SPECTATOR SPORT
Captains courageous
Frank Keating
MICHAEL ATHERTON, morning-faced, bushy-tailed and optimistic, leads out his new England team for its first match in the West Indies this weekend. It prefaces a daunting three months for the young man. A tour to the Caribbean has broken the spirit and nerve of umpteen visiting crick- eters, and the most hostile reception has always been reserved for those who are inexperienced in the conditions, or opening batsmen, or opposing captains. Atherton is all three.
The West Indies have not lost a Test series anywhere for 14 years. They have been unbeaten at home for 21 years. This time, in their cruel resplendence, the home side might particularly enjoy discomfiting a tyro England skipper who is also an intel- lectual. The last graduate (Atherton got a very decent upper second in history at Downing College, Cambridge) to captain England was another Mike, Brearley, over a decade ago; he led the side in all of 31 Tests and proof of his varsity-inspired per- cipience was that none of them was ever, either home or away, against our ferocious- ly good friends from the Caribbean.
That was doubtless one of the reasons Ian Botham (who died the certain death as a captain after nine of his dozen Tests as leader had been against the West Indies) forever referred with pointed affection to Brearley as 'Brainbox'. It was probably a Botham-like larkpot of the dressing-room who famously chalked the three letters FEC on Atherton's cricket bag when he first played for Lancashire. Decorum at once insisted that the initials meant Future England Captain, but the chortling freema- sonry of the cricket shires knew the truth: that if the E stood for Educated, the F and the C became pithily obvious.
I suppose I was contemplating young Atherton's refreshingly clear-eyed and Corinthian approach the other day when, by fluke, I chanced upon Mike by P.G. Wodehouse. It was the great man's first 'adult' novel, so good as to be brought out by A. & C. Black in 1909 after being seri- alised as a mere schoolboy yarn in The Cap- tain. It was Wodehouse's big break; he was up and running and, to his death, apparent- ly, he always insisted Mike had been his best of all. In fact, has there ever been a better cricket novel, so spot-on, believably, spiritu- ally and technically? In the context, it is nice and apt as well that it is called Mike. Here's a snatch as Mike goes out to face the demon bowler, Burgess:
'In a funk arc you?' asked Wyatt as he passed. Mike grinned. The fact was that he had far too good an opinion of himself to be nervous. An entirely modest person seldom makes a good batsman. Batting is one of those things which demand first and foremost a thorough belief in oneself. It need not be aggressive, but it must be there.
'Now Mike braced himself as Burgess began his run . . . As the ball left Burgess's hand, he began instinctively to shape for a forward stroke. Then, suddenly, he realised the thing was going to be a yorker. He banged his bat down in the block just as the ball arrived. An unpleasant sensation as of having been struck by a thunderbolt was succeeded by relief that he had kept the ball out of his wicket.
'There are easier things in the world than stopping a fast yorker.'
Great stuff. Very Mike. Very Atherton. Twenty-three years before that was pub- lished, and 110 winters ago, Arthur Shrews- bury was England's captain in Australia. Cardus said of Shrewsbury that he played his cricket and led his men 'with patience, serenity and happiness'. What a beautiful creed for a cricketer. And very Mike. Very Atherton. Pray he comes back with all his qualities intact.
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