TEN
MICHAEL ATHERTON
‘I don’t think as captain you ever think entirely logically. You find ways of feeling optimistic.’
Captains come in all shapes and sizes with all sorts of profiles and qualities. Some captaincy selections are from left field, others more easily explained. For a few there is a certain amount of inevitability. That was certainly the case with Michael Atherton, who had always seemed destined for great things. A fine, classical opening batsman, shrewd, intelligent and likeable, he was even given the nickname ‘FEC’ (Future England Captain) from a young age; that he would inherit the captaincy of England was never in doubt as soon as he established himself in the team. It was written in the tea leaves.
Atherton’s progress through the ranks was swift. He was prodigious at schoolboy level, captained young Lancashire sides, England under-19, Cambridge University and Combined Universities and had played only 23 first-class games for Lancashire before being called up for the 1989 Ashes. The scoreline at the time was 3–0, to Australia. It was one with which he was to become all too familiar.
He was not selected for the West Indies trip of 1989–90 but quickly bedded down alongside Graham Gooch the following summer, his technique and dependability proving a useful foil to Gooch whose bludgeoning of attacks was then at its most clinically effective. A reasonable tour of Australia followed: he scored 279 runs at an average of 31, including his only century against the old enemy, at Sydney.
When the sides met again for the 1993 Ashes series, Atherton, who had endured a lean trot on the spin-friendly surfaces of India and Sri Lanka, was far from certain of his place in the team. But a dramatic chain of events, which started with a return to form at Lord’s, saw him inherit Gooch’s side in a matter of weeks. ‘I was on the verge of being dropped before the second Test at Lord’s, but I got 80 and 99 in that game, and two games later I was captain,’ Atherton said. ‘Everybody knew Goochie had been coming to the end of the road. The winter tour had been disappointing and then we lost the Ashes. Out of nine Test matches, going back to the defeat against Pakistan at the Oval in August 1992, we’d lost eight. Goochie was obviously cracking on in age anyway and it was apparent to us all that he had had enough.’
The two leading candidates for the job were Atherton and Alec Stewart, who had taken over from Gooch when England’s captain was unavailable in Sri Lanka. Stewart was perceived as being of a similar ilk to Gooch, whereas Atherton offered something a bit different. Just as another young England captain, Will Carling, had led English rugby union into a new era, so it was hoped Atherton, whose Cambridge background evoked memories of Mike Brearley, might usher in a new dawn for England cricket. ‘It was perceived that Gooch led an inflexible regime that didn’t take into account different approaches and different personalities,’ Atherton said. ‘His clash with David Gower was at the heart of that. People wanted a change of approach and thought, rightly or wrongly, that I’d be more inclusive compared to Stewie, who was seen very much as Goochie’s right-hand man.’
For a man with the nickname FEC, had the captaincy of England been something he’d thought about, perhaps even coveted, I wondered? ‘Captaining England is obviously a massive honour, the highest honour in the game, and everyone aspires to rise to the top, but it wasn’t something that I’d set out to do or occupied my thoughts,’ Atherton said. ‘I was 25, and I had no grounding, as I wasn’t captain of Lancashire. So it was a little bit of a bolt out of the blue and I did think hard before accepting it. But I knew in the back of my mind that I wasn’t going to have a long career. I’d already had a back operation, I had arthritic problems and the surgeon said I was unlikely to play past 30, so if I didn’t accept it then I was unlikely to get another chance.’
Just as Gooch had succeeded Gower with the Ashes lost and the team in turmoil, so the baton – or poisoned chalice – was handed down to Atherton. The major difference, of course, was that at 25 Atherton was 12 years younger than Gooch had been when he took over the job. There was an opportunity for him to build a team, and with expectations low there was a good chance he would be given time to make it happen. He had made his debut 3–0 down to Australia. Now he was to captain his country in the most famous of all cricketing duels at 3–0 down once more. ‘In the sense that things couldn’t go much worse it wasn’t bad timing,’ Atherton said. ‘I had a pretty clear vision of what I wanted to create. I had a feeling that there was a bit of a hangover from the 1980s. The Botham-Gooch-Gower-Lamb-Gatting era I felt had really come to an end in the 1993 series and we needed to move forward. There were some good young players. Thorpe had just scored a hundred on debut; Hussain was on the fringe, as was Mark Ramprakash; Hick was there, and obviously Robin Smith was well established.
