Aggers and Tuffers eager to talk cricket again at Wolverhampton's Grand Theatre

I’m seven minutes late and start with an apology. “Sorry,” I tell Aggers. “Another interview had overrun.”

He’s disarmingly genial. “Oh, don’t worry about that,” says Jonathan Agnew. “I’ve just been pottering around.”

The dulcet tones are unmistakeable, as is the affable disposition. The man who has become the soundtrack to summer to men and women who love cricket is the acme of a good-humoured, easy-going pundit. Approachable and warm, he’s looking forward to heading back out for dates in theatres, after a two-year absence.

The man who has witnessed more than 400 test matches – and who still remembers every one of them – will be teaming up with his partner-in-crime, Phil Tufnall, for An Evening With Aggers and Tuffers. The production reaches Wolverhampton’s Grand Theatre on Tuesday, February 15, and the duo will entertain and inform.

Both, of course, are key figures in the world of cricket, both as former professional players and now as world-renowned commentators.

They were an instant hit from the first evening they performed this show in 2016 and, prior to Covid, continued to play to sell-out audiences around the country. You didn’t have to be a huge cricket fan to appreciate their on-stage charisma, colourful anecdotes and witty banter.

Agnew has often been described as a ‘master broadcaster’, and his consummate skills on air in Test Match Special have proved electric on stage in previous Evenings With Aggers alongside his prickly commentating partner Geoffrey Boycott, spin legend Graeme Swann, Indian’s ‘Little Master’ Sunil Gavaskar and the gloriously eccentric David ‘Bumble’ Lloyd. Fresh from commentating Down Under on England’s recent Ashes debacle, he is poised to take the audience on a fabulous journey.

“I think it’s our first one for a while. It’s the first time either of us have been in a theatre for two years. So it’s great to be going back again into that live audience situation," he says.

"There’s a helluva lot that’s happened in cricket since we’ve been away, so there’ll be no shortage of talking points.”

Aggers enjoys the direct contact with his audience, something that he doesn’t get in quite the same measure on TMS. When he’s in a theatre, he hears in an instant whether the listener gets the joke – or not.

“On the radio, you can come up with what you think is the funniest line of all time and there’s silence so you never really know. But the people who come to our show let us know. They’re there for a good time and Phil is a great entertainer, he’s one of those people who really comes alive when he’s on stage.”

It’s been a curious two years, in which the world locked down and got to grips with a once-in-a-century pandemic. Like many professional cricketers, Aggers spent long periods of time in isolation, and players and commentators were required to live in Covid-secure ‘bubbles’.

“The players were in the Premier League bubbles and we were in Championship Bubbles. We had tests in England at Southampton and Old Trafford and the commentators were allowed out for a walk. At Southampton, that meant we could go around a golf course but at Old Trafford we only had the car park. I’m a country fella, used to long walks with the dog, so that was a bit tough.”

Worse almost followed on this winter’s Ashes tour of Australia, with commentators warned they would face two-weeks in a solitary room once they arrived. That plan, happily, was shelved and instead the matches went ahead without punitive restrictions.

Mental health, however, has been an issue, particularly for players who’ve spent long periods away from loved ones.

“For the players, like Moeen Ali, who’ve moved from tournament to tournament, it must have been horrendous. On the one hand, playing cricket is their job and they have to work to earn money during a short career. On the other hand, they have to keep sane. I know a lot of players linked up on Football Manager computer games to keep entertained, but it’s not been easy.”

Like his great protégé, Brian Johnson, Aggers is viewed by many as being The Voice of Cricket. Wise, funny, upholding the spirit of the game and eschewing the casual aggression and abuse that has been a part of the game across the past 20 or so years, he’s a man with whom people connect. He has been pleased to see a return to traditional values during Covid, where more matches have been played in a spirit of fairness, rather than naked hostility.

“With the West Indies tour, during the first year of the pandemic, there was a great spirit. And with the Ashes, this winter, there’s also been a good spirit. It seems there’s been an awakening that there’s much more to life than simply going out there and winning cricket matches. People want to win and they play to win. But that doesn’t mean they should disrespect others. I don’t think abusing others is the way to play any sport.

“The Ashes was remarkable for the way the two teams got on. There was no less intensity but the players respected each other a bit more. Hopefully we’ve changed. We had the sandpaper stuff and sledging but hopefully the efforts of the West Indies in coming here two years ago helped to change things.”

The Ashes remains a hot topic, given England’s capitulation Down Under when the national team was humiliated in a 4-0 reverse. And while winning in Australia is notoriously difficult, there was no disguising the gulf in class, the muddled thinking, the lack of application and the way in which the one-day game has corroded skills needed for five-day test matches.

Aggers sighs: “England went to Australia knowing they were going to get hammered. It was a pretty miserable experience.

“My personal memory of the Ashes was that I tried to be fair. People who were shouting from the sidelines didn’t necessarily have an idea of what was going on because Australia are hard to beat at home.

“But the gulf between English cricket and Australian cricket is huge. Our domestic season has to be restructured. Four years ago, Andrew Strauss wrote the report saying more better quality county cricket was needed. Now he’s just received another report that says exactly the same thing. In the meantime, the only thing they’ve actually done is stick another one-day tournament in.”

Aggers is a huge supporter of the women’s game, as well as the men’s, and hopes the English Cricket Board will start to address the structural issues that conspire against a world-beating men’s test team.

“We’ve just had one of the best women’s tests of all-time, England versus Australia, and the ECB stuck out the men’s fixtures in the middle of it. The issues facing the ECB are huge. They’re not going to be resolved by someone waving a magic wand and thinking they can get it all done in a season. There are lots of things to address, including visibility.

“They’ve brought The Hundred in to solve that issue because they’d taken telly off free-to-air TV then realised the error of their ways. But The Hundred is creating more problems than it’s solving, yet they’re stuck with that now because they sold it for £1 billion.”

TMS has been Aggers' life for several decades and he’s as passionate about cricket as can be. He gets cross about issues within the game because he wants the game to be better.

“There’s been a lot of change. Even the language of cricket has changed. I’m in my sixties, but I’m perfectly comfortable using the term ‘batsmen'. I’m getting in dodgy water here and I don’t care but the men’s game and the women’s game are not the same. I would never call a woman batsman a batsman, I’d say batter. More girls are playing and that’s wonderful. That’s what we want.”

The differences between men’s cricket and women’s cricket leads onto inclusion – and the fact that cricket is mostly off-limits to the working class.

“I saw Matt Prior highlight something about the coaching clinics in Sussex costing parents £1,000 a time," says Aggers.

"Who can afford that? It puts it out of reach. The absence of black kids playing cricket, why are we surprised? They have no playing fields and not everyone can afford Sky TV. Until you get sport for all and cricket for all, we’ll struggle.”

Yet for all of the game’s ills he remains a great advocate for it. His lifelong love, a passion that provided for a brilliant county career, with Leicestershire, and a brief international career, with England, is strong.

“Cricket gives people life skills and experiences. You are out there by yourself as a batsman or a batter, you have to dig in and get through things.”