IT WAS the morning after the General Election: the dawn of a new era, though you might not have guessed it from the faces on the Birmingham train, stoical behind the sensations in their newspapers. Edgbaston had fallen to Labour, for the first time ever. Mike Atherton was there for a Benson & Hedges group match. He'd been up half the night watching the telly in his hotel, but only because the next room was occupied by partying Blairites.

He had voted early, at home in Didsbury, Manchester, spurred by the combination of a next-door polling booth and a hangover. How he'd voted, he wouldn't say, and I couldn't guess. You could see him identifying with Blair, the bright young Oxbridge man who leads by example and personal toughness and has dragged an out-dated institution into the modern world. Equally, you could see parallels with John Major, a likeable, capable, untelegenic leader, having to carry a team so gaffe-prone that it had become a national joke.

These early days of the season ought to be light entertainment for Atherton– a chance to make a few runs and shed the cares of office. Instead it had been the opposite. As we spoke, he had just made 24 before driving Allan Donald straight to slip; as we went to press on May 11, it was still his highest score of the season. And no sooner had he relinquished the Lancashire vice-captaincy, to Wasim Akram, than Mike Watkinson had got injured, and with Akram tied up on the international treadmill, Atherton had been forced to stand in.

But he seemed pretty relaxed. He always does, except in press conferences. It is said of John Major that if every one of us had met him, he would have no trouble winning our support. Atherton is rather the same.

For him, as for the politicians, this is a year of destiny. He is already the second-longest-serving of all England captains. At Edgbaston this month, barring injury, he will equal Peter May's record of 41 Tests, and at Lord's he will break it. Yet he is still on trial. His results have been mixed: 10 full series, with four defeats and three victories, none of them against the big four – Australia, Pakistan, West Indies and South Africa. This summer, for the first time, he faces Australia in a full home series. Ray Illingworth is safely back in Pudsey, and his successor, David Graveney, is an Atherton fan. The other two selectors, Graham Gooch and Mike Gatting, played under him. The coach, David Lloyd, is a personal friend. There are no excuses any more. If the Ashes result is anything like the drubbings of 1989 and'93, Atherton's captaincy will go up in smoke, just like Gooch's and David Gower's.

 Edgbaston, venue of the First Test, will have a big say in this. Another pitch like the last two there, treacherous and seaming, will give England their best chance of an early win. Reading between the lines, this is clearly what the management has asked for. But there are financial and political pressures on Warwickshire to produce a surface that goes the distance – the sort of flat track on which Australia's batsmen thrive, and bowlers are powerless, unless their name is Shane Warne.

 Atherton emerges from the dressing-room with a handshake and a wary smile, and leads the way up on to the cameramen's gantry, to sit in the sun. He settles into a horizontal position, feet up on the railings, and watches Akram pull Lancashire out of the hole Donald has dug for them.

They say television adds 10lbs to people, but Atherton seems broader in real life, and more of an athlete – loping, self-possessed, perfectly balanced, with an unexpected hint of a coiled spring. Otherwise, with his stubble and unruly short hair, strong hands and hard-bitten nails, he looks exactly as he always has. The longest run of sustained pressure in English cricket history has left not a mark on him.

TdL: Let's start with Peter May's record. Will it mean a lot to you?

MA: Not in the sense of it being a mere statistic, but yes in a way, in that it'll mean that I've managed to cope with the demands over a reasonable period of time. The era that Peter May was captain was a very different one – England were world champions. But the demands of the job were very different – the attention, the profile is much greater now, so the demands are greater. Peter May eventually struggled with the demands of it, like most people. So in terms of showing a decent reaction to pressure over a period of time, then yeh.

The Illy relationship was hard work. It was never particularly warm and we often didn't see eye to eye on cricketing matters

Usually when a captain goes on for a long time it's a sign that a team has been successful. But your record is more mixed.

Obviously, we've not been as successful as I'd have liked. But some of the thoughts that say came out in Wisden at the start of the season – not Cricket Monthly, the Almanack– saying that the England team are a shambles, and their record's disastrous – well, I don't accept that. When I came to the job England had lost eight out of nine Test matches, and now, out of the last 22 we've lost five. That suggests to me that we've become harder to beat, which is one step forward. Now we've only won five out of those 22 as well, so we've got to unlock the key to winning more consistently. But I think our performances have been far more consistent over the past couple of years than before I took over.

