TALK ABOUT good timing. It has always been integral to Mike Atherton's batting, but the timing of Athers, his authorised biography, really takes the biscuit. Commissioned, one assumes, to coincide with the Lord's Test against Australia, in which (publisher's fingers crossed) he would pass Peter May's record of 41 Tests as England captain, fortune of fortunes in appeared hard on the heels of the first Test at Edgbaston, where Atherton celebrated equalling the record with a euphoric start to the Ashes series.

That the Edgbaston win was only the 11th victory of Atherton's captaincy is one reason why his has been a roller-coaster reign. He will be hard-pushed to match May's 48 per cent record of wins, let alone Mike Brearley's 58 per cent, but unlike these two he did not inherit winning sides. When Atherton replaced Graham Gooch during the 1983 Ashes series, England had lost eight of their previous nine Tests.

Nor did May or Brearley have Raymond Illingworth's jacket hanging in their England dressing-rooms. The former chairman of selectors and `supremo' dogs Atherton throughout this book rather like a wicked stepmother. Indeed there were times when I thought I must be reading Illywhacker rather than Athers. The tragedy is that, by the end, Illingworth's role has become that of the pantomime dame, good for a few laughs.

Even so, while the reader is likely to sympathise with Atherton over the speed at which Illingworth shoots from the lip, the tensions between the captain and the chairman do provide a dynamic sub-plot to what would otherwise be a pacy but nonetheless standard cricket biography. David Norrie knows his man and has his confidence – Atherton himself chips in with observations and occasional insights – but the subject is definitely Athers the cricketer. Michael Atherton remains something of a closed book. There's authority in that word `authorised'.

For example, the hotels where England teams are selected get a namecheck, but only once do we learn the name of a book Atherton has read. It's a Ladybird cricket book. Yet the England captain is reputed to be a voracious reader, and books, as well as furnishing rooms, can furnish a character. They provide clues, and so can music, but in neither instance does Athers give anything away.

Albeit unintentionally, however, Atherton's reading does provide a possible clue. At Cambridge, he says, `I never went to lectures as what was in lectures was in the books.' There is a hint of the autodidact there and, like the self-taught man, Atherton appears to feel safer with his own opinions; to be reluctant to take on board other people's ideas without first digesting them. `With all that university education,' says Neil Fairbrother, his long-time friend and team-mate, `he was very headstrong, someone who didn't listen.' A good lecturer, and Cambridge must have had some, can inspire not only enthusiasm but a fresh approach.

Inspiration, however, has not been Atherton's modus operandum, for all his being seen as `a natural leader' from his school-days – even if he did find it difficult to thank the tea-ladies. `I didn't try to fire the boys up,' he says of his first time in charge of England. `That's not my style. I aimed to lead by example.'

The danger with that comes when the exemplar fails. `We know that if we can dismiss [ Atherton] cheaply,' said Allan Donald before the 1995–96 series in South Africa, `it will be a great psychological blow for us.' Yet Australia dismissed him cheaply in the first innings at Edgbaston. So what was different?

In a word, continuity: one that Atherton uses time and again throughout the book. He saw it as essential to England's recovery when he became captain, and he had to stand by while Illingworth dismantled both his team and his planning after the West Indies tour of 1993–94. Now, under the patronage of Lord MacLaurin and the ECB, he has been given the continuity he craved, and in return for his belief in them, his players are responding. I suspect there was a time when, by definition almost, Atherton believed that a professional cricketer knew his job. Experience has taught him otherwise and he has had to communicate more with his team on the field. It is all beginning to pay dividends.

The ups and downs of Atherton's career are all analysed here in detail, and though fresh in the memory they still make fascinating reading. Men of lesser purpose would have thrown in the towel, but Atherton follows the line of the American poet, Robert Frost: `The best way out is always through.' As David Llyod says of him, and as the Australians are learning to acknowledge, `Athers is a tough little sod.' That comes across on almost every page of David Norrie's very good read.

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