he? He was known as. Was he the Mop or the Hoover, whatever, whatever they call him, you know, mop up the tail. And he did that and he did it in the County Championship match and he won Nottinghamshire the County Championship. And although it does pain me to say it because I'm a proud Surrey fan, it was an exceptional, brilliant display of bowling.

Henry.

I have struggled to look beyond Alana King, the Australian leg spinner, at the Women's World Cup. 7 for 18 in a 50 over match against South Africa. Against indoor, rather. It was just phenomenal. It was ridiculous bowling and the control, the skill. And in a week where we've been remembering a leg spinning king in Melbourne, leg spinning King from Australia doing the business.

Wasn't she like five for one at.

One point as well?

Because we were watching that in our hotel in Visikapatnam and I came down, I just saw that her figures, I couldn't make out, they got this the wrong way round because she was like 5 for 1 and 6 for 3 or something. Conceded a few runs at the back end, seven for.

But also a leg spinner normally will bowl enough loose deliveries just by the nature of the art that the few will go flying away. Just phenomenal it was. Australia didn't win the World cup, surprisingly, but she was brilliant and a real star. I am going to throw in though just as a little bit of a wild card. Somebody that snuck in on December 30. Bhutan's Sonam Yeshi, who has recorded the best ever figures in a T20 international, 22 years old, taken eight wickets in a game, four overs, one maiden, eight for seven. Look past that if you can.

That's statistically that's going to be hard, hard to beat. I'm going to go slightly left field. I'm going for a spell by England in that win at Lords. Brydon cart on the fourth evening at Lords came on India only chasing 193. As you mentioned earlier on, they were 35 for 1, 8 overs left in the day. And it wasn't just what he did. He got out Karen Nair and Shubman Gill, who'd been basically immovable in the first two tests, lbw. Then Stokes got the Akash deeper, the night watcher before the close of play. So 58 for 4. Suddenly their chase becomes really difficult rather than relatively seemingly straightforward chasing 193 if they're only one down, two for 11 in four overs. But it was how he bowled and it was. The tracking data showed that at that time it was the second fullest pitched spell by an England Seymour of 4 overs or more in terms of the average bounce position. And we think of Bryden Cast often bowling sort of short, almost like this enforcer role that we talk about. But he bowled to a different plan and it turned that game in England's, England's favor. There's over 4000 overs in that data set. Jo Arly bowled and even Fuller spell later in that series. But yeah, it was a kind of dramatic moment. You often get these kind of phases towards the end of play where the, you know, the crowd's really into it after 6, 7 hours sitting in the. Sitting in the sun. And it was a brilliant spot of bowling. And also I think when we look at this Ashes now and after seeing how England bowled in Melbourne, albeit in helpful conditions, pitching much fuller, think back to that cast spell against indirect Lords. I think they might have bowled the wrong lengths by quite a.

Well, this was what I was going to say. Why, why? And why, since he can bowl there, why, why did it have to be this way?

So we need to choose a winner. We've got a few slightly left field calls here, so we've got Josh Tung in the County Championship against Surrey, Alana King 7 for 18 against Alafka in the Women's World cup and Brydon Castle.

Well, it's a tricky one actually because none of them actually won something at that point. For me, one of the reasons I've chosen Tongue is that his spell, they won the game by 20 runs and it broke a hegemony and it gave a title to Nottinghamshire for the first time in a long time. Kaz's spell, good though it was, was a couple of wickets and lots more stuff had to happen.

Yeah, fair point.

But Alana King 7 for. And there was a point at which, like I said, something like five for none. It was, it was utterly crazy, I suppose in terms of just like being weirded out Alana King's spell. Although I do still think that, you know, Josh Tongue did basically win them the counter championship in that spell, but I don't know, I don't know.

Well, I'm happy to go with Alana King just because I absolutely love leg spin and it's an art that doesn't maybe get quite as much airing in international cricket as would be ideal. So that's our winner, Alana King. Do report to the BBC to collect your commemorative silver salver.

The TMS podcast from BBC Radio 5 live.