Do you ever feel you got the job too young?

That's something you have no control over, apart from obviously turning the offer down, which is difficult to do. I think the Board can better prepare people for the job. They must identify two or three candidates who might take over and send them on management courses and media-relations courses. And when somebody gets the captaincy, it needs to be spelt out to him exactly what is role is and what his powers are and what he's expected to do in the job. That was never spelt out to me. Ted rang me up and asked me to captain the side and that was where it started and ended. It was very clear to me that the first touring side we picked I was very much responsible for, and then in the next year or two the power shifted a bit. So I could have been a bit better prepared for it. But in terms of cricket I wasn't inexperienced.

Have you become a more attacking captain?

I think so, over time. More prepared to take risks now. Less worried about the consequences. Less worried full stop, actually. That's not a very recent thing, that was after the first stab at it, the firs few games.

Just being what he is: Mike Atherton in the dressing-room at Old Trafford, shortly before leaving for last winter's tour

You've got a tremendous record as a batsman while captaining the side. You don't seem to have any trouble getting the best out of yourself.

I think there's two things. I'd played 20 or 30 Tests before becoming captain and you gradually improve the more you play. I was at an age, 25 to 29, when you should be improving anyway. But the captaincy certainly precipitated that, the way it did for Goochie. The time in Zimbabwe and the start of the New Zealand tour was the only time when I've really felt out of nick.

So the question is, is it easier to get the best out of yourself than out of other people? Or don't you see that as the role of the captain?

[pause] Well, it's obviously the role of the captain to make people firmly believe in their own ability and the ability of the team to win in every situation. I do feel however that when you're playing for England, the actual motivational part of it is not absolutely necessary because it tends to be a big game and a big crowd. I've never known a player not be up for a Test match for England.

I didn't so much mean geeing up the players, as getting the best out of them. In your team there are some talented but inconsistent players, or there have been.

In the team we finished the winter with, the batting's been consistent as a unit – has been for a long time. Certainly the seam bowling was very inconsistent. Goughie bowled exceptionally well for most of the winter. Andy Caddick when he came into the side bowled well. Corky's performance level just dipped a little bit, and that's something we'll have to work hard at for when the Australians get here.

That's been a feature of recent Ashes series– bad bowling by England on the first day.

Yes, it was certainly a feature in'89,'93 to a lesser extent, certainly'94–95 in Brisbane where rather than Australia seizing the initiative we presented it to them, and that set the tone for much of what was to follow. It's crucial this time that we get off to a good start.

So what happens if you win the toss here at Edgbaston, where the last two Test pitches have been very bad for batting?

[laughs] You can't have past failures in your mind when you make that kind of decision. If the right decision is to insert, you have to back your bowlers to bowl well.

Some of the things the press said in Zimbabwe were complete untruths … It was all an attempt, particularly by their coach I think, to just stir it up with our press, knowing that they get on our backs

You've said in the past that our pitches are quite hospitable to visiting teams.

I think they were certainly hospitable against Pakistan last year. At Lord's, we might as well have been playing at Peshawar, it was so slow, low, dry, arid – perfect for the Pakistani swing bowlers and legspinner.

On a more general point, English pitches have lost their Englishness. Take this pitch here today. It's absolutely snuff-dry, with a bit of up-and-down bounce, not like the pitches of old, which were damper and gave more sideways movement. When people say Matthew Elliott's inexperienced in English conditions, I don't think that's a problem, because conditions in England are much the same as in West Indies or Australia or anywhere else. And that's a shame, because one of the great strengths of English cricket was the peculiar nature of its conditions.

So have you joined the campaign for uncovered pitches?

Well, I'd like to have had a go on them, just to see a bit more variety in the game. But I'm not sure how these pitches with the heavy loams would react now to being uncovered, whether they'd be too dangerous. They're very different from the natural soil wickets of old – hard loam pitches with crowns of grass, which makes harder, quicker surfaces, with a bit of up-and-down bounce.

