When it was over and the corks were popping, he was happy to agree that it had been hard graft and that Allan Donald and Shaun Pollock are outstanding fast bowlers so he had to be on his best mettle. But typically he would not be drawn into self-indulgence, not until he mocked his mate Alec Stewart by alluding to their own private contest for Test match hundreds. Such is his self-deprecation he got that wrong, too, saying that they were level with 11 apiece. They are not, Atherton has 12.
I cannot believe, however, that he can bat better than he did on Sunday afternoon or too much better than he did yesterday. I also believe that his own crusade to prove the England cricket team worthy of the name and of a higher place in the world order, which began five years ago when he was appointed captain, came to a head as he walked to the crease to face the first ball of these wonderfully well-crafted 98 runs.
South Africa are the toughies of the game, more so even than Australia, who are better but who have it in them to blow up, and to out-tough South Africa on a good, fair pitch and with Donald and Pollock fit and well would be irrefutable evidence of Atherton's conviction that England - as against English first-class cricket - are not soft. He has always craved for his team to be respected. He understands that the lack of match-winning bowlers means a modest record of match wins but he hates humiliation, which is what his team have sometimes suffered.
You may say it is not his team any more, but in most ways it still is and will remain so until Stewart brings clear changes to its character, which he might with time. For the moment, it is still a team which depends on an Atherton epic to get it out of the blocks, still a team that has Angus Fraser, Atherton's type and friend, as its ballast.
In the first Test of this series, which England dominated, Atherton made 100 -an emotional, important, self-justifying set of three figures that stuck it up the doubters. When England won the run chase in Trinidad - their only win of the winter - he put on 129 for the first wicket with Stewart to set it up. When they sprinted to victory against Australia at the start of last summer, he finished unbeaten with 57 to Stewart's 40 out of 119 for one. When England won the previous Test in Christchurch, managing 307 in the last innings, he scored 118 to go with the unbeaten 94 he made in the first innings. And there are more, and more examples -his match-saving innings of 185 at the Wanderers in 1995 et al - of the Atherton factor.
He made these runs at Trent Bridge, 58 in the first innings, too, remember, because he is not captain any more. In fact he has made 476 runs in the series at an average of 68 because he is not captain any more. It had simply become too difficult to clear the mind for batting at the same time as being at the head of an under-achieving team.
It has been a joy to him to work ``bloody hard'' during the early part of the season at Old Trafford and to find time for a little golf and a view of the city lights. His perspective is recovered and his mind free of clutter, which is why he is batting again as he can.
And better. For as long as I watch cricket, I shall remember an extra-cover drive that he appeared to brush to the boundary; low-struck square drives of perfectly judged reaction to the line of the ball; and hook strokes of ravishing dare. For as long as we all shall live we will remember Sunday's awesome confrontation with Donald and the defensive excellence of Atherton's resistance.
Ninety-eight runs in 277 balls is not the stuff of Botham or of a Richards but it was stuff desperately needed by English cricket, almost demanded by the presence of a remarkably large and enthusiastic Monday crowd, and it was delivered by England's most valuable, let him not deny it, modern cricketer.
After that magnum opus in Johannesburg on England's last tour to South Africa, Dr Ali Bacher, the managing director of the United Cricket Board of South Africa, said that Atherton had the strongest mind and will of any cricketer he had known. Nothing he has watched on television these past two days will have changed his opinion.