Jonathan Agnew Quotes

Archer has an incredible talent. He is one of those fast bowlers who makes it look easy.

Opening the batting in Test cricket, facing up to fast bowlers looking to do their worst with a new, hard ball is incredibly tough. You have to be brave, single-minded and prepared to work very, very hard.

Without television, cricket would be a poorer place;the two have to coexist.

Flying my own small plane is my escape. I learnt to fly in 2006 and share ownership of a Socata TB10.

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.

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.

Genius doesn’t always come in neat packages.

Virender Sehwag can tear any attack apart. He is audacious, takes risks and has fantastic hand/eye co-ordination.

What you can never do on a slow pitch is bowl with any width. If you bowl straight it’s almost impossible to get the ball away.

Anybody can have a dip in form.

I am not very good at putting on a front.

A disciplined, patient, defensive period in a Test match is not old fashioned and boring – it’s essential.

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.

Pietersen is an incredibly confident cricketer, almost brash.

That is what Test cricket is about, adapting to different conditions around the world.

On your debut, you just want to get into the game. I remember when I played my first Test, we bowled first and I went wicketless in the first innings. I felt like I was searching to make a contribution.

Word can spread quickly around the international circuit if a player is perceived to have a fault, particularly if it is against short bowling.

You can’t now do county and international cricket and have a life.

I think most cricket fans would accept that Dravid and Tendulkar are very different individuals but they are both great players.

We go to Dubai quite a lot, so I’ve seen it being gradually ruined.

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.

When you are captain at the same time, that’s when it gets difficult and when your own game starts to decay because you have other worries and pressures.

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.

We don’t cover too many draws in Test cricket and its great: it means the cricket is more interesting, more exciting.

I don’t think cricket will ever have the same sort of money as football.

What we have learned is that Roland-Jones is a very promising prospect. Because of the way he bowls, he will not blow batsmen away, but is more likely to take wickets through accuracy and building pressure.

I was a professional cricketer from 16.

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 really enjoy politics.

Stuart Broad’s 400th Test wicket did not come the way he would have wanted – Tom Latham chipped the ball to mid-wicket – but he will take it nonetheless. It is a fantastic achievement.

If anyone ever accuses me of bias – on Twitter, say – they’re blocked straight away. It simply isn’t true.

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.

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 played at school then signed up with Leicestershire when I was 18, for £20 per week. In those days cricket wasn’t a full-time job; in the winter you had nothing to do.

I love winding up Geoffrey Boycott.

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.

Without ambition, drive and the willingness to make sacrifices, I don’t think you get anywhere.

Call me traditional, but Test cricket is the most important thing.

Some people get the wrong idea about what the job of a cricket correspondent involves – it’s not all laid-on luxury travel.

Test cricket might seem to be slow and ponderous at times, yet it is capable of conjuring great drama from nowhere.

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.

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.

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.

Being a stepfather is a huge challenge.

A bowler should be allowed to point out to an umpire that a batsman is backing up, leaving the officials to watch what is going on.

The first day I worked with Brian Johnston was very daunting.

Fairness matters.

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.

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.

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.

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.

When you know that batting will be tough, that the ball might move around and your technique will be tested, you have to make sure that you don’t give the bowlers any more advantages.

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.

My relationship with my kids is the one sad area of my life.

No matter how bad your hotel is, take a deep breath, because if you can get through a night, it won’t seem quite so bad the following morning.

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 cannot believe that people really sit and devote hours of their lives watching reality TV like ‘Big Brother.’

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.

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.

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.

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.

I’m not much of a reader; I’m more of a laptop person. I would never consider travelling without it.

It is nothing new for the management of an international cricket team to wrestle with the amount of freedom afforded to players.

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.

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.

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!

I very rarely watch any television at all.

It’s easy to throw mud at coaches because we don’t see – nor often understand – everything they do.

I’ve known Stuart Broad since he was a child, living up the road from me.

With new fast bowlers on the international circuit few and far between, it’s always good to see someone new coming through.