AT LAST a sign that England are becoming serious about winning. Lord MacLaurin is fronting a harder approach that you could call 'Tescossification'.

The players are on a special two-day motivational seminar, and have been told they ``should be prepared to die for England''. Michael Atherton has been appointed as captain for the whole summer, ensuring at least a semblance of stability, and the expertise of Mike Brearley - as a psycho-analyst on call - has been recruited for the first time since he retired in 1982.

Despite winning 18 of 31 Tests as captain of England (losing only four), and leading Middlesex to four championship titles, Brearley stresses he is not a magician. ``Miracles can't be achieved over such a short-term involvement, but my work as a psycho-analyst and experience as a psycho-analyst's patient suggests they can help players who consistently under-perform or lose their nerve.''

How? As captain, he believed the dressing-room was a sacred place where players could let off steam, or indulge their particular pleasure, and he did his utmost to protect that space.

But in the dressing-room you are still in full view of the team, so natural instincts are curbed. A bowler cannot exactly go up to the captain and say, ``Er, sorry skip, I don't think I'll be able to hit the cut strip today,'' even if that is what he feels like. Now, in the consulting room attached to his house, Brearley can extend that privacy and security, allowing individuals to air their real feelings and anxieties.

``What I offer is a completely safe environment, a neutral situation, away from players, the cricketing environment, the family. I help people to understand their thoughts are more complex than they might have realised and that this could have an impact on performance. I might use the example of a tennis player tending to lose his service immediately after breaking his opponent's, to illustrate this. It's mental frailty.

``Hypnotherapy expands a person's positive feelings and I've nothing against it, but I'm interested in a more complete understanding, exploring some of the more negative aspects of someone's personality - that they may be weak, arrogant, downputting - as well as the positive. My image of my patients is like a spinning sycamore seed, gradually unwinding.''

This might be all gobbledegook to Fred Trueman and the like, but there is no cause for concern. The reassuring thing about Brearley is that he is not some white-coated shrink likely to clamp his unsuspecting subject into the kind of gadgetry Woody Allen experiences in Sleeper. At heart he is an astute cricketer who sits, listens, observes and responds, relating it all to his 11 years' experience as captain of county and country. He was probably the best man- manager the game ever had.

The Middlesex side of the early 1980s - an odd mixture of characters - tested his abilities to the limit. Mike Selvey and Phil Edmonds were diametric opposites. One had an unkempt, rocker sort of image, the other was smart, conceited and always monopolising the phone for business. Older lags like Graham Barlow and Clive Radley looked on as Mike Gatting and John Emburey tried to outdo each other in the nets or at backgammon, and Wayne Daniel told outrageous stories about his female conquests to an infatuated audience of Roland Butcher and Wilf Slack. I was a nonchalant, chaotic student with my kit in supermarket carrier bags.

Brearley heaped all this flotsam into the melting pot and siphoned off the best bits for mutual benefit. He understood what made people tick. He coaxed extra overs out of Daniel by promising an introduction to the attractive brunette in the Tavern; he admired Emburey, reacted tersely to Edmonds (though he also appreciated his skill and intelligence).

Sometimes he was intimidating. He would not tolerate negligence or people holding something in reserve through fear of failure. His ruthlessness and ambition ensured opponents cracked before his team did.

But his best motivational ploy was to make everyone feel valued and involved. He was always canvassing opinion among the team, no one was left out. The day he came over during an opposition run-riot and asked me, aged 20, who I thought should bowl next, I felt 10ft tall, particularly when he took up the suggestion. He was brilliant at helping individuals believe they were important.

He can do so again now, because, besides all the chief executive's oratory, the coach's musical videos, the other modern gimmickry, it's good to talk.

Simon Hughes's book A Lot Of Hard Yakka - a county cricketer's life (Headline) is available for £16.99 plus £2.50 P & P from Telegraph Books Direct, PO Box 1992, Epping, Essex CM16 6JL, tel 0541 557222 (8am-8pm).