Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It is nothing new for the management of an international cricket team to wrestle with the amount of freedom afforded to players.
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.
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 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.
The old player in me can certainly sympathise with how your targets change because you simply do not know what is around the corner.
I love Rome and the way that you can wander around and find something interesting around every street corner. You can smell the history.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Word can spread quickly around the international circuit if a player is perceived to have a fault, particularly if it is against short 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.