‘So here he is, Mr Impala, out for the day with his family, stretching their legs in the sun when …’ I began.
‘No, you don’t understand,’ Beefy told me. ‘There’s too many of ’em. Far too many. They have to be culled.’
I pointed out that there are a lot of Chinese people on this planet and some would argue too many. But, despite the size of their population, nobody goes around shooting them.
‘You don’t get it, do you?’ he said.
The way I saw it was that this impala family was out having some breakfast one morning when their dad was shot and subsequently stood on. In one way Beefy was right, I suppose. I didn’t get that at all.
Off screen Both and I do not have much in common, I guess, but one thing we do share is a love of fishing. On another occasion during my three years in the white coat, I turned up at New Road to officiate in a Benson & Hedges Cup match. Beefy, now with Worcestershire, popped into the umpires’ room before play for a chat, during the course of which he invited me for a day out on a prime stretch of water on the River Wye. He also left me with a catalogue, telling me to pick out what I wanted and he would get any clobber sent on to me. As it happened, his friendly offer could not have been better timed, as I needed a new rod and reel.
Later in the day, he came on to bowl at my end, and announced himself with a loosener which plopped down the leg-side. My response, given the guidelines for one-day cricket, was to call and signal a wide.
‘It’s a what?’ Botham inquired incredulously, hands on hips.
‘It’s a wide,’ I replied. ‘You couldn’t have reached that with a clothes prop.’
‘Clothes prop, eh?’ he chuntered as he bristled past me. ‘You had better get one of those for your fishing because you’ll not be getting any tackle from me.’
Later that evening, as players and officials congregated outside that beautiful old bar they used to have at Worcester, I wandered over to offer him a drink. ‘Let me get you one in. What are you after, Both?’
‘I’ll have a bottle of pink champagne,’ he said. ‘They know what I have at the bar, just tell them it’s for me.’
‘A bottle of pink champagne?’
‘Wha’s up wi’ you, you tight git? I’ll get you one after.’
Now what would I want with a bottle of pink champagne? Heavens above.
Michael Atherton – Captain Shabby
I have worked with Athers for large parts of his professional life, so talking cricket with him comes pretty naturally. Our chats used to take place in the privacy of a dressing-room, or team meeting-room, but now we have them in other people’s living-rooms, and we are paid handsomely for the privilege. Knowing him as I have, it was no surprise to me whatsoever that he waltzed into the commentary box after retiring from the game and took up the microphone with such obvious ease. He is a bloke who does everything he sets out to accomplish with a minimum of fuss, whose professional standards are extremely high, and whose talents I believe will take him beyond commentating and cricket. He has strong opinions on the game and very good judgement, but also a capacity to expand his career into other areas. He is one of the cleverest blokes I have ever come across and is, as everyone would have to acknowledge, a brilliant writer, a factor which leads me to believe he will branch into other subjects, should he so wish, later in life.
Our working relationship goes back a long way and Athers was instrumental in my instalment as England coach, something which really did come out of the blue for me. In fact, it was not something that had seriously crossed my mind when on a January morning in 1996, as I picked him up from Manchester Airport following an underwhelming England tour of South Africa, he told me I had to get involved with the national senior side’s coaching set-up. At the time I was juggling my work as first-team coach at Lancashire with various other coaching posts across England’s age-group teams, occasional appearances on Test Match Special and a smattering of after-dinner speaking engagements. He was clearly batting for my promotion but, at the time, the job he was lining me up for did not even technically exist. In those days Raymond Illingworth acted as both chairman of selectors and England manager.
But Athers, much more progressive in his thinking as England captain than his public persona let on, was an advocate of modernisation. He no longer saw the benefit of that dual role and urged me to make myself available for a coaching position. Within a couple of months, following a disastrous World Cup, English cricket was the subject of an internal investigation. During the inquest into what exactly had been going wrong, Raymond relinquished the hands-on side of the job. The new position advertised by the Test and County Cricket Board, as it was then, was specifically on-field, bypassing the political side of things I did not care for, and therefore suited me down to the ground. In April that year I agreed to an initial six-month deal as England coach, forming an alliance with Atherton as England captain.
Professionally for three years we were as good for each other as we are now off-screen. I have developed a very good friendship with Athers, and – although he occasionally stops mid-sentence or mid-stride to wind me up by asking, ‘What on earth am I doing with you? You are just an old fella. A fella old enough to be me dad’ – we spend a lot of time in each other’s company. I have known him since he was a Manchester Grammar schoolboy, playing in the same Lancashire age-group team as my eldest lad Graham, so I guess he has got a point. During his junior days I would be there, chatting to his mum and dad as a fellow parent. I was there when he was developing as a cricketer at Lancashire during his Cambridge University days. I was as close to Athers as I was to any player during my time as a coach at both domestic and international level. He had just always been there. And that familiarity, and our understanding of each other, meant our captain–coach relationship functioned smoothly.
Above and beyond our friendship I have never swayed from my belief that Athers was a bloody good England captain. This is not a subjective assessment either, formed because of our geographical roots or friendship, it is just a solid observation from within the dressing-room. Unfortunately, partly as a result of being his own man, he never got the credit his efforts in the role deserved.
When we were in tandem neither of us came across as we would have wanted at times, but behind closed doors we complemented each other perfectly. He knew my personality and I his. He opted for a ‘give ’em nowt’ approach to the press, and I occasionally said too much. Our natural characters led us to be perceived in certain ways. My passion and enthusiasm occasionally spilt over, and I would argue black was white to protect the team, while Athers actively played up to his Captain Grumpy image to get his own back at the tabloid press. In turn his portrayal to the cricket-loving public was hardly flattering at times, which affected their perception of him. Like it or not, in the positions of power we were in, your image is determined by your professional utterances, and while Athers’s behavioural choice did not damage the side one iota, neither did it promote him as a warm, welcoming individual to the nation he led. Hopefully we both have the balance right in our current vocations.
Popular opinion would have been that he was surly and moody. Nothing could have been further from the truth when it came to his social interaction with his contemporaries. Nobody within the game had a bad word for him back then; and I believe that is still the case now, even though he has to be publicly critical of players on occasion both on air and in print. He had an exterior when he was England captain that could not have been further from the bloke trapped inside it. For a long time it was a case of what you saw was not what we got.
This split between his public and private images stemmed from the fact that he just couldn’t be doing with the press, which is ironic, I guess, given that his post-playing career took him straight into its bosom. In defence of how he dealt with things at that time, you also have to remember that he was drugged up to the eyeballs. His back condition meant he was habitually on Voltarol tablets. Oh, and in case you were wondering, those things are not to be swallowed. They are, excuse the expression, taken up the arse.