It's already been a dry spring, which is just what Shane Warne and Michael Bevan would like.

We had a chat two weeks ago here at Edgbaston about the pitches that we'd like to play Australia on. I'm not going to divulge any secrets, and it may be that we don't get the pitches we ask for. That's certainly happened in the past. But we do have a game-plan in mind. It's been fairly obvious over recent months that Australia have played exceptionally well on very flat pitches where their batsmen have dominated and have let their spinners take control of the game, and they've fared less well on more seamer-oriented pitches.

We've asked about 15 ex-players, coaches and so on to predict the score in the Test series, and about 13 have said Australia will win.

Well, you'd be foolish to say that we would start favourites. On paper, they're a very strong side. But the game's not played on paper. It's how you perform over – it can be a short period of time, although it's a long series; if you get the initiative early on, you can control things. And that's up to us, to perform to our maximum, and not worry too much about Australia.

 David Boon says the key for England is to have a settled side. Do you feel you should start the series with the XI that have just won two Tests, unless there's a good reason not to?

Yes. I feel that success only comes with consistency of selection, and that's been one of the great disappointments of my captaincy. However, you've got to draw the balance between blind loyalty to players and a realistic appraisal of form at the time, and the conditions – on a pitch like this, you may have to sacrifice a second spinner. But generally I'm all for consistency of selection.

Do you take your share of responsibility for that, having been a selector over the past four years?

Yeh, absolutely.

Too many players who were picked for one Test?

Yep. I've been part of a selection committee that's made lots of mistakes. You're always going to make mistakes, no matter what side you pick. But when you're in a position to do that, you take the flak, and I take full responsibility for some bad selections and some inconsistencies in selection policy.

Do you have a smoother relationship with David Graveney that you did with Illy?

Yes. [laughs, pauses] The Illy relationship was hard work, in that it was never particularly warm and we often didn't see eye to eye on cricketing matters, but on a personal level we got on OK, we managed to see the time through. But I find David very approachable and more open to cricket chat.

Your success in New Zealand had a lot to do with Alec Stewart finally coming off as wicketkeeper-batsman. Can he sustain that through a whole summer, doing it for Surrey as well as England?

It's a hard ask on him. I don't know whether he intends to do it all season for Surrey. Obviously it makes sense for him to do it at the start to get into the groove. Once he's playing international matches, he may feel he needs a breather. But he's got one thing going for him: he's an extremely fit lad.

He'd be pleased to be called a lad.

Yeh, probably doing him a disservice – 34. He's one of the fittest members of the team and he needs to be with that workload. But that decision was a key to our success and at the time loads of people were ready to jump on us.

I sem to remember saying it was crazy.

Lots of people did. At the Sky dinner before the Test match at Bulawayo, Bob Willis and the like really jumped down our throats for changing the batting order, but all the batsmen got runs in their positions and it enabled us to play a balanced attack. It was a key decision which worked and hopefully it'll work this summer.

Are you reluctant to go back to four bowlers?

Well, the more options you have, the better you look as a captain, for one. And the cheaper you're going to bowl out the opposition, generally. The problem was when we tried to fiddle five bowlers in for much of the last two or three years, it was a kind of compromise. We didn't really have anybody up to the task of batting six and being a third seamer.

Do you feel that the one-day side should be different from the Test side?

It makes sense to pick your best possible one-day side, and if that means four or five changes, so be it. At home we have a wide pool of talent to pick from and that's helped us have a better one-day record at home than abroad.

But you wouldn't extend that to feeling that there's a case for having a different captain?

Sure, there's a case. It's for the selectors to decide. I feel I'm a good one-day captain. In the last year my batting has not been up to the standard I would like in one-day internationals, starting in South Africa. Before that I was averaging 46 in one-dayers for England and it's dropped to the low 30s, and I'd like to get back on track this summer.

Might you be captain in the West Indies next winter but not go to Sharjah in December?

Well again that's up to the selectors. Obviously if they said to me, `We want you to just captain Test matches and not one-day internationals', you'd have to think seriously about whether you were going to accept that.

You hinted in the winter that if this Ashes series didn't go well, you'd step down as captain.

