Jonathan Agnew Quotes.
You do not want cricketers who are cowed by adversity, waiting for someone to tell them what to do.
As lots of us ex-pros know, you are a long time retired and there comes a stage when you would give anything to be back out there playing.
Tillakaratne Dilshan is innovative and scores quickly, while Upul Tharanga is neat and well organised – and left handed.
Word can spread quickly around the international circuit if a player is perceived to have a fault, particularly if it is against short bowling.
It is not difficult to come up with a long list of cricketers who like to have a good time – from the village green to the Test arena, it is a sociable sport.
That is what Test cricket is about, adapting to different conditions around the world.
I cannot believe that people really sit and devote hours of their lives watching reality TV like ‘Big Brother.’
It’s an interesting education to listen to cricket commentary when you’re not at the game. When you’re there, which is most of the time for me, it flows over you. But when you’re not there, you look at it in a slightly different way. You pick up things.
I always wanted to be a professional cricketer, which meant I didn’t work as much as I should have done at exams. But, happily, it came off.
It is nothing new for the management of an international cricket team to wrestle with the amount of freedom afforded to players.
Any decent coach can make more than enough money just doing three or four T20 leagues.
Players like Alastair Cook do not come around very often. To play for so long and achieve so much says everything about his fitness, concentration, discipline and skill.
A good commentator is someone who obviously people like listening to, who gets the blend between description, entertainment and accuracy of conveying the event right. If you can do that in an interesting way, you are a good commentator.
Cruising on the old rice boats in Kerala, southern India, with my wife was amazing.
Bowling on English pitches is not rocket science. If you bowl a good length on off stump, the ball just has to do a fraction, up or down or side to side, and you get someone out.
As a player, when things are going against you, you look to the captain to inject some energy but I don’t see any of that from Amla.
I really enjoy politics.
I love Rome and the way that you can wander around and find something interesting around every street corner. You can smell the history.
The absolute key difference between television and radio is the ability of radio to communicate. With television you can watch the screen and your mind can be anywhere. On radio it requires a certain amount of discipline from the listener to follow what’s being said.
In one-day internationals, the batsman is under pressure to get on with run-scoring and does not have the luxury of leaving too many deliveries.
If anyone ever accuses me of bias – on Twitter, say – they’re blocked straight away. It simply isn’t true.
It is doubtful that anyone has contributed more in a lifetime to the overall coverage of cricket.
Rather than influence the media, I hope that my progress from player to correspondent shows that there is a role for former cricketers in the media, despite the intolerant views of some of my colleagues in the press box.
With new fast bowlers on the international circuit few and far between, it’s always good to see someone new coming through.
When you are at the top, teams raise their game to play against you, breathing down your neck because they want what you have.
The bouncer shouldn’t be banned. Hitting batsmen, I’m afraid, is part of the game. But it’s the histrionics, the nonsense, the prancing, the in-your-face nastiness. It’s become accepted, and actually it’s not acceptable at all.
I love the individual characters that cricket produces and, more than most other sports, the unlikely heroes.
There’s little that’s subtle about Hardus Viljoen – he’s a broad-chested, broad-shouldered fast bowler, who simply trundles up to the wicket and hurls it down as fast as possible.
There are times when it’s difficult to see your wife and her ex-husband sitting next to each other chatting away.
By empowering players – not just players, but grown men – to think for themselves outside of the game, you hope that they will be more likely to adapt to a situation and seize the moment in a sporting contest.
No one means to drop catches. Everyone has done it.
I am not very good at putting on a front.
Without ambition, drive and the willingness to make sacrifices, I don’t think you get anywhere.
The truly great players have this advantage over the rest of the international elite, gifted though those others are: they have the ability to slow down a ball travelling at 90mph, to move before others can, to make the world adjust to their rhythm rather than the other way round.
The art of coaching is to give a player freedom to bring out his talent. It is the player’s responsibility for what happens once they are on the pitch.
It is one thing to err on the side of caution. Equally, Test wins have to be earned. They are seldom handed to you on a plate.
The first day I worked with Brian Johnston was very daunting.
