Top 50 Jonathan Agnew Quotes

I very rarely watch any television at all.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

As a batting captain, you do have to earn bowlers’ trust, especially when it comes to fields.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 old player in me can certainly sympathise with how your targets change because you simply do not know what is around the corner.

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.

Being a stepfather is a huge challenge.

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.

When you are at the top, teams raise their game to play against you, breathing down your neck because they want what you have.

Any decent coach can make more than enough money just doing three or four T20 leagues.

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.

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

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.

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

There are times when it’s difficult to see your wife and her ex-husband sitting next to each other chatting away.

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.

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.

Anybody can have a dip in form.

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.

I fly a light aircraft.

I really enjoy politics.

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.

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.

There is no other job in major sport like a cricket captain. It is a huge job.

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 love winding up Geoffrey Boycott.

No one means to drop catches. Everyone has done it.

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.

Pietersen is an incredibly confident cricketer, almost brash.

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.

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

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.

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 television, cricket would be a poorer place;the two have to coexist.

In Test cricket, you have to be adaptable.

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.

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

Tillakaratne Dilshan is innovative and scores quickly, while Upul Tharanga is neat and well organised – and left handed.