‘We were struggling for bowlers, but we had a good crop of young batsmen. I felt it was a time when we could create something. I knew what I wanted to do – the problem, as it turned out, was implementing it. I wanted to create a “19th County”: a team rather than a group of players coming together now and again. I remember before the Trent Bridge Test in 1993 that we had to have a bit of a cocktail party to introduce people to one another and that seemed to me to be a hopeless way of operating. What I thought needed to happen was to create a feeling of the county side that you were normally with.’
Atherton’s vision was not that revolutionary: pick some promising young players, give them security and opportunity, then with a bit of nurturing they should grow together. It had to be a better formula than chopping and changing personnel and discarding players after a solitary Test. Astonishingly, England had used 29 players in the Ashes of 1989 and 24 players in 1993. Unfortunately, however, not everyone is as forward thinking as they should be in the world of professional sport. It’s a cut-throat, results-driven business where terms like ‘transition’ and ‘building for the future’ are not easy to swallow.
I found this to my own cost at Kent in 2004. I told the Kent committee that we had the youngsters who might enable us to challenge for silverware on a consistent basis three or four years down the line if we brought them through. One of my goals for the season was to play everyone in the squad, so long as they were deserving of the chance. My rationale was that they would get a taste for the first-class game, and want more, whilst also realising where their games might need improving.
I’d read Sacred Hoops by Phil Jackson, the coach of the Chicago Bulls, and found a lot of his ideas relevant and inspiring. We didn’t possess a cricketing equivalent to Michael Jordan, although Andrew Symonds had his moments, but I liked the idea of everyone contributing and feeling like they belonged. If we took a hit in the short term, I thought the long-term benefits would compensate.
We got relegated from the one-day league but nearly won the Championship, winning two more games than the eventual winners, Warwickshire, who pipped us by ten points. Two years later I was no longer captain, all the young bowlers who had made an impact had been released and the preferred route taken by the county was to pursue ready-made Kolpak options, who are better bets in the short term but hinder opportunity for the academy players coming through the ranks.
Atherton would need time to implement his vision and build his team. He would also need support. His first act was to salvage some pride in the Ashes series. Despite losing initially at Edgbaston with an attack that consisted of Martin Bicknell, Mark Ilott and Peter Such – who had played just seven Tests between them – as well as the experienced John Emburey, Atherton’s England won at the Oval. ‘We got the strategy right for the last Test,’ Atherton said. ‘We got a quick pitch, Devon Malcolm and Steve Watkin both played and Gus Fraser was brought back, which was Ted Dexter’s last act as chairman of selectors. The batsmen played aggressively; Malcolm bowled quickly. From a captaincy point of view, things fell into place. Sometimes you put fielders in silly catching positions and catches seem to go there.’
England’s new captain had been thrown in at the deep end but had come up swimming at the end of a tough summer for English cricket. Australia had built on the impressive series of 1989 and 1990–91 and looked stronger than ever. Atherton was under no illusion that closing the gap would be easy.
‘There was a Warne factor that had developed, for starters,’ Atherton said. ‘Obviously at the beginning of the series he was an unknown quantity. Hick had smashed him around at Worcester prior to the first Test and it had rained so hard in Manchester that people thought they might play Tim May, the finger spinner, instead of him, but then, of course, he bowled that first ball, which bowled Gatting and proved to be a dominating force in the series from then on.
‘But I just think they were more settled. They had gone through their dodgy times in the late 1980s. They had a nucleus of hardened batsmen. Taylor had an outstanding series, Slater was the young dasher, and then they had Boon, Mark Waugh, Steve Waugh and Border; six top players whom we never looked like bowling out for most of the series.’
Atherton’s admiration for Border is also palpable. They shared a lot of qualities as players and both thrived on backs-against-the-wall situations. In the early days, Atherton’s ambition would have been to emulate the way Border dragged his team from no-hopers to hardened winners. He wanted to lead by example as a tough, never-take-a-backward-step sort of captain, very much in the Border mould. Both were captains thrust into the breach, but while Border was a reluctant leader, Atherton welcomed the opportunity, even if it had come sooner than he and others would have ideally liked. He had a clearer idea of what he wanted to achieve than Border initially did, and set about making it happen. ‘I did set out my vision to the guys at the outset,’ he said. ‘I said I wanted to get more consistency in selection, trying to bring a new era forward quickly. And at first I had a lot of say in the selection. We went to the West Indies in early 1994 with a team in my image: young and dynamic.’
