Toby Tarrant is used to talking for a living – but can he talk around people who don’t understand cricket like the Daily Star’s features ed Meg?
The moment has almost arrived. From Birmingham to Brisbane, cricket fans all over the world are preparing for the ultimate grudge match, as the Ashes 2025 reignites one of the great sporting rivalries.
But are you ready to step up to the crease for the first match this Friday? Or are you – like cricket numpty MEG JORSH – just a little bit confused?
Luckily, Radio X host Toby Tarrant – the Daily Star’s very own Mr Sledge – is available to help. Here, as our Ashes Week continues, he gets to grips with a few burning questions…
Q: What is cricket?
A : “Cricket is probably the most Marmite sport on the planet. I adore it and I can sit there and watch every single second as they play for five days, but for some people that’s their idea of hell.”
Q: Yeah, but… what is cricket?
A : (Toby pauses, possibly considering the life choices that have led him to this moment). “So, in its simplest terms, a bloke or a lady runs in and bowls a ball, a very hard, painful ball if it hits you, made of leather, at a bloke or a lady who’s holding a bat.”
Q: Why is the ball so hard? Surely that’s dangerous?
A : “As somebody who still plays cricket, I ask myself that question every Saturday when I nearly break my fingers. I wake up every Sunday morning covered in bruises. I don’t know which sadistic psychopath decided to make it such a painful ball, but they obviously had some sort of weird fetish they were exploring.”
Q: This all sounds terrible. And the Ashes… they’re connected to cricket, somehow? What are these ashes?
A : “So, England invented cricket, but then over time we became much worse at it and everyone we taught it to became much better. Then in 1882 we lost at the sport we invented to Australia – basically a country we invented – and they said it was the death of English cricket. Two ladies approached our captain at the time with an urn full of ashes, to say that English cricket is officially dead. It’s still kept in the museum at Lords Cricket Ground in north London.”
Q: Ah, so is that the trophy the teams are trying to win?
A : “Yes. All this excitement boils down to trying to win an urn that has got the ashes of English cricket in it. It’s maybe a couple of inches tall.”
Q: Right. Why?
A : “Good question – and not necessarily one that I have the answer to.” (Another, longish pause). “I think that most people, and especially sports fans, are quite easily entertained. We stopped questioning why years ago and now we just accept that it is the most important thing in the world.”
Q: Don’t worry. I imagine it’s all over in a few hours, at least ?
A : “Well, every couple of years they play in England or Australia, taking it in turns. They’ll play five Test matches, each of which could last five days, playing for about seven and a half hours a day. Whoever wins the most of those five matches, at the end of it all, they get the urn.”
Q: And that does what?
A : “That sits proudly in our trophy cabinet until another couple of years, when it will be The Ashes again, and then we do it all over again. And then we do that forever until we die. A bit like how EastEnders will never end, right?”
Q: I think I’m starting to understand. Is it true that you also get to shout at each other?
A : “There’ll be a bit of banter – a bit of sledging as it’s called in cricket – between the fans, but there’s never animosity and you’ll have several beers with your opponents after the game. I think football could learn a lot from that. It’s meant to be intelligent and light-hearted and relatively witty. But in the Ashes, it tends to spill over into more basic stuff, like, ‘You’re s***.’”
Q: You might actually sell me on the details. How did you get into cricket?
A : “Like most things, it’s passed on from my father [telly legend Chris Tarrant]. I think it’s a bit of a hereditary sport. My father is a cricket tragic like me. I’m hoping this series might capture the public imagination like it did in 2005, when England famously won the best Ashes series ever and suddenly people that had never watched cricket got into it.”
Q: And why would they do that?
A : “Even if you’ve never watched cricket in your life, it’s a chance to beat Australia, in Australia. Cricket wouldn’t exist without us and yet they’ve decided to weirdly claim it for themselves, so it’s our chance to claim it back. But whatever happens, we’ll go back to being Britain and they’ll go back to being Australia. So, we win either way.”
● The first Test of the Ashes 2025 starts in Perth, Australia, on Friday, November 21 at 2.30am UK time.
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