“All I know most surely about morality and obligation I owe to football”,
Glorious summers and discontents
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Mike Atherton, Simon and Schuster, London, 2011. ISBN: 978-0-85720-348-9
Given that the book consists of newspaper articles written by Atherton over a period, it makes very interesting reading. The book consists of 11 chapters in two sections – Discontents and Glorious Summers.
Atherton is one of the few players who are as competent as writers as they were in the first career. His insights are outstanding. The section The World Game is superb as he analyses the role of cricket in West Indies, Pakistan and Bangladesh. He is very supportive of Bangladesh because of how important it is to the country to have test cricket status: “Here in Bangladesh, cricket transforms, it inspires and it is absolutely central to the very notion of national identity and shared experience. And what can be more important than that?”
There is a poignant comparison of two South Africans, Cronje and D’Oliveira.
Atherton shows himself as the matter of the one-liner:
“Dogs and lamp-posts summed up the then relationship between administrators and players”.
“Twenty20 is the equivalent of the gas chamber for a bowler”.
Sachin Tendulkar – “manoeuvred [the ball]expertly into the gaps as if his blade possessed a sat-nav”.
“Two strips of rolled snot from which not even Sir David Attenborough could find any life.”
“Chanderpaul is now a reassuring presence in a game dominated by biceps and bats as wide as tree trunks”.
“England versus Bangladesh? “About as exciting as creosoting the garden fence”.
I end with a thought so profound that I am still struggling to understand it fully: “The hardest thing in professional sport is to play as if winning is the only thing that matters, with the knowledge that it does not matter at all.”
A thought provoking and very readable book.