Atherton’s team fought hard in a series that was dominated by the bat of Brian Lara and the bowling of Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh. England’s lowest moment was being bowled out for 46 in Trinidad, but they fought back valiantly to win in Barbados, thanks to two hundreds from Stewart and 8 for 75 from Fraser. Lara recorded a Test record 375 in Antigua, but on the whole England emerged with credit despite a wider margin of defeat than had occurred on the previous tour under Gooch. Atherton and Stewart at the top of the order had a look of class and solidity, while Robin Smith was a world-class player of fast bowling in the middle. Of the young guns Matthew Maynard, Mark Ramprakash, Graham Thorpe and Graeme Hick were all better for their Caribbean experience and, with Nasser Hussain also on the fringes, England’s batting future looked exciting.
Just as Border saw players of the calibre of David Boon, Geoff Marsh, Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh emerge around him, so Atherton appeared to be creating a useful, vibrant batting unit. Australia had persevered through the lean times of the mid-1980s, knowing they had to give their players a chance to learn the ropes at the highest level.
Unfortunately, Atherton was not given the time for his vision to bear fruit. Ray Illingworth was appointed over his head as chairman of selectors, which saw a departure from the captain’s longer-term strategy. Illingworth, a former successful England captain, was respected in the game but he was from a different era and implemented a more old-school approach. ‘At the end of the West Indies tour, Ray Illingworth came on board as chairman of selectors – a supremo, if you like,’ Atherton said. ‘And that’s when my influence over selection and direction began to fade, as he was of the opinion that you pick your best players for each game and if that means chopping and changing then so be it.
‘Fundamentally, we had a different view of how we should go forward. We got on OK. I respected what he had done as a former captain, and a successful one at that, but he was in charge. He’d been brought in and told he was the ultimate voice, so you either spit your dummy out and let someone else be captain or you just get on with it.’
Atherton decided on the latter course of action, but he became a different type of captain. The energised visionary had been compromised, making way for a more pragmatic, stubborn leader of the team. He was one of five selectors, but with Illingworth’s preferences of Fred Titmus and Brian Bolus being endorsed by the TCCB, Atherton and Keith Fletcher, the coach, were always likely to get out-voted on marginal decisions.
Atherton’s power base was further undermined after the ball-tampering allegations against South Africa at Lord’s in 1994, when he was filmed rubbing dirt from his pocket on to the surface of the ball during the first Test. Besieged by a rampant media smelling blood, Atherton ignored calls to resign. Illingworth fined him, maintaining it was the price of hanging on to his job, and Atherton issued a statement that he intended to carry on.
Always preferring to let his bat do the talking, he made a valiant 99 on a damp Headingley pitch in the second Test, having received a rousing reception from a supportive Yorkshire crowd at the start of play. On such an emotional day he should have followed his instinct not to have appeared at the press conference at the close. After initially responding to the questions with a straight bat he couldn’t resist firing back at the men who’d crucified him over the previous week. ‘A hundred would have been the best answer to the gutter press,’ he said. It was a foolish, if understandable, riposte and a missed opportunity. The negative headlines were back the following morning.
Atherton had publicly thanked Illingworth for his support during this tough time, which only strengthened the chairman of selectors’ hand. The squad that flew out for the 1994–95 Ashes had a different emphasis from the one which bore Atherton’s stamp in the West Indies. This was Illingworth’s team. Fraser was jettisoned and Gatting preferred to either Ramprakash or Hussain. ‘I thought sending both Gooch and Gatting was a mistake,’ Atherton said. ‘I was quite happy for Goochie to go, even though he was nearly 40. He was still playing well, played Warne brilliantly and the plan was to bat him in the middle order to combat Warne. I felt both of those playing in the same side, with hot weather, on big grounds, on a long tour just didn’t make sense really.
‘Leaving Fraser out was a mistake. Illingworth had a black spot as far as Fraser was concerned – not that he didn’t like him, he just thought he wasn’t quick enough and didn’t do anything with the ball. He didn’t rate him. I thought he should have gone instead of Joey Benjamin. I was happy with the Martin McCague selection. I’d played against him and he was quick, bowled a heavy ball and I thought in Australia you need a good dose of pace.’
Atherton had to make do with what he was given. The irony of this was that the Australian captain, Mark Taylor, would have had more influence on the composition of his squad, even though he didn’t have a formal vote on selection. The selectors, not the captain, pick the Australian team, but the reality is the captain has the opportunity to make a case for who he wants alongside him. Having had little say in key selection decisions for an Ashes battle against a strong Australian side, was it hard for Atherton to muster any confidence?
