CMJ: Captaincy is becoming too great a burden for Atherton (12 August 1997)

Tuesday 12 August 1997

Captaincy is becoming too great a burden for Atherton

Christopher Martin-Jenkins.

TWO questions gnawed at the mind like hungry mice on the day after Australia`s unexpectedly sudden seizure of the last great prize of the international season: why did England bat in the way that they did, and will Mike Atherton continue as captain after the final Test at the Oval, which will be played before full houses from next Thursday, even though the Ashes have been lost?

There is more than one answer to the first question. The glib one is that it was a Sunday afternoon and England bat- ted accordingly. They were bowled out for 186, an average score in the AXA League, in only eight overs and five balls more than they would have received if they had been wearing the coloured clothes.

Less glib is the observation that if they are to play 25 matches of 50 overs from 1998, the instincts towards batting like gamblers - not to mention the unfamiliarity with bowling first and foremost to take wickets, will be even more ingrained in the psyche of the English professional. The way we are going, England may win the World Cup in 1999 but will never have the patience with bat or ball to win Test series against really topclass sides.

There were three ways in which they could have approached the task of batting for a day and a half in theoretical pursuit of 451 to win at Trent Bridge.

The first was to have sat on the splice on a very good pitch and batted without taking a single risk in a single- minded attempt to save the game. Atherton and Jack Russell`s rearguard in Johannesburg was but the latest proof that such a thing was possible.

Secondly, England could have set out to break Australia`s spirit by attacking their bowlers and forcing them onto the defensive, at which point they might, at least in a world of dreams, have been able to take control and cruise to victory. It is a method which sometimes works in overs-limit cricket.

The third route was the one usually employed by captains and coaches: "Play your natural game and see how it goes." If there was any plan, this, it seems, was broadly the one which was attempted.

David Lloyd, the disappointed coach, said yesterday that the plan was to "play every ball on its merits but to play positively rather than to defend at all costs. The secret was to build partnerships but the big problem for me is that we don`t recover from a setback."

Atherton said after a night`s reflection yesterday that he had no qualms about the way the top-order batsmen played. "We were probably never going to save the game and a draw was no good to us as far as the Ashes were concerned," he told me. "What happened was a mixture of trying to get on top of the bowling and simply taking the opportunities presented by at- tacking fields. I didn`t see the point of blocking. Batsmen have to get their minds right on these occasions but there is no point in wasting scoring chances. Lower down the order there were some disappointing shots played, but I suppose by then it was a lost cause."

Indeed it was and Robert Croft, a talented cricketer who bowled well without luck but who has had a rude lesson in what it is like to play against a really tough cricket team, will and probably should pay, only temporarily I hope, for the way that he was prepared to sacrifice Mike Smith at Leeds and himself at Trent Bridge.

David Graveney said yesterday that he still felt that Atherton was the best man to captain England in the West Indies. Atherton himself wants time to consider all the implications but he will have made up his mind, if he has not already done so, before the Oval Test.

He is likely to resign, not because he has failed as a captain - on the contrary he has got better with experience - but because Glenn McGrath has been too good for him and because he is tired of battling against the odds alongside batsmen and, especially, bowlers, who are simply too inconsistent to succeed against a side of Australia`s all-round strength.

Atherton`s former Lancashire team-mate Graeme Fowler compares his experiences as England captain to someone setting out on a long walk with a rucksack. "It feels heavy at first, but as you get into your stride the load seems to decrease. Then there comes a time when the weather is hot, more and more has been loaded onto your back and the weight simply becomes too much."

It is doubtful if any other captain - Nasser Hussain probably, Adam Hollioake possibly (with Alec Stewart, Mark Ramprakash and John Crawley as rank outsiders) - would be more effec- tive than Atherton in the West Indies. He said after the match: "We have a good coach, good back-up and things are going in the right direction. I would back us to win in the West Indies."

It would be mean to point out that he backed England to win the Ashes too, but Australia have beaten the West Indies at home and away, so this prophecy may have a better chance, whether or not Atherton leads the attempt to fulfil it.

Meanwhile, those of us who believed that there was a definite, albeit an outside, chance that England might exploit the cohesion developed last winter and the weariness of the Australians after their heavy winter schedule, have been thoroughly confounded.

Source :: The Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/)