A LIST OF notable events during the Headingley Test:

 1.
•  Darren Gough exorcised some bad memories;
 2.
•  Ian Botham judged the Man of the Match award;
 3.
•  Jason Gillespie spoke:
 4.
•  Michael Atherton read demands for his resignation;
 5.
• The Hollioake brothers were once more nominated as saviours of the game;
 6.
•  Dominic Cork made a spectacular comeback for Derbyshire. Discuss, analyse and place in order of importance…

Each of these apparently unrelated occurrences actually has its base in a single syndrome – the one called Heroes and Villains. It is widely practised in this country, especially by the lowbrow media, and its simplest virtue is that one man can be both a hero and a villain in swift succession, sometimes several times over. But those who refuse to give interviews or to behave in a way that could expose themselves to the glib gods of adulation or ridicule need not apply.

Hence, Australia's Gillespie, excellent bowling not withstanding, remained wilfully outside the gates of fame because, it was said, he was too shy to give interviews. The team management played up this line in the same way that Alex Ferguson used to protect Ryan Giggs from The predatory press pack. Then Botham named Gillespie Man of the Match ahead of Matthew Elliott and Ricky Ponting, and Gillespie was pressed before David Gower's microphone. He began gauchely before uttering the priceless line that he intended' to have a few drinks in a very shorts space of time'. He was suddenly a hero and he knew it. Minutes later, he had presented himself before the newspaper writers too, and was going at it with a will. Villainy may not be far off, but Gillespie will never again be though a gifted nobody.

 Cork is an executive member of the Fame Game association, which made his rushed return to county cricket a significant event. It was not the most important of those listed above – how could it compete with `Dizzy' breaking his self-imposed silence? – but in a week when England's Ashes chances died 501 deaths, there was an appealing symmetry to `Corky' bustling back weeks ahead of schedule to play in the 2nd X1 at Belper Meadows and then taking a Sunday League game by storm. For, when it comes to this very modern syndrome, the thoroughly modern Cork is the ultimate subject.

 FEW CRICKETERS acquired hero status so quickly – not even his own idol, Botham– and fewer still have suffered such a painful fall. Whether Cork now actually qualifies as a villain is open to debate. What is unarguable is the fact that his life collapsed from an apparent idyll to an unenviable mess in a matter of months. In the oldest of rainy-day board games, he landed on the longest ladder, followed abruptly by the most venomous snake.

It hardly seems possible that it was only two summers ago when Cork burst upon us, taking 7 for 43 in his First Test– naturally, it was at Lord's – and then doing the hat-trick in his third, at Old Trafford. As both games ended in victories over West Indies, a rare and highly negotiable currency, he was instantly elevated to the tabloid pantheon, which sounds very attractive until you encounter the downside.

From hero to villain: Dominic Cork gained instant fame when he took a hat-trick in his third Test match. But only 18 months later he withdrew from England's tour of Zimbabwe, his personal and professional lives in turmoil

It took about a year, no more, for Cork to reap the whirlwind. It emanated, as these things usually do, from a decline if form and the resentful sniping of innocents and malcontents who felt he should do the hat-trick every time he had the ball in his hand. Spectacular success is not all it is cracked up to be. Do these deeds once and they tend to become a millstone.

But Cork's involuntary trip down the equivalent of an Alton Towers super-slide was immeasurably accelerated by a very public broken marriage and his unashamedly emotional reaction. In his vulnerable state, he sought and received compassionate leave from the first part of England's winter tour, then undertook the second part with all the enthusiasm of a vegetarian in a steakhouse. He became a different, less attractive individual, hiding himself away from any threat of publicity ad adopting such a persecution complex that Botham himself pronounced he had given up on him. `They used to say I was paranoid,' he said wonderingly, `but this bloke is something else.'

The consequences of this attitude problem were severe. Cork's cricket deteriorated sharply, his bowling shorn of the shape and rhythm that made it such a proposition (though his combative batting, to be fair, has had its moments). And he so lost touch with the demands of being part of a team that he became the cause of chronic exasperation among the management.

Twice, Atherton had to speak individually to him about his problems and his responsibilities. More than once, the coach, David Lloyd– a more combustible character – was driven to distraction. When Lord MacLaurin, the chairman of the Board, arrived in New Zealand and was briefed on the situation, Cork came very close to being sent home, partly for the good of his won tortured mind but more for the benefit of a team losing patience with him.