‘I don’t think as a captain or as a player you ever think entirely logically,’ Atherton said. ‘You never sit down and say, “Well, actually they’re a much better side than us and they’re going to wipe the floor with us.” You find ways of feeling optimistic. We’d played some good cricket against South Africa at the back end of the summer, and had the better of two Tests. South Africa were a good side then, so we had a sense that we could compete pretty well. But you look back now and it’s clear that Australia had a much better side than us. They had a nucleus of very good players and a few great ones.’
Atherton’s optimism was quickly dispelled as Australia surged into a 2–0 lead, with wins in Brisbane and Melbourne. Taylor and Slater grabbed the series by the throat, the latter smashing 176 at the Gabba before Warne once again mesmerised the batsmen. He returned career best figures of 8 for 75 in the first Test and took a hat-trick in the second in front of his beloved home fans at the MCG. To make matters worse for England’s captain, his players were dropping like flies.
‘On the field it didn’t fall apart. Off the field it did; there were so many injuries. I think we sent six players home. McCague, Craig White, Darren Gough, Hick. Neil Fairbrother came out and then got injured, and even the physio, Dave Roberts, broke his finger, which meant he couldn’t massage anyone, which kind of summed it up. It was a complete shambles. Devon Malcolm and Joey Benjamin got chicken pox. With just the bare XI standing on occasions, we did pretty well to stay competitive.’
Malcolm’s chicken pox, diagnosed before the series had even begun, opened the door for Fraser to return. He had sensibly opted to play in club cricket in Sydney so as to be ready for any call-to-arms and he was drafted into the squad immediately. Illingworth, whose liking for communication through the media was all-too-familiar, said at a Sports Writers’ Association lunch in London three days before the Test: ‘If Mike puts him in the side, I’ll ring him to tell him what I think.’ It was not helpful for team morale.
England’s one success of the series came in the fourth Test at Adelaide, when they used their five remaining fit batsmen and Steve Rhodes at number six. Often having fewer batsmen can focus the minds of a top order, which consequently has to take more responsibility. On this occasion Atherton won an important toss and led from the front with a typically solid 80. Gooch helped him blunt the new ball with 47, but it was Gatting’s timely 117 that pushed England to a competitive 353. The in-form Australian batsmen hit back, reaching 396 for 5, but Malcolm and Fraser took the last five wickets for 23 runs to bowl Australia out for 419. As captain, the upside of having only five batsmen is having more bowling options at your disposal, and it paid dividends late in the innings as Atherton’s most potent combination had enough in the tank to finish the job.
At 181 for 6 in the third innings of the game, England needed something special and they got it courtesy of DeFreitas, who took the attack to the bowlers in making 88 off just 95 balls. Thorpe had made 83 and Crawley provided valuable support to push England up to 328, leaving Australia an awkward target of 263 on the last afternoon. Malcolm produced his best opening salvo of the series, removing both openers and then finding a beauty to rearrange Steve Waugh’s stumps first ball. Tails up and having been on the receiving end for most of the tour, England’s bowlers allowed the batsmen no respite. Atherton rotated his four seam bowlers skilfully and, despite a canny 51 not out from Healy, they ran through the rest of the batting, knocking Australia over for 156 to win by 106 runs. Although it proved to be nothing more than a consolation as Australia wrapped up the series with a 329-run win in Perth, it was reward for England’s and Atherton’s perseverance on what had become the toughest of tours.
From a captaincy perspective, it had been the third Test in Sydney that had provided the sternest examination of Atherton’s captaincy credentials. It had also been the most controversial. For the first time in the series, Atherton found himself in the driving seat for the majority of the Test match. A mediocre start saw England struggle against McDermott and Fleming, reaching 197 for 7 until Gough altered the momentum of the contest in ‘Bothamesque’ fashion with a terrific performance with bat and ball. Ably assisted by the stoic Fraser and the belligerent Malcolm, Gough smashed 51 out of the next 58 runs before Malcolm weighed in with 29 off just 18 balls to take England past 300. Then, fully pumped up, Gough roared in with the ball to take 6 for 49 as Australia slumped to 116 all out.
England required quick runs in the second innings and things were going according to plan until Hick became becalmed in the nineties. Atherton describes events thus: ‘At tea time on the fourth day we were 450 on, needing to win the Test match to keep the Ashes alive. It just wasn’t happening. Hick couldn’t seem to get the strike from Thorpe. He was dawdling around a bit and suddenly time was ticking away and I got frustrated and made a snap decision to declare leaving Hick on 98, which in retrospect might have been a bit hasty.