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Dan well, for me I can't look further than Perth because of the what ifs and this was this awful thing. So Series after series, 2013, 2017, 2021, England have lost. We know that they've been pummeled. We know that they've never looked like getting close to winning a game, which has been part of what's made it so incredibly difficult to watch. And then we'd had this first day in England, he got 170 odd and we thought oh no, same old. But then a five pronged bowling attack and bundled Australia out giving England the lead of 40 odd. And it just felt at that moment that, oh my goodness, we've got the West Indies pace attack from the 1980s and this is going to be so thrilling. We're gonna. They're so un English as well and all we had to do is hold our nerve. And for the first session England held their nerve. They did it really well. Duckett batted really well, I thought, in that morning session after England picked up that 10th wicket and they went to lunch, was it 99 ahead, one wicket down and two sessions later they've lost the test match. How do you do that? How is that actually physically possible? I still can't. The numbers don't add up. They don't make sense. You've alluded to them already. The three drives on the up, you know, I literally walked 10 minutes to somewhere else, didn't know what the score was with a degree of confidence and happiness and sprightliness in my step and then was confronted with misery and doom. And even then setting 205 because of there was some good late order hitting, wasn't there from Atkinson, among others. You thought on a tricky pitch, you know, high score of the match to win, to be blasted out by Travis Head because they'd gone for a really ridiculous short ball ploy rather than bowling in exactly the same way as they had bowled the same time the night before. It was mind boggling and that it happened in two Days. And so there's all sorts of other things that go with that as well. You know, I was doing lots of events for people who had flown over just for the Perth Test match. This was one of their bucket list things to do. And they got two days, then they had to go down the Margaret river or whatever it is, you know, oh, great. There isn't. Whatever anybody says about Perth, it's hot Croydon. That's all it is. It's tiny and it's hot Croydon. But, you know, it was. I thought that was. It was. It was awful. And from being so excited, we were suddenly back in the depths of despair going, well, they can't afford to lose at Brisbane, which is not where any England team needs to.

It's going to be hard to beat. Henry, what's your nomination?

Well, on a purely statistical level, West Indies all out for 27. We mentioned it a moment ago. Day night test in Jamaica in July. Mitchell Stark takes 6 for 9 in just 7.3 overs. The innings is done in 14.3 overs. There's seven ducks in the innings. It's horrendous.

He would have loved it and Zols, wouldn't he?

I don't know it, but for me it was just dispiriting because just sometimes you see a performance, you think, oh, that's exciting. A team's played brilliantly. But then, I don't know, there's this just this sense of, oh, this is bleak. And this for the long term future, the game's no good.

They were dreadful pitches in the West Indies as well. They were really, really spicy throughout. The West Indies kept on bowling Australia out quite well. It sees a scorecard, you go, ooh, they bowled Australia out for 200. Then, oh, and then this horrible response.

But 27, I mean 27 one more.

Than the 26 that New Zealand got against England in 54. Five, which is the lowest score in first cricket history.

I don't think we're going to beat Perth. My nomination was England losing to India at Edgbaston on one of the flattest pitches that we've seen in, in England in, in decades. India 580 7. England 407, 300 of them in one partnership between Brooke and Jamie Smith. 303 with collapses either side. India 427 for 6 declared Shubman Gill scored was it. 430 runs in the match. The. That's a lot of runs to score in month. It was the second most ever in a test match. England then had to bat for basically an hour plus the 90 overs on the last day. On this flat pitch Akash deep bowled brilliantly but they lost three wickets. Classic. England 72 for 3 off 16 and then lost comfortably in the end with over 30 overs to spare. And it was, you know, it wasn't just the fact that they lost but the fact they lost on that pitch with so much time to spare when it was quite a straightforward task. India people saying why have India not declared? Why have they gone on so long? And I think they wanted to remove any hope. We've seen particularly the early years of, of Basball. England really brilliant at chasing in fourth innings of big chases against New Zealand. That amazing 370 plus chase against against India at Edgbaston in the delayed, delayed fifth test. A couple of near misses against against Australia in, in 23. So they've been really good. In fourth innings India just removed hope by leaving England 608 to win and England just dealt with it really badly. And I think we're talking about the accumulation of scar tissue denting the confidence of, of the basball England.

I'm going for Perth Daniel.

Yeah, I think Perth walks this one. It was a defeat that I think haunting.

Just very quick point on that. The Australian media and fans had turned on Australia because the Usman Kawarti Browns and golf and once that happens, we saw it in 1011. Once that happens you're so on top in the series. England had it. It was there in the palm of their hand and then like an empty can of VB crushed, gone top.

Well that's what, that's what basball does do. It really hates being on top of. It was, it was, it was like, it was like when Lyon walked off injured at Lords in 2023. It's like, oh, everything's working in our favor now. Basically we need to throw it away.

