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Difficult to give a hint for 23D without giving it away but here goes - the last player in a cricket team to bat would be the ****** ******, so a two letter abbreviation for the first word followed by the second minus a four letter synonym for "still" gives the solution.

Thanks for the help with parsing 23d, all.

Any hints for parsing 15d? I can just about see which part is the definition but can't begin to put together any wordplay.

LOI 7d, clue of the day 18d for me.

@Mattw - The first word is simply a slang term for wife - usually preceded by "old", the second a word for confused minus the last two letters.

More specifically, the first word is cockney rhyming slang, as often the case dropping the actual word that rhymes. Here it is an abbreviation of "Duchess of Fife".

Thought I had finally understood 23d, with the first two letters being an abbreviation for a term that's 3,3 for the last batsman (not a term I'd heard as a non-follower of cricket). However now I'm further thrown by stevenc@20 mentioning it's an abbreviation for a six letter term and nodrog@21 mention a term that's ****** ******! (6,6). What is this mystery term?

rosencrantz - it's just "number". I don't know what your 3,3 is.

Hi.

Can anyone help with parsing of 24 across. Think we have the answer but no clue on parsing.

Thanks.

Hi snowwhite
A slightly odd clue. "The fifth" indicates a letter, but the order seems wrong.

Thanks very much ChrisE. See it now.

Not a very good clue in my view.

24 was my LOI and took an inordinate amount of time to solve, but I think the wordplay order is OK.
I took "The fifth X" to indicate a member of an alphabetically labeled list (analogous to bullet points, subscripts, etc).