This Week in Cricket #198: Jacob Duffy stars for RCB, NZ20 approved & Brendon McCullum to stay

In this episode of the show, Binksy, Baldy and Stu discuss an interesting week in the world of cricket, which saw the IPL begin with RCB's win over SRH, New Zealand Cricket approve (in-principle) the formation of a new T20 franchise league & more details emerged about England's post-Ashes review.

We start the show with game 1 of IPL 2026 - the Sunrisers Hyderabad taking on the defending champion RCB. The match played all the hits - big sixes, quality catches and big names - but it was a big Kiwi who stole the show with Jacob Duffy grabbing three quick wickets in the powerplay for RCB and then earning himself a well-deserved rest after 7 overs of the contest. We discuss the impact player rule, Virat Kohli's shot of the tournament, bowling concerns for SRH, Phil Salt's catching and a scattering of other IPL news including an injury to MS Dhoni and Ben Duckett's withdrawal.

As we move to New Zealand, we breeze past South Africa's white-ball tour only really name-checking Ben Sears & Amelia Kerr, and spend the majority of this segment wondering how the proposed NZ20 franchise league would work and whether there's enough time to get things up and running for January 2027.

To round out the show, we discuss England Cricket's post-Ashes review, which has seen the Stokes/McCullum combination retained . . . at least for now. We talk about whether anything is likely to change, whether it needed to change and why the Bazball style might not have suited the current England squad in the same way that it seemed to energise the group only a few years ago.

We'll be back in your feed again soon with more cricket news, including some IPL game reviews and the upcoming NZ tours. Until then please take the time to give us a like, follow, share or subscribe on all our channels (@toporderpod on Twitter & Facebook, and @thetoporderpodcast on Instagram & YouTube) and a (5-Star!) review at your favourite podcast provider, or tell a friend to download. It really helps others find the show and is the best thing you can do to support us. You can also find all our written content, including our Hall of Fame series, at our website.

You can also dip back into our guest episodes - including conversations with Mike Hesson, Shane Bond and Mike Hussey, current players such as Matt Henry, Sophie Devine and Ish Sodhi, coaches Gary Stead, Jeetan Patel and Luke Wright, as well as Barry Richards, Frankie Mackay, Bharat Sundaresan and many more fascinating people from all across the cricketing world. And if you'd like to reach out to us with feedback, questions or guest suggestions, get in touch at [email protected].

Thanks for listening.

0:00 Intro

1:30 RCB v SRH

2:45 Impact players

6:30 Story of the powerplays

8:20 SRH bowling concerns & RCB batting highlights

12:15 Jacob Duffy

15:10 Catching

16:10 Other IPL news: Dhoni, Cummins, Duckett

23:15 Black Caps v SA

27:50 NZ20 approved, but what now?

42:00 Ashes review over - McCullum to stay

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