‘A lot of people thought I was mad to do it; others thought it was right. Richie Benaud thought I should have declared even earlier. In principle, what I did was right in that it gave us the maximum chance to win the game – to have two new balls to get into them. The knock-on effects just weren’t great: Hicky didn’t speak to me for two weeks and the dressing-room was a bit deflated by it.
‘I remember going to his room that evening – as obviously in the field I could see how infuriated he was – and tried to sit down and talk to him about it, but he didn’t want to know at all. It was quite an awkward meeting. I misread Hicky. I didn’t realise how important hundreds were to him. We all like scoring hundreds, but I can honestly say I wouldn’t have had that reaction at all. His reaction was disappointing – I get on well with Hicky and like him a lot, but at that time I thought we should have been able to sort it out man-to-man and move on.’
Atherton did send a clear message out to the middle that he wanted to declare and is right to have wanted as long as possible to bowl the opposition out. In theory, the declaration made sense. But people are more important than theory and the effects such a move can have on a player and a dressing-room outweigh the extra five minutes you gain to bowl a side out.
Atherton’s misreading of Hick represents a captaincy failing on his part. You need to know what makes your players tick. Hick, while prolific for Worcestershire, had struggled for England and a hundred against Australia would, one suspects, have done wonders for his confidence. I take his point about Hick’s reaction being disappointing – it was, and doesn’t reflect well on him, but he was playing in an era where one or two bad games meant you could be out of the side, so his reaction was to some extent understandable. The disappointment in all of this is that Atherton’s original vision for England’s future would have given players like Hick the security to be better able to deal with such a declaration.
The other thing you have to remember as captain is that by the very nature of the office you usually care more about the fortunes of the team than the rest of the players. And that’s not to say they don’t care, but just that your own focus is different, as you are judged by the results of the team more than is the case with individual players. You see the bigger picture while often they see individual runs and wickets first, victory second. Nasser Hussain describes Atherton as ‘someone you’d play for every time because he didn’t try to do things for himself’. Such a leader would struggle with any perception of a player putting his own needs ahead of the team’s and would be more inclined to declare on a player dawdling on 98 out of principle. Such captaincy decisions are, of course, made in an instant without the benefit of hindsight. Instead of England taking to the field buoyed by a popular player having reached an important career milestone, they started flat. Taylor and Slater put on 208 for the first wicket and the draw was comfortably achieved.
On occasion it does no harm for a captain to re-emphasize the principles of the team by firing a shot across a player’s bow. I remember Kent declaring at Trent Bridge in 1995 with Neil Taylor on 98. Mark Benson, the captain, who was not playing, having got injured in warm-ups two days before, wanted us to get bowling at the Nottinghamshire top order. Taylor, a very experienced player, knew we needed to declare but was too focused on his hundred to the extent that he was defending against a part-time spinner rather than taking any chances. An angry Benson told acting captain Aravinda de Silva to call the batsmen in, but when de Silva hesitated Min Patel said, ‘I’ve seen enough of this rubbish,’ and promptly did the honours from the balcony. In this instance the declaration was a positive move and was supported by the majority of the team.
I had a more delicate dilemma in 2004 when contesting a crunch Championship match against Warwickshire at Edgbaston. We were the top two sides in the Championship and while rain ruined any chance of a result, we could close the gap on the home side by acquiring our bonus points whilst depriving them of theirs. We achieved maximum points when we hit 400 and, with Warwickshire needing another wicket to obtain another bowling point, my instinct told me to declare. I hesitated only because our talented young batsman, Alex Loudon, who had never scored a first-class hundred, was 90 not out. I knew the tough decision was to declare, as I could imagine the frustration of losing the Championship by a solitary point, but I also felt it was important to show Alex we cared about his hundred. I held on in the hope he would score ten more runs, but he gloved a hook to the keeper and was out for 91. I’d accomplished neither of my objectives.
The Australians, who play a very team-orientated game, and whose players were protected by central contracts and given more extended opportunities, were more sympathetic to Atherton’s decision to declare on Hick. Like Benaud, Taylor saw no problem with Atherton’s ‘brave’ move, preferring instead to take issue with Atherton’s tactics on day five. ‘I think, because he had been brought up in an era where Australia had been so dominant over England, that he missed an opportunity to go for the jugular,’ Taylor said. ‘I had told our players with over an hour to go that we were no longer going for the victory, but it took him a long time to realise we were playing out for the draw. He didn’t quite have the fortitude to go out there and grab the Test match.’
