BBC SPORT | BBC Pundits | 'Captain Grumpy' speaks his mind



By Rob Bonnet BBC Sport

It was my birthday party the other day and a friend came up trumps with a present - My Cricket Memories by Jack Hobbs (later Sir Jack), published in 1924.

It's a treasure.... a period piece. Uncontroversial, deferential, it paints sun-filled pictures of the 1890s, when cricket inhabited another, distant world.

On page four, there's the tale of how, as a tiny 10-year-old in Cambridge, the young Hobbs made a tremblingly nervous walk to the wicket for the second innings of his life (for St Matthew's Choir against Trinity College Choir).

[Michael Atherton] said he'd sometimes deliberately get into a confrontation

And he was sledged! A voice piped up "If this chap gets a run, I'll eat my hat!"

Hobbs poked three singles through the slips and left the field feeling "as proud as if I'd been crowned King of England". He wrote afterwards that he hoped the fielder had good digestion.

Over a century later, sports autobiographies are two-a-penny and often unreadably bland or scurrilously sensational.

But not Mike Atherton's book Opening Up, which I read in preparation for an interview for BBC News 24's Sportstalk.

It's honest, thoughtful, full of insight and peppered with laughs, often at Atherton's own expense, though FECs (Former England Captains) are by no means safe.

Former England captain Michael Atherton
Like when Keith Fletcher greeted him at the Cambridge University wicket.

"Let's get this iwitating little pwick out," said the Essex captain, who never could say his r's properly and whose ability to deliver the venomously unsettling remark was surely undermined as a result.

In the Sportstalk studio, Atherton and I talked about sledging, lying and cheating in the modern game.

Sledging? He said he'd sometimes deliberately get into a confrontation with a bowler in order to fire himself up.

For exactly the same reason, he would instruct his England teams to keep their mouths shut around potentially dangerous batsmen.

Lying? Atherton concedes he omitted certain details during his interview with match referee Peter Burge during the infamous 'Dirt in Pocket' Test at Lord's in 1994.

But he said that what he did was nevertheless within the rules.

More honest

Others remain unconvinced that drying the ball with dust (which is what Atherton appeared to be doing) is as legal as drying the hands.

And cheating? Atherton says he was neither a liar nor a cheat but I think players - even in the modern professional game - should "walk" if they know they're out.

Not to do so is dishonest and puts intolerable pressure on umpires.

Alan Donald shows his anger as Atherton is reprieved in 1998
Atherton said it was more honest to wait for and accept the umpire's decision right or wrong.

Which is what he did in the 1998 Trent Bridge Test during that fabulously intense passage of play against Allan Donald.

The match might have been lost had umpire Dunne raised the finger that Atherton knew his gloved catch to Boucher deserved.

Donald called him a ******* cheat. Atherton stayed to make 98 not out and take England to victory.

I reminded Atherton that he was a golfer and that on the course he polices himself.

My guess is that he's not the kind of person to hack away out of sight in the bushes and declare a five when he really took an eight.

In golf, even the professionals instinctively know that an illegally false score leaves only emptiness and dissatisfaction.

Not, it seems, in cricket, a game that the now extremely affable Captain Grumpy enhanced with his courage, determination and leadership (and widely underestimated skill).

He left the sport, however, even more deeply entrenched than before in a swings-and-roundabouts moral code.