Well … [mysterious harrumph] Part of the problem with the captaincy over the years is that because we appoint a captain for a certain period, the issue is always in the air when that period ends. What I would do, and I said it to the Acfield committee, is select a captain, until he resigns or is sacked. To me, it's an obvious thing to do – you've got total flexibility. If you don't like the guy who's doing it, you can get rid of him after one game. But if you like how he's doing the job, he's not constantly got a question to answer to.

But you've talked in the past about there being a natural four-year cycle. And that comes to an end after this series.

Well that's [short, sharp sigh] a natural cycle and we'll see where we stand at the end of this summer. There's a few factors: (a) we've got to be doing OK as a team; (b) I've still got to have the drive, enthusiasm and desire to carry on doing it; (c, and probably most importantly) the team's got to want me to do it. If they don't, then obviously you don't do it.

If the selectors said to me, `We want you to just captain Test matches and not one-dayers', you'd have to think seriously about whether you were going to accept that

Is the drive still the same, after 60 or 70 Tests?

The anticipation this summer, with Australia coming, is huge. And I'd like to think I've got a few more years to play as a batsman yet. I'm just short of 5000 runs, I'd like to make it a few more and finish with a decent record.

The image business. One-to-one, you come over well. You even smile quite a lot. [he chuckles] But in front of the cameras that's not always the case.

It's probably my fault. I don't do myself justice in that I just try and be as I am. And often that means being uncomfortable, particularly if it's with somebody I don't know,'cause I take a bit of time to get to know people. Certainly I'm very reserved in a written-press conference, because I've found from experience that the more you say, the more rope you give yourself to be hung by. So in the winter I tried to do them economically and professionally – answer the questions without any regard to who was asking them, whether I like the bloke or not, just get them out of the way. Because I'm afraid that through experience I basically don't trust that I'm going to be quoted correctly.

There was a classic example at the end of the New Zealand tour. Colin Bateman of the Daily Express– we lost the game at Auckland, chasing 150, and he asked me about the defeat. I said very simply, `if you play as we did today, obviously you give the opposition a chance'. That was just an obvious comment and it was taken the piss out of in the Daily Express– saying `this is what the England captain thinks, aren't we glad he's a wise old bird', lah di dah. Complete piss-take. You don't need that. So keep things short and sweet in press conferences.

I think I can make a bit more of an effort with the TV cameras, because they're situations you're in control of, you can't get misquoted or turned around, and you're portraying yourself to the viewers as well.

I noticed when you were interviewed by Charles Colvile after the third one-dayer in Zimbabwe, you were extremely friendly and upbeat.

I made a conscious effort because the team were watching it in the dressing-room and there's no way you could be seen to be depressed or on the verge of quitting or whatever.

I do feel sometimes that we are given a bad press. I don't want to whinge about the press, but some of the things that were said during the Zimbabwe tour were complete and utter untruths – about the team not being sociable. At no stage were we invited for a drink after the day's play, and yet after the Test match and after the one-day internationals there were seven or eight of us chatting away for an hour or so in the Zimbabwe dressing-room. It was all an attempt, particularly by their coach I think, to just stir it up with our press, knowing that they get on our backs and make life difficult for us.

What's your impression of Lord MacLaurin?

I've had two or three meetings with him and he's an interesting guy to talk to because he comes from a different background and has a different perspective on things and obviously has a very successful business record, so you have an immediate respect for the things he says. And it also struck me that he wants to be a bit of a doer, and both he and Tim Lamb have stressed the need for change and for the England team to be primary in everyone's thoughts. So – positive start, I'd say.

Has he spoken to you about the PR side?

Not laid down – I know he feels quite strongly about the presentation of the England side. But again I'd have to say that for every Test match, we turn up in our regulation kit as given to us by the Board. It's nonsensical to ask players to shave every day in 100-degree heat abroad, but I accept that for press conferences and the cameras that's fair enough. The England team's not badly presented, but it becomes an issue when we're losing – after the one-day internationals in Zimbabwe, or in India in 1992. If you lose, people always need to find a reason, and that just happened to be the flavour of the month.

The gathering of the England squad in April – you said firmly that it wasn't a charm school.

