I believe that our cricketers of Test rank and those aspiring thereto, with one proviso, can acquit themselves with credit in the demanding period ahead if, despite media pressures, however fair or exaggerated, they can maintain a spirit of enjoyment and good fellowship. This has been the direction of Atherton's enduring strength, and it is this quality that has prompted the England Cricket Board chairman and selectors to persuade him to carry on.
My one caveat concerns the opening attack. To look for a reason why success in Tests (as distinct from one-day cricket) has recently been so hard to come by, one has only to compare the English new-ball bowlers of the last decade and more with the opposition - with Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis, Donald and Pollock, Ambrose and Walsh, McDermott and McGrath. Several have had their moments, notably Angus Fraser, Devon Malcolm, Dominic Cork and, of course, Darren Gough, whose last-minute withdrawal has been such a sad blow to England's immediate prospects. There has not, however, been a truly militant pair since Willis and Botham faded out in the mid-1980s.
In series after series, English batting, and especially Atherton and his opening partner, have been under the severest testing without the captain's capacity to subject the enemy to anything comparable. Hence I believe that the prospect in the Caribbean may chiefly depend on the degree with which the faster bowlers, Caddick, Headley, Fraser, Silverwood and Cowan, can command speed with control.
At limited-overs level, as was evidenced against Australia last May and, most welcomely, at Sharjah last month, other disciplines apply: seven wins in a row we had, the tournament's success against West Indies, India and Pakistan under Adam Hollioake being a great fillip to all.
Hollioake has clear qualities as a leader, but it is as an all-rounder with Test claims that he is at the moment a key figure. As Ted Dexter pointed out with some force in these columns when the team was chosen, the selectors, by omitting Mark Ealham, the only man with proven all-round Test credentials, can only play five bowlers by asking the admirable Alec Stewart to keep wicket as well as going in first or thereabouts. As I see it, a balanced side including Jack Russell can emerge only if Hollioake's early form makes it reasonable to try him at No 6 and as a fifth bowler.
With only two four-day matches before the first Test on Jan 29 and 16 players to choose from, Atherton and his co-selectors have difficult choices to make. It is specially frustrating, therefore, that, having given themselves ample time to acclimatise to Caribbean pitches and light, the unseasonable rain in Antigua has kept them out of the nets. West Indies also have their difficulties, of course, of a more basic sort, beginning with the choice of a captain.
REMEMBERING the corresponding Test at Kingston, Jamaica, four years ago when Courtney Walsh was guilty of what Wisden properly called ``unwarranted and unpunished intimidation'', I am pleased to hear from the ICC chief executive, David Richards, that Barry Jarman, the old Australian wicketkeeper, is to referee the series.
The referee system, operative in all Tests, was novel in 1994, since when it has sometimes been crucial in fortifying the umpires and regulating the temperature. Steve Bucknor and Venkataraghavan, experienced men both, should not need reminding that, irrespective of the deplorable two bouncers-an-over allowance, intimidation is intimidation, punishable under the unfair play Law, 42.
The first Test happenings notwithstanding, the last series in the West Indies was played in a spirit reflecting credit on the captains, Atherton and Richie Richardson. Let us hope for a repetition, and may all concerned remember that the young will be watching - and listening!
A WINTER clear-out of files and accumulated paraphernalia has revealed a document which has perhaps some topical relevance. It is the speech delivered by Field Marshal Lord Montgomery at the MCC anniversary dinner in 1956, of which he gave me a copy three years later when, at his invitation, I reviewed on my return the 1958-59 tour of Australia.
He rose to speak, he said, with some diffidence, but it was not a quality at all in evidence as he attempted to equate cricket and warfare: ``I once had the honour to lead an England team on to the field: not the cricket field but the field of battle. We won all our matches.''
Preaching from this text, Monty maintained that success was simply a matter of leadership, discipline and training. He wanted changes in the first-class structure to bring in more amateurs (this was several years before they were officially eliminated), and he finally led a slightly bemused audience into the realms of technique before advising the MCC committee to ``loosen up, be imaginative; do not be mentally constipated''.
Unfortunately Telegraph and BBC duty had taken me to Worcester for the Australians' opening match, so I heard the amused, whimsical reaction only at second-hand of a committee who, as it happened, contained no fewer than seven former England captains under the presidency, ironically enough, of Monty's fellow field marshal, Alexander by name.
Monty's conception of cricket was, of course simplistic. The tactics of the game and its many-sided subtleties were a closed book to him. Yet one can detect in his remarks a faint foretaste of the ECB's Raising the Standard, while the importance of leadership can scarcely be over-rated, though he succeeded in doing so.