No ghostwriter haunts this account of a cricketing life, so obviously written by the man who played the way he did: stubborn, scornful of frills and too intelligent to be dull; a man (a boy) who could stick up for himself. At 19, in 1987, while still at Cambridge, he was already playing for Lancashire, causing resentment. Someone daubed FEC on his locker, which did not mean ‘Future England Captain’ (the E stood for ‘educated’). In only his third match for the county he put some wet clothes in the pavilion dryer and Paul Allott, a senior player, took them out and threw in his own. Atherton took out Allott’s and replaced his. It will stand for an image of his whole career: no one was ever going to stare him down. Later that day Allott and Fowler asked him out for a drink (‘it was almost an order’) and drove him to a distant pub. After a while they excused themselves to go to the Gents, and it took a while for Atherton to twig. They had driven off, leaving him with no money and no means of getting back. Atherton in his own way stared back, by scoring over 1,000 runs that season, only the second debutant to do so. ‘Playing for Lancashire was the best of times.’ Two years later, at 21, he was playing for England; at 25 he was captain.
The useless attempts at discouragement began early. In his first match for Cambridge, against Essex, he scored 73 not out and caused such professional irritation that on his way to the wicket for his second innings Keith Fletcher, who had trouble with his ‘r’s, snarled, ‘Let’s get this iwwitating little pwick out.’ Atherton cheerfully adds, ‘I took it as a compliment from the man who was to be my England coach five years later.
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