It had been a tough tour for England and their captain. Beaten convincingly 3–1 in the Tests, smashed in the one-day matches and with a multitude of injury problems, questions about morale were inevitably raised. Atherton, though, has a remarkably phlegmatic streak and remained philosophical about the Ashes experience Down Under. ‘It was clear once we were 2–0 down we weren’t going to win the Ashes,’ Atherton said. ‘Melbourne was a low point. Warne got his hat-trick there and, with the MCG being a bit of a coliseum with an amazing atmosphere, getting beaten badly is made worse by having 80,000 Aussies screaming at you.
‘You hear players talking of unhappy tours or bad atmospheres but I never felt like that as a player. I enjoyed touring and playing, and even though things were going badly on the field I never felt miserable about it, even though it might have looked that way. If you’re there making the decisions, you’re energised by the challenge of it and for me it was an interesting time; other players might not have felt that way.
‘Things were different from 1993. As captain, I was in the trenches being bombed from all sides. At the start in 1993 things were easier. I made decisions instinctively with less thought; I knew exactly where I wanted to go and was more in control of our destiny in that I had a greater say in selection. In 1995, there were lots of other issues impinging on my thought processes, like issues with the selectors – I didn’t get on with Titmus and Bolus at all. I knew they both didn’t want me as captain and they were briefing against me all the time; it was very political. I had an ambivalent relationship with Illingworth – I got on fine with him – but clearly we didn’t see down the same line. I had issues with the media too at this point, on the back of what had happened in the summer with the ball-tampering stuff, so there were a lot of issues that made the job harder. And to some extent I’d made the job harder for myself. Yet I was still batting well at this point and I felt the team were still with me, so there were a lot of positive things as well.’
It’s an interesting summary from Atherton, because he illustrates how different strands of England cricket were working against each other. The tussle with the selectors, who were from a different era and always unlikely to see eye-to-eye with a captain who quite obviously wanted to do things differently, was bordering on the unbearable. But his poor relationship with the media should not be underestimated either. After the ‘dirt in the pocket’ affair he decided the press wasn’t to be trusted and clammed up, perhaps missing a trick in the process. After all, a few friendly headlines and a couple of journalists arguing your corner can go a long way to appeasing the public and the bosses at the TCCB. Atherton was not a believer in image but, as an ambassador for his team and for English cricket, he had a responsibility to portray a positive image to the sponsors, to the nation and to the rest of the cricketing world.
In a press conference at the end of the last Test of the 1994–95 series, Atherton produced a prepared speech. He repeated his wish for a young team with character and desire, and then said: ‘What we require are selectors who are more in touch with the dynamics of the modern game, ideally former recently retired Test players who are able to communicate with current players more effectively because they have played the same game and talk the same language.’
Illingworth was not impressed. On the eve of the following winter’s tour to South Africa, the first of a three-part interview with Illingworth by Geoff Boycott was published in The Sun under the headline: ‘Atherton is so stubborn, inflexible and narrow-minded’. Having to deal with Illingworth publicly sticking the knife in was tough enough without affronted journalists giving it an extra twist. One couldn’t help but wonder if a more conciliatory stance from Atherton might have softened the media’s portrayal of him. His intransigence and the subsequent frostiness certainly did him no favours.
Nasser Hussain, who saw this relationship at close quarters, realised he would have to cultivate a different type of relationship with the media when he assumed the captaincy. ‘I’d seen Athers, Stewie and Goochie deal with the media and decided you couldn’t beat them so I gave them everything they wanted. I wouldn’t go into a press conference bearing any sort of grudge against any of them because it comes across on camera and you give a bad conference,’ he said.
One of Atherton’s biggest bugbears was the amount of cricket played and the workload on key bowlers. From 1994 to 1998, when Angus Fraser retired, the careers of Caddick (England’s eighth highest Test wicket-taker), Gough (ninth) and Fraser (15th) overlapped for 53 England Test matches. Astonishingly, however, this trio – three of the best bowlers during Atherton’s captaincy – never played a solitary Test together. In 50 per cent of the matches, two of them played; in approximately 46 per cent just one of them took to the field; and in seven of these matches none of the three played. It was a sad indictment of the structure of English cricket and it was something Atherton railed against. He longed for central contracts and the opportunity of throwing the ball to bowlers operating at full throttle. Gus Fraser played just 46 Tests out of a possible 103 over his nine-year international career. He took 177 wickets at an average of 27. He bowled 18 per cent of his career first-class deliveries for his country. In contrast Craig McDermott, who was also born in 1965, took 291 Test wickets, having bowled 52 per cent of his deliveries for Australia.