It's James Bond when the baddie has got Bond locked in a room and says rather than finishing the job off. Now I'm going to go and have a cup of tea and I'll pop back in 10 minutes.

Oh, he's got away.

Oh, he's been there.

Oh, has he? There you go.

Perth wins our worst defeat of the year. Have a more positive category now. Comeback of the year. My nomination for this is the South African men's Test team. Yes, Test cricket in South Africa has taken an absolute battering over the years. They sent a pretty much a third choice team to New Zealand during this, the World Test cycle that they ended up winning because they made their top players play in the. It was very much sending the kids.

Out for the Carabao Cup.

It was, you know, players who, you know, played their only test of their careers in that series. There were several of them. They, you know, don't play much at home. When they came to England in 2022, their batting was, was terrible. They always had, you know, good bowling, but they had a real struggle. They were heavily beaten in Australia and in really quite a short space of time they regenerated into a really effective team. Now there was a lot of complaints before the World Test Final that they hadn't played the top sides or they played India at home, but they hadn't played England and Australia. But they won a lot of games. Aside from that, they won in Asia, they beat Sri Lanka in Asia. They won under pressure to qualify for the World Test Final and they made it there. And then they beat Australia really well with that brilliant innings by Markrum. Fantastic bowling from Rabada in particular. I think he had nine wickets in the game. And it is just one of the great stories that almost like the players have kept that flame alive. Their administrators are almost marginalizing test cricket in South Africa and they put together a batting lineup without really any absolutely elite level stars, but with lots of players who made contributions throughout that cycle. They had an amazing number of players. Different players score centuries in the 2024 calendar year. And this fantastic bowling attack with Robarda and Marco Janssen definite sort of world 11 candidates and I just thought it was. And the brilliantly led by Temba Bavuma as well, who is a really interesting cricketer, doesn't have amazing numbers, but plays a lot of really high value innings. Not necessarily centuries, but he did the same in India. Henry, what's your comeback of the year?

I'm going for Jimmy Anderson, returning to T20 and 100 ball cricket after an 11 year absence from the last time he played in the T20 blast. Because if nothing else, the man's commitment to continue playing is so admirable. I love it. If he hadn't been dropped in the Test site, there's no way he would have elected to retire. He would have been desperate to be at the Ashes.

It's why he's not a bowling coach anymore. Because you can't have a bowling coach who thinks he should be in the team ahead of the other bowlers and.

Arguably should be at times anyway. Coming back to playing the T20 blast 11 years away from it, the last time he had been playing in it was around about the time Freddie Flintoff Made his comeback, ended up with 20 wickets in the competition, got a deal with the Manchester Originals in the hundred and showed that he's high class in the format. Still got it. And I just thought, good on you Jimmy Anderson for giving the crowd what they wanted. And if nothing else, what is sport if it's not for spectators to have something to go through the gates for? It was great fun. And he didn't just sort of come as a novelty act, he actually performed really well. And I thought good on you.

And you know what else he is? He's now Lancashire's Canada Championship captain next year. Unbelievable.

So here's a scenario. Jimmy Anderson leads Lancashire to championship glory. Ash is four years time he's captaining England in Australia. You heard it here first.

Get in.

Bring that on, Dan. Come back of the year.

Well, mine's a great one. But it was just, it was the moment and it was Joffre Archer's comeback at Lords. And we've been waiting, waiting, waiting for Joffre Archer to be back ever since he played in that summer of 2019 and then again in the COVID summer 2020. But he hadn't been in front of crowds, had he, since 2019. And Joffre, or Joffre, as he said he wanted to be called at one point this year, is, is. He's sort of totemic, he's something that we can all entirely get behind. He's quick, he's just languid, he's skillful, he's brilliant. And there he was and half of us were thinking, oh no, please don't let this be like horrible. Say, please let his arm fall off, please don't let it all just go horribly wrong. And instead in his first over, he gets ushanswijaiswal, who has been a scourge of England for quite a while, caught at slip. And it was just a moment where there was just this burst of relief and joy and also fair play to him because people, for whatever reason, they question the commitments of cricketers, whether they really want to do Test cricket. And Jof Raj has been a little bit under the spotlight for that. Is it, is he only really in it for white ball cricket? He's so obviously desperate to play Test cricket and he worked so hard to get there, to do it and to see him do it and to see the joy on his face and everybody else around him, it was, that was my comeback moment of the year. But I'm not sure it can really beat South Africa winning the World Test Championship.

It was a Beautiful ball as well.

