Top 103 Quotes & Sayings by Jonathan Agnew
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English entertainer Jonathan Agnew.
Last updated on December 3, 2024.
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.
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.
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 is nothing new for the management of an international cricket team to wrestle with the amount of freedom afforded to players.
I think most cricket fans would accept that Dravid and Tendulkar are very different individuals but they are both great players.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Word can spread quickly around the international circuit if a player is perceived to have a fault, particularly if it is against short bowling.
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.
Archer has an incredible talent. He is one of those fast bowlers who makes it look easy.
Anybody can have a dip in form.
Test cricket is about respecting the opposition, the conditions and the circumstances.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A disciplined, patient, defensive period in a Test match is not old fashioned and boring - it's essential.
You do not want cricketers who are cowed by adversity, waiting for someone to tell them what to do.
There are times when it's difficult to see your wife and her ex-husband sitting next to each other chatting away.
It takes very little effort to make someone happy.
We go to Dubai quite a lot, so I've seen it being gradually ruined.
I love Rome and the way that you can wander around and find something interesting around every street corner. You can smell the history.
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.
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.
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 fly a light aircraft.
We don't cover too many draws in Test cricket and its great: it means the cricket is more interesting, more exciting.
The old player in me can certainly sympathise with how your targets change because you simply do not know what is around the corner.
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 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.
Tillakaratne Dilshan is innovative and scores quickly, while Upul Tharanga is neat and well organised - and left handed.
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.
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.
With new fast bowlers on the international circuit few and far between, it's always good to see someone new coming through.
Pietersen is an incredibly confident cricketer, almost brash.
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.
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.
Genius doesn't always come in neat packages.
The Twenty20 is itself a banal game, a crude game, but it works, so I hope Twenty20 commentary works.
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.
I've known Stuart Broad since he was a child, living up the road from me.
I'm not much of a reader; I'm more of a laptop person. I would never consider travelling without it.
Some people get the wrong idea about what the job of a cricket correspondent involves - it's not all laid-on luxury travel.
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.
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.
No one means to drop catches. Everyone has done it.
Without television, cricket would be a poorer place;the two have to coexist.
There is no other job in major sport like a cricket captain. It is a huge job.
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.
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.
Virender Sehwag can tear any attack apart. He is audacious, takes risks and has fantastic hand/eye co-ordination.
As a batting captain, you do have to earn bowlers' trust, especially when it comes to fields.
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.
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.
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.
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.
When you are at the top, teams raise their game to play against you, breathing down your neck because they want what you have.
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