Well it wasn't. [laughs]

What was it?

A course run by a company called Insights, Will Carling's company, and it was very much more to do with teamwork, team ethics and dynamics, splitting 20 players into maybe five groups of four and giving you little problems to solve – go on an orienteering course, find a few clues, build a raft, get over a river, all that kind of thing. Which was (a) good fun, and (b) it got the squad together, which was the only time we could do that, so it enabled us to set out our objectives for the summer, while doing something a little bit different. I don't think people learned anything especially new, or I didn't, but it just flickered the memory a bit and hammered home the point about teamwork.

On top of everything else, this year is your benefit year.

Well again that's not a decision that I have any control over. The club offers you a benefit and you accept. What I've got is an excellent chairman and committee. Before the season I did a bit of running around, talking at dinners and so on, but now we've got very little going on and they're aware that the cricket is the first priority. Obviously I want to do well in the benefit year too, but I'm of the attitude that if the cricket goes well, everything else will fall into place.

Is there a feeling that you need to get runs for Lancashire[rueful chuckle] as you empty the members' pockets?

Well I'm certainly not having any collections at the ground, I find that a bit embarrassing. But I'll be doing my best to score runs for Lancashire. I had an outstanding record for Lancashire before I was made England captain and it's dropped off a little bit. It's not surprising that something has to give, with the amount of cricket we play for one and the amount of scrutiny you're under for two.

I asked you two years ago if you'd rather be remembered as a great batsman or as a great captain, and you said batsman. Would you still say that?

Yeh. I don't think I will be remembered as a great batsman, sadly [laughs], but I'll hopefully be remembered as a pretty good one. I think opening the batting in Test cricket is a tough job, and to do it successfully over a number of years is a – well, so far it's gone all right and that's something to be proud of.

But is your standing as a batsman more important to you than your standing as a captain?

I'd like to be remembered as a good captain as well, of course. And this summer will obviously have a big part to play in that. But you can get too het up about focusing on the result all the time. Sometimes the result is out of your control, and what we're trying to do is focus a bit more on the processes that go into winning.

Do you see yourself one day becoming a coach or manager?

[sharp intake of breath] No, I don't think so. You never know: you don't rule out anything. I like to think I could play till I'm 35 or so, which is five or six years off, and that in that time your attitudes can change. But I'd like to think I could do something different.

Something completely different?

Yeh, I'd like to think that right now. But I'm sure everybody does, and then you get to the stage where you're mid-30s and you can't easily start something afresh.

In Zimbabwe you discouraged wives and girlfriends from joining the tour. Looking back, was that the right decision?

Well, I always look back and it's easy to say [mildly dismissive chuckle] about any decision that it wasn't the right decision. But it was done for the right reasons, and I would do the same again.

So will the same thing happen next winter?

No. What we've done with next winter is we've planned it better, in that we've looked ahead and found a gap of 10 days in the itinerary when there's no international cricket. I think the team's maybe in Guyana and Barbados, for two island games, and the wives and girlfriends are coming out then.

They're going to love it in Guyana.

What's wrong with Guyana? Don't write that, my girlfriend'll go spare – she's Guyanese.

You mentioned that you worry less about the job now. Do you switch off completely, or does it stay with you when you go off fishing or whatever?

At the end of each match I do have a period of review about my performance as captain, the decisions that you make – were they the right decisions, what were the consequences, would you do anything different? But once that period of review and assessment is over, forget about it. You can't do anything about it at that stage – just try and learn the lessons, and do better next time.

ILLY ON ATHERTON: `IMPROVING, BUT SLOWLY'

I certainly respect him as a batsman, a captain and as a man, and I like to think that respect is returned. We've had a few laughs and there are many more pluses than minuses in our time together. I can only repeat something I wrote earlier: I just cannot imagine how I would have coped with leading England at his age. [Illy did not captain England until he was 37.]

He is improving as a captain, but only slowly because of the number of times he has to juggle a moderate attack, mostly of four instead of five bowlers. That is why he has to learn to be more flexible; he needs to try to make things happen more, rather than sit back and wait.'– from the new postscript to Illy's book `One-Man Committee'

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