Jonathan Agnew (2010) – Thanks, Johnners, London: Blue Door

Anyone who started following English cricket in the 90s will have known nothing of Test Match Special without Jonathan Agnew, now comfortably into his fourth decade in the TMS box, a period of service that outstrips even the venerable Brian Johnston.

Despite its title, Thanks Johnners is as much about its author as its subject, which probably reflects the fact that these two long-serving TMS mainstays worked together on the programme only briefly, between 1991 and 1993, although this was long enough for the senior man to bestow upon his younger colleague the nickname by which he has been known ever since, and for the two to earn lasting notoriety for a moment of unexpected on-air levity.

Around that time, I had only a vague notion that ‘Aggers’ was quite a bit younger than the rest of the TMS team – mainly by virtue of the fact that (and I mean this with all due respect) many of the other voices sounded to my teenage ears as if they belonged to men who were older than God, but also because he had made a brief playing return for Leicestershire in the semi-final of the 1992 Natwest Trophy.

Agnew was still only 32 at that point, having retired two years earlier when it became clear that he was unlikely to ever play international cricket again. The moment of clarity came during the 1989 home Ashes – a central low point, it seems, in the stories of many key players in English cricket at the time – when it appeared that his county skipper Gower, then also captain of England (and facing a deluge of withdrawals from qualified fast bowlers) had been convinced to consider Agnew for selection in the final Test of the summer at The Oval.

Unfortunately, Gower then telephoned Agnew with some bad news: ‘I couldn’t persuade Ted Dexter or Micky Stewart, so you’re not in anymore. They’ve gone for Alan Igglesden. Know anything about him?’

Agnew, historically quite self-deprecating about his playing days, had in fact been one of the leading bowlers in the county cricket during the late 80s. As he summarises it here, his was a career of two halves: ‘the first being when I was an out-and-out fast bowler and played for England when I probably should not have done; and the second being when I slowed down a bit, learned how to swing the ball and did not play for England when I probably should have done.’

Once overlooked for Igglesden (rather unkindly referred to by coach Stewart as England’s ‘seventeenth choice seamer’) Agnew, reasoning that his last chance had gone, moved into journalism, firstly for the Today newspaper, before making rather swift progress to the TMS box after succeeding Christopher Martin-Jenkins as the BBC’s chief cricket correspondent.

His initial role, as a former player, was as expert summariser, which is how he came to be commentating alongside Johnston during the infamous ‘leg over’ incident, when the hit wicket dismissal of Ian Botham during the fifth Test against the West Indies at The Oval in 1991 prompted a serious laughing fit.

Looking back, it does seem a little bit odd that an incident provoked by sexual innuendo should have become such a treasured comedy moment in the national consciousness: it was some years before I even knew what the phrase ‘leg over’ meant, and until that point had laboured under the misapprehension that the whole thing was just an attack of the giggles that came out of nowhere.

In the heat of the moment, TMS producer Peter Baxter was apparently less than impressed, and even Johnston himself considered it unprofessional, until the positive public reaction revealed itself. Nevertheless, the two were subsequently kept apart from each other on commentary for a period, like naughty schoolkids who couldn’t be trusted.

I think the attention surrounding this piece of commentary was my first real experience of TMS, which probably created an expectation in my mind that its coverage was more light-hearted and less serious than it was, although some of the emphasis on the double-entendre certainly receded in the post-Johnston era.

As I became more of a listener myself during the mid-90s, my impression was that Aggers had a tough job trying to balance the continuation of Johnston’s jovial legacy with more serious cricketing considerations, particularly during a period of ongoing struggle for the England team. He reflects here on some early missteps while covering Mike Atherton’s ‘dirt in the pocket’ affair in 1994, although maintains that for the purposes of this story, he was the BBC’s chief cricket correspondent, not the TMS ‘leg over’ man.

Corralling pundits from a bygone generation was also another challenge. I always appreciated contributions from players who had retired more recently – the likes of Graeme Fowler and David Lloyd, or even Vic Marks and Mike Selvey – than those who were a little older and tended to be obsessed with their own version of the past where the fast bowlers were faster, spin bowlers had more knowhow, batsmen possessed proper technique and fielders never dropped catches. Fred Trueman always seemed particularly liable to get out of hand, and required gentle handling from Aggers, CMJ or whoever else was on commentary, to bring him back to the on-field action.(1)

In Thanks, Johnners, Agnew offers some thoughts on a few issues of the era – the era, in this case, being 2010 – including the Allen Stanford affair and the role of technology in assisting umpiring decisions. There are nods, too, to the slightly more innocent days of social media, when it was seen as a novelty and quite a positive thing for people in the public eye to engage with.(2)

Aggers tells a tale from 2009 in which he briefly forgets which knee Andrew Flintoff had injured shortly before going on air and seeks the assistance of his followers, which was gladly given. Today the same question would, no doubt, provoke criticism for poor preparation from angry online hordes demanding the immediate withdrawal of the BBC licence fee.

Similarly, when the appearance of Lily Allen on TMS provoked a snarky online critique of Agnew in The Observer (headline: ‘When Aggers met Lily: an unrequited love affair for the middle-aged’) the same followers, urged on by an irate Aggers, rushed to his defence.

He hit rockier territory as the 2010s progressed: after gamely attempting to engage with angry comments and online conspiracy theories relating to the sacking of Kevin Pietersen in 2014, the wheels rather came off at the end of the decade after he repeatedly called the journalist Jonathan Liew a ‘c__t’ in response to a piece the latter had written in The Independent. This time, Agnew was on the wrong side of the media storm, and he later apologised (and deleted his Twitter account).

If it revealed a different side of Aggers – perhaps one that showed while he was happy to be self-effacing about his past playing career, he took his position as the doyen of cricket commentary rather more seriously – he certainly isn’t the first or last legacy media figure to become baffled, distracted and overwhelmed by a tidal wave of online feedback.

As others also came to realise, it’s difficult enough to be good enough at the thing that you’re actually good at without also trying to convince everyone that you’re a great person who happens to be everyone’s cup of tea.

Despite being buffeted by the winds of public opinion, Aggers has endured, while avoiding the descent into self-parody and repeated use of catchphrases that lies in wait for many a long-serving commentator. Ever since the 90s, he has been the voice of cricket, and whoever succeeds him – an issue apparently of concern even during the writing of this book – will have a tough act to follow.

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Notes:

(1) Even in the late 80s, Johnston – with whom, against all odds, Trueman apparently got on famously – remarked in It’s Been A Piece of Cake: ‘Some people agree with him heartily that things were not as they were. Others think he goes on a bit.’

(2) If Twitter was, back then, a way for middle-aged media people to appear cool and up with modern trends, Aggers slightly undermines this effect here by explaining: ‘For those not in the know, Twitter is a relatively new means of interactive communication which is incredibly fast, by which your followers receive your brief messages – limited to 140 characters – on their computers or mobile telephones, and can respond to them’.

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