"Tiring? I don't find it tiring. I find it enthralling. I wouldn't have liked the job when I was 21 but I understand it now." This is Nasser Hussain talking at 11.30 on a Saturday night as he drives back from Cardiff where he has played two all-star day-night games under the dome of the Millennium Stadium. The subject is being captain of England. "I find the excitement of captaincy is deciding when to attack and when to defend," he says. "Especially with our side. If I had McGrath, Gillespie and Lee it would be fairly easy to work out that I needed four slips and two gullies most of the time. We're more inexperienced. We have to set our field according to how the bowlers feel that day."

Hussain is a pragmatist who is fascinated by the intricacies of the game. "There are always two sides to an argument. Right from the toss," he says and he analyses the dressing-room reaction. "It'll be seven to four or six to five, especially in England, whether to bat or bowl. As that great cricket brain Philip Tufnell told me, there's always the flip side."

He was a hard man to pin down before he left for Australia but a window of opportunity appeared when he was on the motorway, returning home to Essex that night. He said he would talk for as long as the battery lasted in his mobile. There was more juice in it than he thought and he talked at length about leadership, the dressing room and the characters in it, about playing Australia and above all about himself. Nasser speaks about Nasser as frankly as he has ever done – top side and flip side.

There is an important before and after question about Hussain. Before he became captain of England he had an entrenched reputation as a selfish batsman given to throwing the toys out of his cot. Lord MacLaurin, chairman of the ECB, thought him unfit to captain England, but captaincy has changed him. It has transformed him into a mentor and a healer, though one still capable of losing his temper.

"Of those charges against me I would say, yes, I was probably selfish in the way that every international cricketer is selfish. The best ones in our dressing room, Thorpe, Stewart, Gough, all have a selfish streak. That's the only way to be successful. Before I was captain I had a sink-or-swim sort of attitude. I thought it was up to the individual to go and perform. I wasn't a great believer in sports psychology either. I thought it was a load of rubbish but I've learned in the last two or three years.

"I do still get quite cross every now and then. I can remember the first Test at Mohali last winter when India needed four to win in their second innings. I gave the new ball to Matthew Hoggard. They sent in their No. 10 for some reason, `Hoggy' bowled a loosener and it went for four. I was cross with him. And both of us were wrong. Hoggy should have run up and bowled properly and I shouldn't have had a go at the person who was there for me throughout India and since. He's the sort of character I like. The people I like generally speak their mind. We're not picking the England team any more on county ability but on character. It's character that's eventually going to carry you through. We're starting to look at the character of individual players.

"What has surprised me, I suppose, is not so much being captain on the field. I've been pleasantly surprised to discover you can create an atmosphere in the dressing room where everyone can express themselves and where you try and take out the fear of failure from individual players. We have found some very fine cricketers by creating the right dressing-room atmosphere. Trescothick, Vaughan, Hoggard and Flintoff are all players that weren't really setting county cricket alight but who have prospered in our environment. You've got to look at the ones who are going to grow into international cricketers. I'm not mentioning any names, but I used to think if you got millions of runs in county cricket that, surely, you'd be able to do that eventually in Test cricket. I now think there is a certain type of player who will be successful at Test level even if he's not getting runs or wickets at county level. The obvious ones are Trescothick and Vaughan, and, with the ball, Simon Jones and Steve Harmison.

"If you don't give these young lads the chance, then they won't learn and they won't have the opportunities to surprise you. To be honest I was pleasantly surprised by Jones. When he played at Lord's I stood at mid-off thinking `this is great'. Harmison, in the second innings at Trent Bridge bowling at Dravid and Ganguly, was impressive too. Obviously Vaughan all summer and Trescothick. People knock county cricket but players are coming into the England team and doing well. It's got to say wonders about our coach, to be honest."

Hussain clearly regards himself as one of a pair, in a partnership with Duncan Fletcher. They had never met when each took up his appointment. It could have been a disastrous relationship but Fletcher has an avuncular quality with Test cricketers. He understands the stresses and strains and can give advice without giving offence. Hussain says wonders about Fletcher himself.

"The proof is there in the way the lads have come on. I'm talking about bat grip and positioning of feet and the right angles to play over and round the wicket. Getting to understand the physics of cricket. I don't think there's anyone better than Duncan Fletcher. In the past coaches might tell you to sweep or use your feet to the spinners. Fletcher actually gives you the technique to get into the correct position to play the shots. Some of the work he does with Vaughan, Trescothick and Hoggard is fascinating. "What Fletcher taught me when we met up was that the cameras are on me all the time. There's always someone who is looking at me out of the corner of their eye after every ball to see how I'm reacting. After you've been in the job for a while, you get a reputation and a captain has to be careful not to start doing things for show. That was one reason why I loved Atherton. He never put himself above the team or took himself too seriously or did anything just to make Mike Atherton look good. Sometimes he was so stubborn he didn't mind if he made Mike Atherton look bad. Not shaving or looking scruffy, for example. He always tried to make the team better. That's where I have to be careful about getting a reputation for having a go at my players. The danger is that you start doing it for show."

