Welcome back to the Ruck, the journalist's rugby podcast from the Times and the Sunday Times previewing the final weekend of the November internationals in less, your Wales and South Africa. I'm Alfie Reynolds alongside Will Kelloggler. Hello. And Elgin Alderman. Hello, how are you? I am very well, thank you. Picturesques, I look at both of you here. Back up at the England training base. I mean, I feel like I don't need to say that anymore because it's basically a... away from home, isn't it, through November and Six Nations. But the two of you in front of the fireplace, a nice way to finish off. Crackling fireside, Elginai. This is quite cozy, isn't it? Very much, so this is the coziest podcast I've ever been on. So I'm looking forward to seen what comes out as a result. Let's hope we don't sound like we're falling asleep halfway through.

But if we are, you can like click at our selfie or something. And that will be partly because of the fire, but also partly because you got up in the middle of the night to watch the first ball of the ashes. So I mean, we all like our cricket. Elgin's written plenty more about cricket than I ever have done. So he should talk more about it than me. But I work up at 2.30 or 220. What a weird time for it to start. So I work up at 2.15 for the ashes. Watch the first hour until 3.30-ish, until drinks. And then I was like, you've either got to commit and stay up or go back to bed and wake up again. And I woke up and I was like, oh no, Australia are batting, but they're two down kind of thing. So very weird cricket, wasn't it, Elgin?

I opted for the staying up approach. Normally on a Thursday night, I can be found at the London

Welsh Centre, not far from Kings Cross. So I stayed there until half midnight to minimise the

amount of time on my sofa waiting for the first ball. Worked a treat, saw the first

wicket, first four overs, then thought, oh, that's me done, off to bed now. Well, I managed to get

basically the last two wickets in England innings and then the full England bowling, Aussie

innings, so far. So I feel like I timed it relatively well. That was kind of getting up right six. So you saw Archer hitting people in the face. Yeah, all of that. Everyone backing away to leg. Yeah, all of the above. So it's good stuff and it's quite funny. Is there a segue here for the rugby? Like go fast and aggressive at Argentina or something really clever like that? So I'd imagine you guys were probably the same in the writer's briefing, but I spoke to Ben

Spencer and Richard Wigglesworth today, and I spoke to both of them about the cricket. I did try and ask Richard Wigglesworth, whether, you know, what they make of basball and that approach of, and he didn't really, kind of said, oh, it's different sport, and you don't take too much from it, which I was like, oh, I was hoping for a bit more from that.

It became the buzzword, didn't it?

It sort of money bowling in various sports.

Now it's... and you don't take too much from it, which I was like, oh, I was hoping for a bit more from that. It became the buzzword, didn't it?

Sort of moneyballing in various sports. Now it's everyone saying, oh yeah, we're going to basball this now. I think it became a verb where no one really knows what it means in other sports. Obviously, I mean, people don't really understand, I think, fully what it means. and in cricket people are always getting it wrong what it means, if indeed it means anything.

We were talking earlier about how some of the Australian newspapers don't even refer to them as England anymore. They just call them Bazball, you know, Basball cricket board. Basball and Wales cricket board, I hope they've. Well, yeah, I was going to say, when England used to go on cricket tours, they were the MCC, not England, weren't they? So now they're the, as you say, the basball cricket board.

No, they're bad. But I think in answer to your question probably is not a particularly smooth segue. So I'll do this instead, which is, as I say, we're up at the England training base. And before we go any further, we're going to obviously preview the weekend England's game with Argentina and the other big matches coming up over the next couple of days. But injury news from the England camp today. Max Adjomo is in. Fraser Dingwall drops out. Yeah, so here's maybe a cricket link because Fraser Dingwall, poor bloke's got a side injury, which is the only sort of thing you hear bowlers getting, isn't it? So yeah, poor guy. And actually, it was interesting because we were sort of aware that there was going to be some team news today and we were kind of trying to work out who it might be who was injured. And we actually thought beforehand, Ding will be quite an annoying one to lose because there's not an obvious replacement. However, then you go, oh yes, Maxa Jomo comes in and replaces him. So that would be his second cap. He played against the US in the summer so he's already made a test debut but not played a lot of test rugby and i guess a good

opportunity for england here to test their depth because they've had a whole load of

backline reshuffling happen this week haven't they well that's the interesting thing isn't it so

it makes it seven changes in total i'll come on to the other six in just a second, which you would have seen on Wednesday. But the thing that struck me here, Elgin, is England have lost their starting centre combination from the All Blacks game, the Dingwall Lawrence combination that we quite like the look of. And I suppose there's two ways of looking at that. One is, damn, that's annoying, ahead of an Argentina game, which which is a really tough test and the other thing is probably to use the analogy will you've used a couple of times on on the pod the last few we've done is knockout game at the world cup or world cup semi-final heading into a final and injuries can happen you lose your centre combination how are you able to deal with that and so this is a great challenge for England. Very much so, yeah.

We, you know, it was just beginning to flourish.

And even so, even the fact that Fraser Dingwall is playing is possibly down to the fact that Seb Atkinson's injured because he did so well in the summer and then had that nasty injury playing for Gloucester last month. So, yeah, like you say, you know, other countries like France who are potentially missing 10 members of their first choice 23 at the moment.

It is just part and parcel of rugby right now. We were talking just before the change was confirmed and we were spitballing what the change might be. And we were thinking, oh, maybe this is, maybe they're delaying it slightly because it's going to be Ben Earl at 12. So the position was right, but it wasn't quite the Ben Earl news.

We were thinking might have.

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