Mark Nicholas: Atherton gets the message across at last (25 August 1997)

Monday 25 August 1997

Atherton gets the message across at last

By Mark Nicholas

THAT was some afternoon. So many vignettes, so many asides, mini drama upon mini drama within one huge, breathless production. Could anyone, even Mike Brearley, have led a fielding team so impressively as Michael Atherton on Saturday? And he`s on the way out, isn`t he?

Could anyone have dreamt that when Mark Taylor twice raised his right arm, bat held high in salute to the most appre- ciative of goodbyes from an opposing audience, he would be doing so as the losing captain? Could anyone have bowled orthodox fingerspinners under such a weight of responsibility so well as Philip Tufnell? Could Mark Ramprakash have imagined, even in his craziest dream, that his 48 well-constructed runs which ended so unnecessarily, were enough to take the match away from Australia? And so on, and so on.

Atherton really did captain marvellously well, blending the need to attack with the essentials of defence. Bowl hard, he told his fast men: make every ball an examination of reaction and of courage.

Be yourself, he told his spinner: be the devil, Philip, and win us the game. Sensible, unpretentious fields were set and brilliant, athletic fielding backed them up. Only when Shaun Young came in on a pair in his first Test did Atherton crowd an Australian and that because Tufnell was landing every ball in the rough and making it spit at Young, who had been out to a brute of a spitter in the first innings. Go on, Atherton seemed to say, you want to be a hero, slog our `Tuffers` out of that stuff and if you can`t, you must block, and heaven help you if you go wrong for we are here, four of us vultures, waiting.

What moments of satisfaction Atherton must have had first when Shane Warne slogged down the ground into the hands of the perfectly positioned Peter Martin - just close enough to invite the attempt, just deep enough to deny its safety; then when he moved Adam Hollioake from short leg to short extra cover and two balls later watched in ecstasy as Michael Kasprowicz poked it straight to short extra cover.

How clever too, to applaud Hollioake for the run-out attempt which went for overthrows. This was the message his team had been crying out for - for so long: I`m no extrovert myself but you lot must go for it, just go for it and damn the consequences. It`s a game, express yourself. Which is, of course, what Mark Taylor does so well though, in fairness, his resources more allow such a style of play.

Taylor said later that he was sad to be leaving English cricket, England was the finest place to play the Test match game and that the team, and Tufnell in particular, had done very well.

He added that he was enormously proud of his own. In defeat Taylor was as objective and as charming as he is in victory. Nobody in the modern era of dog-eat-dog, of miles of cricketing newsprint, jammed airways and filled satellite time, and of personal intrusion has led his country with more graciousness and more success. It was a pleasure to see the people at the Oval recognise as much and say so with their applause.

THE grandest applause though must be reserved for those mavericks of Middlesex, the problem children who per- form for their county but too often only promise for their country.

All summer Ramprakash must have had a tortured soul. He is leading Middlesex as if he had done so all his life and has handled the `Gatting factor` - Test selector, previous captain and allembracing Middlesex man - with great skill. He has batted out of his boots, everywhere you go county cricketers nod earnestly and say, "Pick Ramps" - even the Australians agreed but kept it quiet.

For all that he had not a sniff of a place until this unexpected last-ditcher and he cocked up the first innings so was down to the wire in the second.

Say what you like, say the series was done and Australia were below strength, that a man can only do what he is asked to do and Ramprakash, mostly, did it. His feet worked well, his blade was straight, his nose was resolutely over the ball and all the while he retained his instinct for attack. For a time, until the later misjudged shimmies down the pitch at Warne, he looked a cricketer of substance.

And Tufnell? Majestic, if a slower bowler can be so. No Australian could get after him, few could keep him out. His accuracy was relentless, his spin prodigious, his flight a temptation. Part of the spinner`s art is to find the right pace to bowl for the type of pitch, Tufnell was bang on.

His has been a troubled life and another unfulfilled career. Long hair, short hair, hair torn out; fags, booze, the lot, but he is a character and an ally to the common man. Because of this he has had sympathy and it has saved him.

Now he has respect too, for the way in which he has coped with the frustrating summer of omission and for the realisation of his talent. It would be good to think he was here to stay but somehow, rather like Saturday`s victory, English cricket is not quite like that.

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