Lovely, wasn't it? Oh.

So what are we going for as our comeback of the year?

I think South Africa. Well, I mean they've actually won something for once, so let's let them have something else. But it's like London buses.

So yet more silverware for the bulging trophy cabinet in South Africa. One final award, the Noosa Award for commitment to the cause. The heroic devotion to duty that was on display in Noosa.

Don't want go on that because I know that Chris Wilkes has got a special place in your heart.

It was amazing. It was. That was just one of the, the great things because I have been complaining my entire adolescent and adult life about the notion that Colin Cowdery was in any way brave for walking out to bat with a broken arm and standing at the non strikers end for two balls.

That was 1963, Lords, Lords against the West Indies.

And it became this totemic example of bravery. And since then there have been a few that have beaten that. There was Malcolm Marshall walking out with a plaster cast on his left arm and batting one handed, hitting a four through backward point. 84 I think it was. But this absolutely trumped all of them. So Chris Wilkes has dislocated his shoulder on the first day, needlessly running off the ball. It is amazing actually, isn't it that this England team is incapable, it seems of preparing for test matches and playing cricket. But they are expected to run incredibly hard for lost causes. Jack Leach did the same thing in 2023, you remember at Lords, really annoyingly we had a concussion replacement.

22, that's the 32.

Yeah. Parkinson came in as a concussion replacement. So he's run off the ball, he's dislocated his shoulder and it's really bad. It's not just oh, we'll pop it back. It's like he's out for the game. It's costing of the match, they've lost by six runs. But, but in an attempt to save the game he comes out and he's got like this incredible sort of like he's almost like Ned Kelly with the helmet as well. He's got multiple jumpers, he's got like some armor on him and his arm in a sling and he's having to bat and we saw photos of him trying to bat, using it, batting one way and then batting the other way and all they really needed to do was was fire at full and straight and they would get him out. There's no way he could touch the ball. So the issue Was that Atkinson had to farm the strike and there was one point when he ran to and it looked like he was going to throw up. The pain is so intense and it was just magnificent. I mean that was genuine bravery because he's like his body is not just on the line. It could be career over. Yeah. Kind of stuff.

You know, he didn't face a ball but he was out there only 20 minutes.

I wished he had faced the ball just to find out would they have bowled him a bouncer or a yorker. I just, I still don't know. I almost want to like dislocate it again and find out. Additionally, you know, that was the one bit of his innings that was missing for me was just nice if he'd.

Won it with an insouciantly flicked one handed six over. Over the.

Well, Stuart Broad said that Stuart Broad said if there's any man who could actually go out there and do it.

Because people have often talked about Chris Wilkes as being sort of the most technically HB DeVilliers.

Isn't he? I mean because he plays darts. Yeah. And he plays snooker brilliantly.

In terms of commitment to the cause, I had two options beyond wokes. Firstly, Harry Brooks commitment to being utterly, utterly brilliant and then playing some of the most Lucifer shots you've ever seen. But we sort of covered that. So I'm going to go with a commitment to the cause that frustrates me more than almost anything else in sport and that is England's commitment to bowling short at tail enders which hasn't worked for years and years and years. See Stuart Broad and Edgmiston against Jasper at Bumrah. See countless tail end partnerships that have gone on for far longer than they should have done. Because wouldn't you know it, if it's good enough to get the top order out, it might well just be good enough to get the tail enders out of top of off stump for some reason is ignored by England time and again. It doesn't matter who the bowlers are. Over the years we've seen them all have a go at it and it never works. And if it does work, it's when already loads of damage and momentum has been done. So it just. The commitment to it is so annoying. It makes me really genuinely angry.

How angry were you during that incredible moment in. You'll remember the test match, was it Brisbane or Adelaide when England had a second new ball and Carey was batting with Stark and they had the field into Stark trying to get him out and then the field out to Carey and then Carey got out. So Boland came in and proceeded to have that ridiculously long partnership because suddenly, suddenly, in the space of that two overs, it wasn't possible to get Stark out.

No.

So everyone had to go out for Stark and come in for Bowland. And he thought, this platform is just going forever. Exactly. Like Jake Weatherald and Travis Head have to walk out the bat with three slips and a gully. Whereas Mitchell Starr gets to wander out with seven men on the boundary on the fifth ball. On the fifth ball.

I mentioned Richard Pant earlier on, but came back out with a broken foot that was juggling the series and got quite a few runs. He got. He had a couple of fours hopping around on. On one leg.

