I love winding up Geoffrey Boycott.
— Jonathan Agnew
The Twenty20 is itself a banal game, a crude game, but it works, so I hope Twenty20 commentary works.
Without television, cricket would be a poorer place;the two have to coexist.
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 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.
No one means to drop catches. Everyone has done it.
Test cricket is about respecting the opposition, the conditions and the circumstances.
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.
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.
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.
Word can spread quickly around the international circuit if a player is perceived to have a fault, particularly if it is against short bowling.
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.
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.
Tillakaratne Dilshan is innovative and scores quickly, while Upul Tharanga is neat and well organised - and left handed.
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.
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.
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.
I don't think cricket will ever have the same sort of money as football.
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.
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.
Genius doesn't always come in neat packages.
As a batting captain, you do have to earn bowlers' trust, especially when it comes to fields.
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.
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.
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.
Archer has an incredible talent. He is one of those fast bowlers who makes it look easy.
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.
With new fast bowlers on the international circuit few and far between, it's always good to see someone new coming through.
You do not want cricketers who are cowed by adversity, waiting for someone to tell them what to do.
It is nothing new for the management of an international cricket team to wrestle with the amount of freedom afforded to players.
Virender Sehwag can tear any attack apart. He is audacious, takes risks and has fantastic hand/eye co-ordination.
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.
I think most cricket fans would accept that Dravid and Tendulkar are very different individuals but they are both great players.
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.
There are times when it's difficult to see your wife and her ex-husband sitting next to each other chatting away.
We don't cover too many draws in Test cricket and its great: it means the cricket is more interesting, more exciting.
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.
Anybody can have a dip in form.
There is no other job in major sport like a cricket captain. It is a huge job.
When you are at the top, teams raise their game to play against you, breathing down your neck because they want what you have.
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.
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.
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.
Pietersen is an incredibly confident cricketer, almost brash.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The old player in me can certainly sympathise with how your targets change because you simply do not know what is around the corner.
