Botham’s Century: My 100 great cricketing characters. Ian Botham

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      As a senior player when Athers made his first steps in 1989, I couldn’t help feeling that he didn’t want us around much longer, and later, reading between the lines of his first utterances as skipper before he picked the squad for the following winter tour to West Indies, the message was clear: ‘Bog off, you old gits.’ I had retired by then, so that didn’t matter to me personally. But I do remember thinking such an attitude was either extraordinarily brave or extraordinarily naïve.

      Regarding that tour to the Caribbean, although Gooch had decided to make himself unavailable, at the time David Gower was still musing over the pros and cons of retirement. I’m sure a call to Gower to give the team the benefit of his class and experience out there might have persuaded the outstanding left-handed England batsman of his generation to delay his exit. And even when Athers was prevailed upon to recall Gooch, then later Mike Gatting, it was pretty clear it was against his better judgement.

      I know Mike himself believes that had he been allowed to pursue a new-broom policy without interruption, England might have made more progress more quickly. Then again, he never counted on the dirt-in-the-pocket affair during the Lord’s Test against South Africa in 1994 that effectively handed over the final say in selection to Raymond Illingworth, with whom he was subsequently to fight and lose too many battles over personnel.

      I do think that one of the reasons the captaincy got to him in the end was that he didn’t feel able to communicate with or confide in guys like myself from a slightly older generation who might have been able to offer advice in certain situations. But whether he was right or wrong, his attempt to put his own mark on things from the start, whatever the fall-out, offered an insight into the single-mindedness that is at the core of his character.

      In certain situations, of course, for single-mindedness read bull-headed obstinacy. First, consider events at Lord’s in ‘94, when he was spotted on television seeming to apply dust to the ball in what could only be described as suspicious circumstances, then copped a fine after he admitted to not telling the match referee Peter Burge exactly what he was carrying in his pockets at the time. The cricketing public were split right down the middle over whether he should quit the job, and even some of his closest friends thought he would. It took a certain kind of dog-with-a-bone stubbornness to hold on to the captaincy and his sanity while the debate raged around him. In the end he felt that carrying on was the right thing to do for the good of the side. Understanding what kind of scrutiny he was bound to be under from then on, that was an extremely courageous call.

      A little more than a year later, as we went head-to-head in the Cane rum & Coke challenge to celebrate his marathon 185 not out to save the Wanderers Test against South Africa, one of the things Athers revealed to me was how much he regretted bring economical with the truth when interviewed by Burge. He genuinely panicked, I believe, and no matter how hard he tried to rationalize his actions subsequently, I don’t believe he will ever be able to rid himself of the feeling that he let himself down badly that day.

      Courage, stubbornness, obstinacy, bravery. They say that a cricketer’s batting gives the clearest insight into his character; has there been a more transparent case of someone whose batting was so obviously what made them tick? Athers loved a fight; the tougher the opponent, the more he relished the challenge and, no matter what personal differences might have arisen, the longer he carried on the more his players respected him for it.