This was an extreme case, both in the speed with which a hero fell on his face and in the background to it. Cork suffered extenuating, though hardly unique, personal circumstances, during which his fame became an intimidating searchlight from which he wished to hide. Like the Majority of sportsmen who have been lauded and the lampooned, he was not sufficiently mature to cope.

 BUT A TRAWL back through the files of the `characters' of the English game discloses some comparable stories, Botham's for one. Most of us will forever treasure his memory for such feats as Headingley or Edgbaston, 1981, but he will also be recalled for boorish behaviour and sensational stories of his private life, not all of which were untrue. Whether Botham downed buckets of whisky-and-ice-cream (yes, this really was a trendy drink in the 1980s), did drugs or bedded even half the women he was supposed to have done is not the point. The issue in the Fame Game is how he dealt with suspicious accusation or discovery and the answer is unflattering. Botham's defence was a show of injured persecution, an innocent `how-could-anyone-think-that-of-me?' But, through it all, he seldom let such diversions affect his cricket. Strong character.

 Gough was one of those unfortunates, who now, number about 37, destined to be labelled `the new Ian Botham'. Thankfully he has now outgrown such nonsense but only after a spell of humble introspection. Gough and Cork grew up together and their early England careers described very similar graphs – an impossibly steep climb and a depressingly sharp fall. Gough, a more natural centre-stage character than his old chum, convinced us all he could conquer the world after his brief glory in Australia in the first half of 1994–95, but injury conspired with a surfeit of conflicting advice to stall his career and, briefly, sour his mind.

`They used to say I was paranoid, but this bloke is something else'– Botham on Cork

He is a wiser man second time around, even if the overblown adoration of the Headingley crowd at Test time still disorientates him. His First Test there was in June 1995, his first anywhere since his Australian feats. `My lowest moment in cricket,' he still recalls with a graphic frown. Gough's picture was on the cover of every yearbook and every magazine, his lifestyle featured on the women's pages and his strident Yorkshire tones almost as recognisable on radio as FST's. The Western Terrace roared him in to bat, confident he would flay the likes of Ambrose and Walsh as far as Brett's fish shop up the Kirkstall Lane, and was out for 0, hooking impetuously to long leg.

set `em up, know' em down: Darren Gough (top) felt the heat of the tabloids during and after the last Ashes series. But in this as in other fields, Ian Botham remains the king

This year, the crowd response was almost as wild and Gough's batting equally dire – he lasted two balls in the first innings and not quite so many in the second. But his bowling stood up to the local examiners, and the animation he showed when completing five wickets in an innings for the first time in a home Test hinted at all he had been through in the H-and-V department since starting his spell in that 1995 game with so much adrenalin that he put his back out bowling his second ball. Gough always looks as if he might hurl himself into oblivion in his delivery stride. That sad day, he did.

 Atherton has no wish for fame but, having spent four rollercoaster years in his elevated but precarious position, he knows every nuance of the H-and-V game. Early in June, with the Texaco Trophy won and England's third successive Test win in the bag the tabloids virtually demanded that the Palace should take back his mere OBE and give him a knighthood instead. Six seeks later, the same papers were callously calling for his immediate resignation. Is it any wonder that Atherton has taken to addressing press conferences like a particularly uncommunicative robot?

 Atherton has never offered a public persona, his life has never been open hose in the way that Botham's, Gough's and Cork's became. He may tend towards the extreme view that it would be a better game if nobody gave interviews at all, but perhaps he has kept his sanity that way. Certainly, his conduct in the captaincy through the thinnest of times can offer some lessons to whoever does take over from him, a figure now widely being identified as Hollioake major.

If Adam is indeed to be the next England captain, he has made a start on reshaping his image by dismissing his agent, Gareth James. He has also made admirable efforts to be fully available to the media while captaining Surrey, and conducts such sessions in a way that would have Lord MacLaurin wondering if his media training courses were really necessary. But Hollioake reached that stage without so much as playing a Test. As August dawned, his life was about to alter. The Fame Game awaited him.

If was also beckoning Dominic Cork again, offering a second chance to keep his balance on the pedestal, to prove that he could sustain a level of form and an equilibrium of character, to prove that he could once more be the team man rather than the spoiled child. People in high places were watching with great interest.

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