# Jonathan Agnew

**Published by:** [Horace Terry](https://paragraph.com/@potplayer/)
**Published on:** 2022-07-03
**URL:** https://paragraph.com/@potplayer/jonathan-agnew

## Content

Jonathan Philip Agnew, MBE, DL (born 4 April 1960) is an English cricket broadcaster and a former professional cricketer. He was born in Macclesfield, Cheshire, and educated at Uppingham School. He is nicknamed "Aggers", and, less commonly, "Spiro" – the latter, according to Debrett's Cricketers' Who's Who, after former US Vice-President Spiro Agnew.[1] Agnew had a successful first-class career as a fast bowler for Leicestershire from 1979 to 1990, returning briefly in 1992. In first-class cricket he took 666 wickets at an average of 29.25. Agnew won three Test caps for England, as well as playing three One Day Internationals in the mid-1980s, although his entire international career lasted just under a year. In county cricket, Agnew's most successful seasons came toward the end of his career, after his last international match, when he had learned to swing the ball. He was second- and third-leading wicket-taker in 1987 and 1988 respectively, including the achievement of 100 wickets in a season in 1987. He was named as one of the five Cricketers of the Year by Wisden Cricketers' Almanack in 1988. While still a player, Agnew began a career in cricket journalism and commentary. Since his retirement as a player, he has become a leading voice of cricket on radio, as the BBC Radio cricket correspondent and as a commentator on Test Match Special. He has also contributed as a member of Australian broadcaster Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Grandstand team. Agnew's on-air "leg over" comment on Test Match Special, made to fellow commentator Brian Johnston in 1991, provoked giggling fits during a live broadcast and reaction from across the UK. The incident has been voted "the greatest sporting commentary ever" in a BBC poll;[2] Michael Henderson, one of Agnew's peers and rivals, has described him as "a master broadcaster ... the pick of the sports correspondents at the BBC."[3]

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