By the time the sides met for the Ashes of 1997, some of what Atherton had asked for in his Perth press conference at the end of the previous series had happened. Titmus and Bolus had been replaced by recent Test players Gatting and Gooch, who were still playing county cricket and therefore able to talent spot at first-hand, while David Graveney had taken over from Illingworth as the new chairman of selectors. The other two selectors were Atherton as captain and David Lloyd as coach.
Atherton was also coming off the back of his first win abroad as captain, having beaten New Zealand 2–0 in the early part of the year, where his own performances were very much to the fore. In the crucial Christchurch Test he carried his bat in the first innings, finishing 94 not out, and scored 118 in the second as England chased down 305. He left the New Zealand series with 325 Test runs at an average of 108.33. More importantly, for Atherton, the team was taking shape and playing with belief. A significant statistic was that Christchurch was the first time England had fielded an unchanged side in 33 Tests and almost three years. The last occasion this had happened was in the West Indies in the last two Tests before Illingworth became involved. England at last had some momentum as Australia beckoned. ‘In 1997, we were more settled. In New Zealand, the attack was Gough, Caddick, Cork and two spinners, with Stewie as the all-rounder, and I thought that was useful. With the bat, Thorpe, Hussain, myself and Stewart were all established, so I thought we’d give Australia a pretty good run. Then we won the Texaco Trophy one-day series 3–0, so going into the Ashes we were all upbeat.’
England could not have dreamed of a better start, at Edgbaston, as Gough and Caddick tore through the Australian top order after an under-pressure Mark Taylor had elected to bat. At one stage Australia were 54 for 8 and although they mustered 118, a double-hundred from Hussain and a hundred from Thorpe put the game out of reach of the tourists. Taylor got the critics off his back with a courageous second innings hundred, but England triumphed, igniting Ashes fever. ‘The atmosphere was reminiscent of 2005, as we had won the one-dayers and then won the first Test,’ Atherton said. ‘I remember after Edgbaston the tabloids doing things like marking the England players out of ten for how good looking they were, so it moved out of the realms of just cricket and there were signs that it had begun to catch the public’s imagination and the public mood.’
Australia had the better of the second Test at Lord’s, but the rain ensured England went to Manchester one up. Taylor made an incredibly brave decision to bat first on a green, damp pitch, which might have backfired if Steve Waugh had been adjudged lbw first ball. ‘Waugh was plum lbw first ball to Caddick, who hit him with a low full toss,’ Atherton said. ‘The plan to Waugh was always to bowl very straight and very full to him early on, attacking the stumps, and it hit him on the boot in front and how he wasn’t given out I will never know.
‘I’m not one to say that luck influences series to that extent, except to say that Taylor made a very brave decision to bat first and it worked out for him, but it all hinged on a moment that could have changed things completely. Waugh’s two hundreds were outstanding. They were hard hundreds. It flattened out a bit for the second one, but in the first innings it was a juicy deck and we had made inroads. He just played each ball and kept going.’
Having had Australia 160 for 7, England were within striking distance of a 2–0 lead in the Ashes. Waugh’s blade, however, changed the momentum of the whole contest. England would never have another sniff of victory, as Taylor’s men took Headingley and Trent Bridge to retain the Ashes comfortably.
Curiously, in a return to the old days, the Headingley Test saw Gloucestershire’s Mike Smith given a debut in place of Caddick. Lloyd and Atherton favoured Caddick but were out-voted by Gatting, Gooch and Graveney. ‘It was the only time that I went to a player and said I’m afraid I’ve been out-voted,’ Atherton said. ‘I didn’t really believe in knobling the selectors, but I was annoyed about the decision – not in losing the vote but in losing it when the people who were making those decisions weren’t there to assess the conditions.’
Smith became one of the ‘horses-for-courses’ selections for which Headingley was famous but Thorpe dropped Elliott – a straightforward chance at first slip – off the left-armer, who failed to take a wicket. The negativity surrounding Smith’s selection was prescient to Darren Pattinson’s call-up against South Africa in 2008. A fine bowler for his county, Smith cut a lonely figure both on the field and around the hotel in the evenings. In contrast to Dean Headley, who fitted straight into the core of the team, having made his debut one Test earlier at Old Trafford, the more introverted Smith found the England set-up less welcoming.
Caddick returned for the fifth Test, while brothers Ben and Adam Hollioake made their debuts, having impressed in the one-day series. ‘There was a lot of pressure in the media, almost a campaign, to pick the Hollioakes and I guess it was a sign that we weren’t strong enough in selection to resist that,’ Atherton said. ‘We were still chopping and changing too much. It was in an era pre-central contracts when things were just more fluid. People who got 200 in the county game the week before were automatically considered even if not necessarily chosen.’
