UR TV CAST

Ironically, this was the country where Atherton’s Test match potential first took hold during the England A tour in 1990 when Zimbabwe were beaten in both the Test and one-day series.
One of Dostoevsky’s characters claimed in The Brothers Karamazov “that one day is enough to know everything”. But a one-day match is a different matter, and the intervening six years are bound to have wrought changes upon Atherton, who will be 29 in March.”I’m probably more cynical than I was back then,” he said before boarding the plane to New Zealand where England continue the second leg of their winter tour “But I’m no less optimistic. To my mind I’ve achieved a lot, and I hope, and want, to achieve much more There are two options: either give up or fight on I don’t see any point in giving up. We’re half way through the winter and I’ve been appointed to the end of that winter. We’ll see what happens then, but meanwhile we’ll be endeavouring to do our best in New Zealand.”This is spirited talk from a man whose spirit, despite the unemotive carapace and close companionship of his coach David Lloyd, must surely be perilously close to collapse. As Atherton’s predecessor, Graham Gooch eventually found, every human sponge has its saturation point, and the current England captain is now beginning to leave a trail of unmopped anguish behind him. Mind you, even when playing at the peak of his form, Atherton has been forced to absorb more disappointments than any of his contemporaries, an amercement due mainly to his squad’s lack of bowling power.There are other Gooch traits, too, like leading by example through deed rather than word, a method currently under pressure from Atherton’s extended loss of form.

In fact neither man’s method has inspired in the way Mike Brearley did, via a mixture of mystery and psychology. But then neither man – both far superior batsmen to Brearley – were forced to develop that part of their characters. In any case, Brearley’s main asset was to persuade Ian Botham to perform all 12 Herculean labours, and then some, every time he put on an England sweater.Yet how culpable is a captain who has never had a Botham available to him – at least not in the trenches where it matters? Some will say it is a miracle for him to have even got this close to breaking Peter May’s record of 41 Tests in charge (Atherton has four to go), given that he has long been saddled with a workmanlike team, now having more off-days than it can afford. England were rarely outplayed in Zimbabwe – except in the final one-dayer – yet they were constantly outfought by tenacious competitors.It is notoriously difficult captaining a side without match-turning crackerjacks like Shane Warne, Brian Lara or Wasim Akram in the side. Even Zimbabwe have an enforcer in Paul Strang, an improving leg-spinner whose influence on the cricket played here has been almost as huge as that of the Inter- tropical Convergence Zone, the weather system guilty of providing the spectacular thunderstorms that have disrupted play on an almost daily basis since England’s arrival a month ago.Atherton’s captaincy has been on the back foot ever since the soil- in-pocket incident at Lord’s in 1994 when his credibility was damaged not by his actions on the field, but by the spur of the moment fib he told to the match referee. It was at that moment and in the immediate media hysteria that followed that he suddenly realised what a lonely job the England captaincy could be, even for a self-sufficient person like him.

It is a job that he must surely be thinking about vacating now that even his opponents are beginning to feel sorry for him.Lacking players of undisputed world class is undoubtedly the fault of the English system, now under fierce if belated review by the England and Wales Cricket Board, under the chairmanship of Lord MacLaurin of Tesco. However, it is an altogether different matter if talented players are not reaching levels of motivation more or less taken for granted when representing your country. If that is the case then the captain and coach must take a large part of the blame and it is surely more than just a passing coincidence that England appear to have more wastrels with talent, like Chris Lewis and Andy Caddick, than any other country.One of the challenges of captaincy must be to tame and harness such mavericks and it should be remembered that Botham, Geoff Boycott and John Snow were hardly obliging patsies. Atherton’s major fault is perhaps that he expects unconditional support, rather than a battle of wits with his players.