The No Balls Cricket Podcast · No Balls Cricket Podcast

No Balls Cricket Unfiltered Episode 50: A Half-Century of No Balls

·1 hr 12 min·4 clips

Zach Crawley became the first opposition batter with more than four 50-plus scores in a tour of India since Matthew Hayden in 2001.

Episode 50 opens like a dressing-room reunion that has been sitting in the heat a little too long. The hosts do not waste time on formalities. They argue about being too pretty for video, then immediately correct themselves into the familiar line that none of them really have a face for this podcast or for the video. They also agree, in the way this show agrees on things, that nobody in the room is exactly built for glamour. Guddu returns for the anniversary episode. He is introduced every possible way, including Sir Gudeja, Guddu, Siddharth Solanki, and former junior cricketer, with the crew even pulling out the old Singapore under-13s memory. The joke is that he has not been here for a very long time, especially since they switched to video. That becomes its own joke. It also becomes a pretty solid excuse to roast him like an old teammate who has wandered back into the group chat after disappearing for years. Once the reunion noise settles, the episode locks onto Zach Crawley. The discussion starts with whether he is suddenly a very good opener. Then it gets narrowed down into a specific stat about his India tour. The hosts keep correcting the wording because they do not let a loose number survive unchallenged. The point they settle on is simple. Crawley became the first opposition batsman since Matthew Hayden in 2001 to post more than four 50-plus scores on a tour in India. That matters to them because he did it without making a hundred. He was England's leading run scorer on the trip, which makes the missing three-figure score feel like part of the argument instead of an aside. The panel treats that as proof that accumulation can be loud even when the century never arrives. Crawley is framed as someone who arrived pre-anointed rather than someone quietly climbing into the role. That opens the door for the chosen-one jokes. From there the episode pivots into batting risk and false shots. The hosts use a chart to show why taking more shots raises the danger level. They also explain that the upside is either very efficient scoring between errors or, in the best cases, mistakes that still keep paying off. The batting side gets most of the attention first. Then the bowling side gets mentioned so the whole thing does not drift into pure surface-level nonsense. The discussion keeps coming back to shapes, circles, squares, and what they are supposedly telling you about England and India. It is nerdy in the way this show likes to be nerdy. It is also loud, argumentative, and a little rude about everyone involved. By the end, the episode has done three things at once. It has celebrated fifty episodes. It has dragged one returning guest back into the family roast. And it has turned a stat-heavy cricket conversation into the kind of chaotic half-century only this panel could make sound normal. The closing stretch keeps the usual like-share-subscribe energy alive, with Guddu teasing that he might come back again and the whole thing ending on the show’s familiar mix of affection and nonsense.

As heard by us

Episode 50 brings Guddu back, digs into Crawley's India series, and keeps the cricket nerd energy high.

Episode 50 frames the half century as a reunion, bringing Guddu back into the mix and leaning into the old-crew video banter before settling into cricket talk with a sense of its own history.

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Why you'd press play

You want a half-century episode that brings back an early crew member and turns one Zach Crawley stat into a full-on argument.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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