Gone was the crab-like shuffler across the crease, the lbw candidate with toes pointing back to the bowler. Absent too was the reluctant communicator who used to treat interviewers as enemy inquisitors.

This time he was perky enough to remind us that he is only 30, and he looked younger. At the press conference he did not have to grump or groan, or disappear behind a shield of monosyllables to avoid the slings and arrows.

As for his batting, if this is what the removal of the England captaincy does for someone then I recommend it. We saw the stylish old Athers, balanced, getting right forward to fast bowling or back, stroking sweet cover-drives and clipping away anything on leg stump with sweet monotony.

But is it as simple as that? What are the pressures which kidnap a captain's individual talent?

Back in the 1960s, I can recall the endless decision-making on the road. What time do you want us at the ground, skipper? Can I come late, I want to buy inners for my boots? Look at this Skip, said the partying fast bowler, rolling up his trouser leg and peeling back his sock to reveal a hugely swollen ankle - fell off the kerb going to Mass yesterday morning. How can we get a meal with this lousy allowance? Skipper, I've got a personal problem - I can't pay my mortgage. That's why I can't play properly.

It was also possible for a captain to relegate practice on his own game as he took a long look at other players and tried to piece together a winning combination. Media men would claim his time, then there was team selection and travel arrangements, official invitations vetted and dress codes sorted. Eventually a spot of net practice may be possible. Quickly you realise that the last thing a losing team wants is a captain who is in poor form himself.

These days I presume that the many managers, coaches, physios and vicars who surround our professional cricket teams take over the organisational, medical and pastoral roles. The captain can truly concentrate on his own game. The best captains can separate the team's play from his own. In theory it should be possible to run the side in the field for a day and a half, wipe the mind clean, pad up and score a five-hour hundred. So Atherton's burden has been a losing team, his own declining form and the dreaded media.

Captaincy can be the inspiration to play to the top of one's talents. I believe it was that way with Michael Atherton for a long time. On the other hand, the need to lead the way can impede personal progress. Last week I shared a stage at the Hay-on-Wye Literary Festival in Wales with Fred Trueman, whose book of reminiscences is just out. He said that Brian Close was a fine captain because he was so unselfish.

``Brian would always back his talent and he would try to play exactly the sort of innings the team required when he went into bat. If he had not been captain and had played for himself he would have got a hundred hundreds and would never have been out of the England top five.'' Unselfishness is surely a virtue.

There is no job so fascinating as leading a cricket team in a Test match and few experiences sweeter than winning. Lurking in the shadows, however, is failure. In Atherton's case, repeated failure. England had slipped to the second division of Test countries and were a near shambles in the last World Cup. As the team's reputation gurgled down the plug-hole, so did the captain's form decline and his enjoyment diminish. Captaincy became the burden.

This is the problem which takes root in the mind and which is then transferred to the skills. His team were loyal but professional players will blame a captain before they will blame themselves. The captain can retreat to the dressing room after a session's ball-chasing imagining that his players are not quite looking at him. He has missed a few tricks in the field and that blights the professional chances of all of them. The truth is this - captaincy is the greatest job in the world if you are winning.

Playing under someone else appears to be the answer but I am not so sure. It may be only a short-term solution. Atherton spending the remainder of his Test career in the field without making a decision may suffer from chronic boredom. Will he be able to dumb down? David Gower, for example, after leading England to an Ashes win, ended up playing in the more fundamental regime of Graham Gooch and took to flying aircraft over matches.

Athers might make the transition because he does not captain his county. Perhaps he will be committed to what Colin Cowdrey lovingly referred to as ``the art of batsmanship.''

So far, so good. For the moment in the England dressing room he will be forgiven for looking up every time someone yells ``skipper'' and for signing bats at the top. As long as he has rediscovered a clear mind to produce classy batting, small relics of his long captaincy will be seen as lovable eccentricities.