Hello everyone and welcome to the Hawksby and Jacobs Daily podcast. I'm Danny Kelly and alongside me today was former Ipswich, Newcastle, Charleston and Crystal Palace midfielder Darren Ambrose.

We kick things off this week by being joined by the former England cricketer Alex Tudor to discuss the preparation or lack thereof for England going into the ashes this winter.

I know we just mentioned one or two of the wonderful sporting greats that we've lost in 2025. The problem is you're always going to leave somebody out. I think, Darren, I'm going to propose to the management now that on the last day of the year we should do a three or four hour show just listing the people we've lost. But there's one that you particularly wanted to mention, and I guess as an ex-Charlton player. I'll understand the links here. Yeah, well, it's Billy Bonds, and we lost him late in November. And the reason being more so is he was my dad's hero. My dad, we lost just over four years ago now, and he was a huge West Ham fan and he was my dad's hero so I had him

written down but as you said you just time passes you by and you don't get to mention it but he's

another legend that we lost and that losing people is never easy but hopefully their memories

can live on yeah he was one I saw Billy of course I another age. I saw Billy play game after game after game.

He was one of those players. There are very few, because football was tribal, where every club thought, every, the fans of every club thought, oh, which Billy Bonds play for us. Later on in life, Darren, I met Billy Bonds, did some work with him here on Talksport. And I said to him, Bill, I got to tell you, I always thought I would love to have if you could have played for Spurs. He gave me what can only describe as a very old-fashioned look. I don't think the possibilities were great. Brilliant. On to the cricket, England have won a test match. But of course, as we heard, one of the Australian administrators, the Ashes was already cooked at 3-0. Joining us, I'm delighted to say, a very good England player himself. Is Alex Tudor? Hi, Alex. Hi, Donnie. How? How are we? Great and great to talk to you. We've only got a few minutes, because we could talk about this for two hours, I know. So I'm going to go straight in studs up here Alex you'll understand

what's happened in Australia has it been a calamitous failure of planning or a

calamitous failure of execution yeah I think that firstly I would I think

they even come out and said that preparation wasn't quite what they would have liked or not what they've liked

what they're planning, they might have got it wrong.

There were a lot of ex-pros or

husbands or whatever you want to say

that told them that they needed to do a little bit more

but this

under Bazma Cullen

and Rob Key and Ben Stokes

they wanted to go a different way.

And obviously when things don't go your way, you're subject to, you know, people to call you from killer to post and that's what's happened.

Fantastic. They won the last game, disappointed. It was only two days.

I see the Australian hierarchy set the curator to deal with the media. I thought that was a little bit harsh. Listen, the wicket did a little bit. My thing now, as a coach, my thing now is that battles now are set up to play this expansive game. I'm sure people like you that love the game Danny would love people leave the ball outside or dump or show a solid defence but unfortunately when the ball goes off straight the way that these players play now is that they go harder at it but they say that their name's on Alex, I don't want them to bat like Jeff Boycott or Chris Tavaray.

I want them to judge the ball on its merits.

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