And, with that, my 33-plus years because the BBC’s cricket correspondent come to an finish.
There have been two elements to my job. One is presenting Check Match Particular, the opposite is being answerable for information protection.
There’s been a bit of little bit of confusion. I’m not leaving TMS and can stick with it as regular with that programme. It is the information I am handing over and it is undoubtedly the correct time to take action.
The sport has modified. It’s so way more about franchise leagues. I like T20 cricket, however discover it laborious to get enthusiastic about leagues which might be merely the identical gamers shuffled into a distinct shirt from the one they had been enjoying in two weeks prior.
TMS means the world to me. I really feel just like the bridge between a bygone age of Brian Johnston and Fred Trueman, to a brand new period involving the likes of Steven Finn and Alex Hartley.
Wanting again, it was only a bunch of middle-aged white blokes, or perhaps a bunch of late-aged white blokes. Now the fashionable TMS crew is nothing like that. I am very pleased with what we now have achieved.
As correspondent, the largest story I lined was South Africa’s readmission to world sport, with cricket main the way in which. I acquired to interview Nelson Mandela. Folks say sport and politics should not combine, however typically they do. When it really works, it may be such a pressure for good.
Allen Stanford was an enormous story, as was the fallout from the Kevin Pietersen row. The KP saga felt so divisive, at a time when social media was actually beginning to take maintain.
My favorite second, for sure, was the top of England’s victorious 2010-11 Ashes marketing campaign in Australia.
We had received down beneath for the primary and solely time in my life working for the BBC. There was a spare go within the commentary field and I used to be capable of slip it across the neck of my spouse, Emma, and take her on to the pitch with me.
She was there as I used to be speaking to the England gamers, consuming within the celebrations and seeing the delight of the travelling followers within the crowd.
Mine has been a really egocentric job, but in that second I used to be capable of present Emma simply why I do it. It was the very best.
Jonathan Agnew was chatting with BBC chief cricket author Stephan Shemilt.
