CRICKET: Mike Atherton, at the centre of a ball-tampering row, but still proud to lead England, talks exclusively to Paul Martin
FOR a man who was in deep personal anguish and cricketing crisis only a few days ago, Mike Atherton is proving that the old bulldog spirit lives on.
In looks he is the antithesis of a Churchill, or a bulldog — lean as a whippet, with piercing eyes, a sharp nose and, with his strong Lancashire acent an educated turn of phrase emerges, last heard perhaps when Dr Mike Brearley was the England captain.
He is not only continuing to lead England, but thinks he can lead them to victory, and a share of the series. He argues that their best chance of winning was always going to be at the Oval. The pundits may consider the harder, bouncier track would benefit South Africa’s pace attack, especially if Allan Donald is fit. Atherton begs to differ.
“Funnily enough our players do better on pitches where there is some bounce … like Barbados, and the Oval. Lords was too slow and low,” he told me in the first face-to-face interview he has given since the dirt was being dished at Lord’s.
“People say it helps the pace bowlers — but look how we took Merv Hughes and company apart, seven or eight runs an over, in the first 10 overs of the second innings last year.
“That’s the sort of start I’ll be expecting when we open. We’ll be attacking … but our players won’t commit Hara Kiri straight away.
“Of course if Allan Donald is not fully fit that’ll be to our advantage, as it’s his sort of wicket. but I’m confident with or without him — even though we know the South Africans have got an abundance of character.”
Admiration is the only word for Atherton’s view of South African cricket and the leadership of his opposite number. “Wessels’ options are limited. He has four seam bowlers and they know they must bowl a line, one blaster and the other three to work away.
“He sticks very rigidly to the game plan. It’s not very exciting, but his options are limited.
“He’s right. I am myself a great believer in sticking to a winning formula. I’m trying to find one!”
The Oval may be where the discovery is made. “We’ve not come back in a series when down for some years. But now if we can turn it around it shows we have a bit of fight and guts,” expounded Atherton.
“It takes character for us to come back, and that’s what I mean to do.”
That’s the sort of fighting talk that Ray Illingworth, England’s cricket supremo, likes to hear. He said this week: “Atherton is a tougher bugger than I was at 26.” That’s saying something — Illingworth was one of the hardest men ever to captain England.
When Atherton took the helm for England after the ship had drifted towards the rocks last year under Gooch, the pilot was hailed across the country as England’s saviour.
And indeed he did a sterling piece of navigating through the shark infested waters of the Caribbean, after first restoring some respectability against the visiting Australians.
But if Harold Wilson was right in declaring a week to be a long time in politics, then the space of a few months must constitute a millenium in cricket. The latest issue of the satirical magazine Private Eye sums up England’s, and Atherton’s, humiliation. Under the words “Cricket fiasco” it uses a genuine photograph of Atherton examining a ball, and declaring: “We’re even useless at cheating.”
Morale could have collapsed under the combined weight of their poor performance and the ball-tampering row. but it clearly has not. Determination was written on the players’ faces at the team hotel after the second test ended tamely. And Atherton is convinced that that ball-tampering episode has actually made England stronger.
“I think the affair has had quite a positive influence, actually. The team has backed me in these difficult circumstances, and when that happens, you can close ranks, That makes you stronger. that’s what took place at Headingley … though I must say that after Lord’s anything had to be an improvement.
“The 99 I scored at Headingley was the most important innings of my life. It’s certainly taken some of the heat off me.”
Atherton says he feels deep remorse for his own actions at Lord’s. “I know what I did was very foolish. I knew that as captain the spotlight was on me all the time, and I must take responsibility for what happened.”
Atherton revealed that he had actually offered to show match referee Peter Burge of Australia the pair of trousers he’d worn during the affair — but by that time there was “nothing left” in the pockets. “There hadn’t been all that much in there, but what was in the trousers had gone,” said Atherton. He did not explain what had happened to the pocket’s contents.