They kept trying to bowl at his foot, didn't they? Yeah, that was a great thing. They were trying to bowl yorkers at him.

That was. That was good.

I think they pitch it up.

I think all the. The England supporters who. Who've been coming keep coming to Australia, despite the fact that this is now the ninth tour out of 10 where the Ashes have gone after three out of five Tests.

I was told by a fan when I asked him, are you all right? I said, three nil down. He turned to me and said, if you come to Australia expecting to see England win a Test match, you must be certifiably insane.

I believe they sing songs to that effect, don't they? So. So what's. I think we've got to give this to Chris Wilkes. It was his final act as an international cricketer as well. One of the most popular, popular cricketers that England have had.

It was most dramatic moment of the summer. Yeah, it was. And it resulted in the most dramatic wicket in the end of it of the summer. The most dramatic win in the best.

Series of the year.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I've got a few stats, I think. Sum up. Sum up the year. I mean, one of the most extraordinary stats of the year that Jasper Bumrah has. 1, 2, lost 5 in Test cricket this year.

It's amazing.

There have been five tests this year, including Perth and Melbourne, but three others in which wickets fell more regularly than once every five overs, which is as many as they were in the 20th century. If you ignore a couple of games that only had like 10 or 15 overs of cricket was the one game the West Indies would abandon. Another just had a little bit before rain. Five matches in the 20th century, a wicket fell more than once every five overs. We've had two in this series and five this year. The contrast between the two the two series, the two England series. England bowled, like I said, more overs against India in the summer than in any five Test home series or the first five Tests of a six Test series since 1951. The most homerun away anywhere since the 867 Ashes. And they bowled fewer in this Ashes than England have bowled in the first four Tests of any Ashes series, apart from 1902, when two of the first four Tests were ruined by rain. So. And they. Unless if they don't bowl 240 overs in Sydney, which they won't do, which they'll bowl their fewest ever overs in an Ashes series in Australia. The India series, 21 centuries, the joint most ever in a Test series. Four centuries after four Tests in the Ashes, the joint fewest in the Ashes series in Australia. In the first four tests since 1902, more than half of all Test innings this year were teams bowled out for under 200 or scoring 400 or more. It's the 72nd year which has had 15 or more tests in. And that's the first time that more than half of the innings have been bowled out for under 200 or scoring 400 or more. So I think that's. We talk about the extremes we see in cricket. I think with modern batting techniques and approaches, when conditions are good, it's harder than ever to stop a batting side. And when conditions are difficult, they collapse more readily than ever. We saw that with England and Pakistan last year when they got 800 in the first Test and then on those very spinny pitches, they just sort of collapsed in. In both of those games. So, yeah, we are seeing strange cricket played almost at the extremes of. Of what's. What, what's possible. So those are my. And just specifically in Australia, the last two Ashes series in Australia, four years ago, in this one, 26.6 runs per wicket. The last two in England, 32 runs per wicket. Previously this millennium, there was 33 runs in England, 35 and a half in Australia. So we've seen a massive drop off. And there's not just an Ashes and other series Australia have played here as well. Cricket in Australia has completely changed in the last few years. And that is why we've had this weird and not particularly wonderful Ashes series to conclude what an interesting but flawed year of cricket internationally.

Interesting but flawed. It sounds like. Yeah, it sounds like it could be any of our dating profiles.

Every, every year we do this, as in both of them. But every year that people think about these things, there's always something that's wrong that's changed. That's different because Test cricket has got such a rich and magnificent history that it's covered so many different bases. And at the moment, I think we're in a place where defensive techniques are very poor and attacking techniques are very magnificent, and that probably results in a lot of entertainment when you're watching. So they make bad pitches, by which I mean horrible, slow, rubbish ones. You're still going to get fun because players are going to get on with it and you will still get results. The dissatisfaction for purists like us is that on the tricky wickets, the batters don't have the technique to be able to take it.

D well, I think that's the thing. You want a bit of variety, don't you? So over the course of the series, maybe the pitches against Indy were too homogenous and here they've been too weighted in favor of the the bowlers. But anyway, thank you to Daniel and Henry. Thank you all for listening. That was our 2025 TMS awards. Congratulations to all the extremely deserving winners. Make sure you're subscribed to the TMS podcast on BBC Sounds for daily podcasts for the rest of the Ashes, where you can simply search Ashes to find all our content. Thank you very much for listening. We will be back in a year with the third annual tradition National TMS Awards. Until next year.

Goodbye.

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