Australia racked up 427, with solid contributions from their top five, who each made half-centuries, before McGrath and Warne shared eight wickets to take a lead of 114 into the second innings. Further half-centuries from Blewett and Healy set England 451 to win, but England never got close, subsiding to 186 all out. Thorpe, whose 82 not out was the only contribution of note, could only stand and watch from the non-striker’s end as McGrath triggered Australian celebrations on the fourth afternoon by having Malcolm caught at slip. Taylor’s men had retained the Ashes.
Atherton had been captain four years and five days and had seen his reign come full circle. With England’s fate in cricket’s oldest duel finally settled, he prepared to resign. ‘I thought I’d done enough and been around long enough and I actually said, “That’s it, I’m done,” but Lord MacLaurin then said to me that I couldn’t resign until the end of the series. Maybe I should have been stronger and just said, “I’m sorry, you’ll have to find someone else,” but you kind of feel you owe these people. They stick by you, so you should stick by them.’
Atherton acquiesced and it turned out to be a fateful decision as England won an extraordinary match – albeit a dead rubber – at the Oval in similar vein to four years earlier. Caddick and a returning Phil Tufnell captured 19 of the 20 wickets between them as England bowled the Aussies out for 104 in the final innings to win by 19 runs. Buoyed by a Test win, which gave the series a respectable 3–2 scoreline, and a month off, Atherton decided to carry on, but the Oval victory had been both a mirage and an oasis in the desert of England cricket and he resigned the following winter in the Caribbean.
His last captaincy forays were in the Ashes of 2001, when he took over after Hussain sustained a broken finger. He handed the reins back to Hussain with the score at 3–0 to Australia, having lost at Lord’s and Trent Bridge. It was the same scoreline at which he had entered the Test arena in 1989, and taken charge of the England team in 1993. It was to be his last season as a player, too, as his body and Glenn McGrath began to catch up with him.
‘I got to the stage when McGrath was an issue for me. People would say I had a more moderate record against Australia, which is true overall, but if you break these things down you see the effect McGrath had on me. Up to McGrath’s arrival on the scene, which was Perth in 1995, I had a pretty good record against Australia. I averaged over forty in that series and mid-forties in the 1993 series, not necessarily getting hundreds but being consistent. Then in 1997 he got me out a few times and from then on he just got the better of me, so I have a very poor record in the second half of my Ashes career and a very decent one in the first half.
‘Why? Logically, I shouldn’t have had such a problem with him in the sense that Shaun Pollock was a very similar bowler, who got in close to the stumps with a high arm, bowling in the same fashion, and I never felt an issue with Pollock. But when you start having problems with a bowler it becomes a mental issue and eventually it became that.’
Atherton played his last Test innings at the Oval. He edged McGrath to Warne at slip and was out for nine. It was the 19th time McGrath had got the better of his old adversary in Test cricket, a world record. And so Atherton slipped quietly off the Oval turf, emotions typically kept in check. He had begun his Test career under David Gower in a team that lost the Ashes 4–0 and here he was, 12 years later, losing 4–1. He played throughout the 1990s, captained in a record 54 Tests and still England had got no nearer the old enemy. It was an unprecedented run of Ashes failure, one that so committed a servant didn’t deserve. There were times through the 1990s – most notably at the Wanderers ground in South Africa in 1995–96, Christchurch in 1996–97 and Trent Bridge in 1998, as he duelled famously with fast bowler Allan Donald – when it seemed Atherton’s defiance was the only thing keeping England alive. He took everything that was thrown at him. He stood unflinching in the way of 90 mph missiles and could skilfully deal with big turning leg-breaks.
It was the curve balls that English cricket threw up off the field, however, that proved toughest to deal with. He began the job of leadership with a young man’s spirit, clear of purpose and of vision, yet he found his plans impossible to implement. Thwarted at every turn, he retreated to the trenches and settled for fighting alongside his team. His teammates loved and respected him for it, but he was unable to take England forward as he would have liked.
Ironically, just as he was calling time on his playing career, there were signs that everything he’d fought for throughout his captaincy was beginning to happen. The selectors, coach and captain were working together, and with more help behind the scenes the England cricket team was showing signs of progress. Continuity in selection and central contracts meant that England was beginning to feel, after all, like the 19th County. For Atherton, though, it was ten years too late.