Contrition, though, is Atherton’s order of the day. He felt bitterly sorry that he lied to Burge the first evening — before coming “clean” the next day and being fined 2 000 pounds in total by Illingworth.
“It was my big mistake not to tell Burge what I had in my pocket. I was afraid to tell him because my actions could have been misconstrued,” Atherton maintained. “There was not much point in Burge actually inspecting the trousers. People would have said: He changed the trousers for someone else’s. I don’t put my name in black ink on the inside.
“But I know I let myself, my team and my country down. It hurts even more because I’m a team man, and I feel I’ve embarrassed my team.”
Yet had it not been for an alert television cameraman zooming in on a strange bit of cricketing in action, and a producer who slipped it in the recording because nothing else was happening, no-one would have known that the red object was being treated in an unusual way
There is little doubt that Atherton was unlucky. Others have sought ot improve the ball, and very few have been snapped in the act. He broke that eleventh commandemnt: thou shalt not be found out. But found out doing what? Really very little. Really nothing that the Pakistanis had not done two years before.
They too were filmed doing much more suspicious things with the ball, apparently involving a little piece of metal. But the BBC, I have it on good authority, declined to show the incriminating pictures. They were negotiating a new contract for television rights to England test series, and the satellite chanel Sky sports was looking for an opening. Had the BBC been seen to stir controversy the Test and County Cricket Board might, they feared, have chosen those who promised editorial compliance.
It was only when Allan Lamb published his allegations in a British newspaper, and was fined by the English cricket authorities for doing so, that the matter became public.
Atherton made another attack on the British media who had called for him to resign after the incident. “When I mentioned the gutter press they didn’t like it one bit. Our press like to give out stick but they’re not very good at taking it.
“I say: if the cap fits, wear it.”
At Leeds he continued to simer, but hostilities were narrowly avoided in the after-match press conference. “His expression was wooden, his voice a dull monotone and his answers occasionally dismissive,” was the description of it in the Daily Mail.
Atherton had been particularly angered the week before at the attempts some papers made to “invade my privacy” when he went away to the Southern Lakes to think over his position.
“I stayed at a friend’s house … and my girlfriend Isabel came with me. While I was there, I made a deliberate attempt not to read what was written.
“It was on the cards I would resign, but I didn’t want ot make a rash decision in the heat of the moment.
“In the end I decided: No. I felt that if I resigned I would be running away from the things that had gone on. and I would be pandering to the press. I would always have been remembered as the man who resigned over the ball-tampering affair. I could not let that be the way I’d go into cricket history.”
In a new twist, Atherton has criticised the rules dealing with what can be done to a ball. “There are anaomalies in law 42-5.I think we must have clearer rules. Either we can’t put anything at all on the ball, or we should let bowlers do what they like provided they’re not using artificial instruments.
“I cannot tell you which I prefer — I could again open myself up to press hamerings.”
The humiliation Atherton suffered after the ball-tampering incident was particularly hard to handle after the remarkably smooth ride he’d had up until then. The son of a Manchester head teacher, Atherton’s progress to the england captaincy had been almost inevitable — from skipper of schoolboy teams up to international level, to Cambridge, to Lancashire, to England A and then to the top job.
When the blue-eyed boy arrived at his county after Cambridge, the letters FEC were often scribbled on his locker door. It stood for Future England Captain, but it had another meaning too, recalls Atherton. F…ing Educated C..t.
Just a touch of jealousy? Perhaps, but Atherton says he found few problems in gaining team acceptance when he took over from Graham Gooch as the team stumbled to defeat against the Aussies.
“In a way the side could only go up after the poor 12 months we’d just had. so that meant I was under less pressure.
“Being a young captain has actually been to may advantage. I can more easily relate to some of the players in the team than somebody of a differnt age-group.”
Asked what makes a good captain, Atherton replied: “A good team, respect from the players — and experience.”
There’s no doubt he’s learned a few valuable lessons in that regard this past fortnight or so.