When you think of the great eight-wicket bowling figures in Test history, the names of Michael Holding, Shane Warne and Stuart Broad spring to mind.
Finally, after more than a year of unprecedented anticipation, the talking stops and the cricket begins.
Test cricket is about respecting the opposition, the conditions and the circumstances.
This is Test cricket. Being positive is not far away from being reckless. For all that the sport has become more fast-flowing and entertaining, you still need batsmen whose first instinct is to be patient.
It’s all you hear on a cricket field – ‘Knock his head off, knock his head off.’ Cricket has gone too far. It shouldn’t be posturing, abusing.
Usually a captain will allow his bowler to set the field, while exercising overall control and maintaining the authority to step in if he sees fit.
I spend too much time away from home. I love travelling, but we can be away for as much as four months during the winter.
Roland-Jones is a good, old-fashioned English seamer. He’s not especially quick, but he pitches the ball up and swings it away, which is always dangerous.
You can’t now do county and international cricket and have a life.
For me, Test cricket at its best is all about ebb and flow of initiative, and it’s always a fascinating moment of the match for me when one sides snatches it from the other.
Indian fans probably warm to Tendulkar more, because he was their darling from a very young age and he is a class above anyone else in his team. But in any other generation Dravid would be there by himself.
I did three winters at BBC Radio Leicester while playing cricket in the summers.
A disciplined, patient, defensive period in a Test match is not old fashioned and boring – it’s essential.
Archer has a loose-limbed approach in a run-up that is not very long. He gets into a good position at the crease and releases the ball late from a very high action. He snaps the ball down at genuine pace. He has rhythm to his bowling.
The old player in me can certainly sympathise with how your targets change because you simply do not know what is around the corner.
I look at some young commentators who sit down with piles of notes, and of course, what are you going to do if you’ve spent hours preparing all this stuff? You’re going to bloody well read it out. Boring!
It takes very little effort to make someone happy.
Preparation is not just about batting and bowling. You have to consider lots of things – the travel, the weather, the heat, the light, the sounds. You have to be comfortable with everything.
My dad was a keen cricketer – he played at school and club level – but it was hard for him to find time for it because he was a farmer, so he encouraged me and my brother.
I played in Sri Lanka, so I know how hard it is to come here and win. The weather is baking hot and the conditions are alien to English cricketers.
Fairness matters.
Divorce is something I think that children feel particularly hard and what’s sad about a lot of divorces, and certainly about my divorce, is that absent fathers who really want to play a part in their children’s lives but don’t live there, they have a pretty tough time.
Flying my own small plane is my escape. I learnt to fly in 2006 and share ownership of a Socata TB10.
We don’t cover too many draws in Test cricket and its great: it means the cricket is more interesting, more exciting.
I was a professional cricketer from 16.
It is difficult to master the skill of scoring runs from a 90mph delivery that is dug into your armpit or is fizzing past your nose.
I’ve known Stuart Broad since he was a child, living up the road from me.
Some people get the wrong idea about what the job of a cricket correspondent involves – it’s not all laid-on luxury travel.
Call me traditional, but Test cricket is the most important thing.
Without television, cricket would be a poorer place;the two have to coexist.
My relationship with my kids is the one sad area of my life.
Test cricket might seem to be slow and ponderous at times, yet it is capable of conjuring great drama from nowhere.
In any international sporting career an opportunity comes along that you have to grab. Mine came at Old Trafford in 1985 when I was recalled to the England team to face Australia. It was a huge chance to prove I belonged in the Test side but I failed to take it.
Anybody can have a dip in form.
Virender Sehwag can tear any attack apart. He is audacious, takes risks and has fantastic hand/eye co-ordination.
Adelaide is terribly underrated. There are lovely wide streets, beautiful parks, one of the most scenic cricket grounds, wonderful beaches, and vineyards nearby. The food and the people are lovely, and it’s not too big and sprawling.
Pietersen is an incredibly confident cricketer, almost brash.
I wish I’d done better for England. I only played three Tests and three One Day internationals. You have to take your chances and, for whatever reason, I didn’t.
I love winding up Geoffrey Boycott.
