Top 60 Nasser Hussain Quotes

There is nothing worse after a long car journey than to have to go to meetings.

Well, I’ve always prefered playing spin off the back foot because, to my mind, it takes short leg and silly point out of the equation.

If you try and cover all your bases, like the ECB tend to do, you end up with muddled decisions.

Pakistan is a very emotional, cricket-loving nation and what Pakistan need is a street-fighter-type in charge of the team.

Nothing worse than walking out in a Test match and finding your hand slipping on the handle.

Sometimes you don’t realise what you’ve got, because it’s right in front of you.

Michael Atherton’s powers of concentration never cease to amaze me. When you need reminding what Test-match batting is all about, who else would you have at the other end?

I certainly do not want to be remembered as a good captain who perhaps didn’t contribute with the bat as much as he might have done.

I can’t pick up a pair of new gloves like Alec Stewart or Mike Atherton. I have to get them sweaty and loose, and put extra stuff on my gloves to protect the fingers.

I am still disappointed when I have let myself down or my team. That will not change at any stage in the future.

I think Kohli is magnificent in a run chase, I have to say. He has won so many matches for India.

When you’ve done as much travelling as I have, it becomes hard work – I probably spend 90 per cent of the year travelling.

You are only given so much talent and it is up to you what you do with it.

Being in charge of a team is just like having kids.

Bowling was my natural skill. I didn’t know how I was doing it, but I was spinning it miles and bamboozling people.

A captain has to be able to look a player in the eye before he starts his run-up or goes out to bat.

I went to Spain with my brother when I was about 17. We stayed near Barcelona and it was terrible. There were floods and I ended up missing my flight home.

Many Pakistani fans will say they have followed their team for too long and had their hearts broken many times, but I love them, and I love their cricket.

There are lots of places I would love to go to in Europe and North America.

I believe we should come down very firmly on the guilty without infringing the civil liberties of the innocent, like publishing mobile phone bills.

Every player needs to be aware of the levels of fitness needed to play international cricket.

What you don’t want from a player is to walk off and say ‘that’s the way I play.’

I play hard and I play to win, and my team play for me because of the backing I show them.

Adam Gilchrist and Ricky Ponting are anything but conventional, and you can’t frown on Steve Waugh for playing his slog-sweep because it’s so effective.

I want to captain England in more Tests than anyone else.

Some would argue the opposite: that with better pitches you should be able to express yourself, a bit like Kevin Pietersen does. Looking back, I wish I had been a bit more like that. But I always had a fear of failure, a fear of getting out, so I tried to eliminate risk from my game.

I’ve played cricket seriously since I was eight years old, when I first played for the Essex under-11s. I can’t just turn it off.

When I see people like Pietersen bat, I wish that I’d freed up a bit as a batsman, but it’s very easy to say now.

When I first came into the England one-day side and joined the selectors, I wanted to move away from picking what some people called the bits-and-pieces to the best batsmen and bowlers.

Spinners are a funny breed. If they’re playing on seaming pitches they moan and if they’re about to play on real ‘Bunsen burners’ they reckon the pressure is on them.

I always used the media – if people were having a go I could use it as motivation to prove them wrong.

It was Test cricket as it should be played, when the irresistible force in Allan Donald met the immovable object in Mike Atherton at Trent Bridge in 1998. And I was happy to watch from the best seat in the house – at the other end.

It sounds sycophantic, but I don’t think I have met anyone in cricket who gives so much to a team as Marcus Trescothick does to England.

Test match cricket is about individual brilliance.

I admire anyone who can show they can dig deep. Ballesteros and Sergio Garcia, people who are obviously mentally strong. Or Graham Thorpe. He is your fighter. He’s the kid who is bullied at school but will stand up in a fight when it matters.

There have been a few times in my career when I have been close to tears after completing an innings, but rarely when I am waiting to bat.

You should not be flat playing for your country.

Everywhere in life people are in authority to make decisions and you have to abide by them, whether right or wrong.

If you’ve got an opportunity to improve your squad before a World Cup you must take it.

I think Andrew Strauss never gets enough credit for what he’s done for English cricket.

Sometimes when you’re around a side you don’t realise how good they are until you go away from home and they are a very fine team.

My philosophy is to respect the opposition off the field and play it as tough as possible on it.

I want to play 100 Test matches for England.

Sometimes we don’t build up our own cricketers enough.

At the end of my career I always wanted to look back and know that I had given it my absolute best.

The closer I got to Essex 2nds, the more technical I got with my batting.

Pujara is not fashionable, he’s very much old-fashioned – he’s not great between the wickets and he’s not a modern, extravagant, in-your-face character like Kohli, Dhawan or Pandya.

My relationship with my dad is everything.

Seems to me the rules are loaded against batsmen. If bowlers show dissent after a near miss they never seem to get punished.

You have to think about ways of improving the helmet all the time, balancing protection with being able to move and see the ball.

I’m not naive and realise it doesn’t make good commentary or sell newspapers if you only say nice things, and the time does come when you have to say someone isn’t good enough and has to go. But commentators like Richie Benaud have shown that criticism can be made in a constructive or humorous way.

Patriotism is something I wear in my heart not on my head.

I played with Graham Thorpe and Alec Stewart; if anything off the field affected Graham his cricket life was not important and you had to give him a break. But if Alec had issues at home you would never know about it; he would turn up and think: ‘This is my job, I can do it.’

It’s not an issue for me if I captain England in 42 Tests or in 50. It’s a question of what is best for the team in Test and one-day cricket.

The Australians are a weird bunch – until the cricket starts they’re really friendly, saying ‘good luck’ all the time, but the moment the cricket begins they have a real go at you.

I admired Stephen Fleming.

I like back-to-back Tests at the end of a series, without any county game in between. We know county cricket has no bearing on Test cricket.

It’s not easy bowling off-spin in one-day internationals with only five men allowed on the leg side.

Politicians as diverse as Nelson Mandela and Robert Mugabe have been quoted at our team meetings. That is how political England cricket tours have become.

Edgbaston is a ground where you have to think on your feet because it can vary so much from season to season or session to session.