But Hussain is acutely conscious of his two roles – as captain and as top-order batsman – and of the conflicts that arise between them. The one can hinder the other. During the NatWest Series final at Lord's Hussain the batsman appeared to diminish Hussain the captain, acknowledging applause for his century by putting up three fingers at the press box where critics had been saying he should bat lower in the order. It looked somewhat paranoid. As it happens, it is faintly paranoid. "It's a complex issue. The way I sometimes get motivated as a batsman is to read what's written about me and get fiery. That's what made me the player I am, the will to go out and prove people wrong. There are times when I cease to be Nasser Hussain, captain of England, to be loyal to myself as a player. When I went nine months without a run I was probably erring too much towards being Nasser Hussain the captain, not getting too upset about the runs and trying to concentrate on the captaincy, making sure I was goody-two-shoes saying all the right things. Eventually you have to give yourself a kick up the backside and the way I do that is to get fiery.

"You enjoy the good days for the team and there's been quite a few recently, but the problem of being captain and batting in the top four is that the really good days are few and far between. Getting 150 in the Lord's Test and winning was a great week. Getting 100 in the NatWest Series final and losing to India was a dreadful weekend. When you're trying to get runs yourself and win games there's not many days of the year when you sit in your car and drive home and think `what a great day'." As his own character matures Hussain has come to appreciate the importance of character in others. It has become a mantra. Promising young England players must start to look to their character.

"For too long the England policy was not to select players who were a bit different – the Caddicks of this world. But you can't select a group of people who play the way you do. The bottom line is they all have something about them, whether it be fire in their belly or even a quietness, like Atherton's. Graham Thorpe's a classic example. He's a very quiet lad. Hardly says a word in the dressing room but when you look in his eyes when he comes out to bat in a pressure situation you know this is the bloke you want to have with you. In truth he's not one of the hardest hitters of a cricket ball and he doesn't have a wide array of shots; at times he can be a bit of a nudger. But he's a real street fighter. Same as Atherton and Stewart.

"You have to select from character," he says and he applies the principle to his captaincy too. He has had to learn how to balance the requirements of batting and captaincy in his relations with the media as well as his players. "A lot of people tell me I get a lot of stick from the media but I honestly think that I have been fairly treated. I went nine months when I couldn't buy a run and I know other captains would have been nailed for that. The press stuck by me and I'll remember that."

The conversation is drawn, magnetically, towards playing Australia. Hussain is the sort of combative character who enjoys the challenge and it is significant that the only opposing captains he singles out are the Australian skippers he has played against.

"Mark Taylor, I admired the way he carried himself on a cricket field. Stood at slip, his demeanour was that of an Australian captain; win or lose, he never got involved in disputes or shenanigans. He handled the job well and in that respect I hold him as a benchmark. He ended up being a great Australian. As for Steve Waugh, he took the Australian game into a different era. All he wanted was to win every Test match. Normally bad weather means there will be a draw somewhere, but he just told his great side that they had to score at five an over and take 20 wickets. That was phenomenal." The quality Hussain brings to this Ashes series is pragmatism. He has few illusions about his team. He cannot deploy them like some heat-seeking missile the way Waugh can his team. They need more individual care and attention. The old ones are prone to injury and he will be leading the young ones into unknown territory where they are still to be tested. "I never go into a series knowing how I'm going to captain it. Situations change so quickly. You have to learn when to sit in and when to attack. Basically, that is the art of captaincy. We have been successful recently in the subcontinent and in England playing on some turgid wickets. Patience has been the key. But there are so many variables – pitches for a start – you can't go into a series with one plan.

"What happens this winter depends on how our bowlers rock up. If they are match fit then I think we're going to have to play some attacking cricket, choose which of their bowlers to go after and which to sit on. And we're going to look at some of Stephen Fleming's fields, although they might not apply to our type of bowling. You can set a field for Hoggard that won't work for Caddick. In India we tried sitting on a 7-2 field and bowling outside off stump. Flintoff bowled short and it worked for three innings but towards the end they started to deal with that plan. Things might work one day and not the next. Throughout the Ashes series we're going to have to think on our feet.

"I mentioned to our side at the end of The Oval Test that we'd played against sides recently that sat in a little bit and now we're going to come up against a side that will come at us. It's not going to be any surprise. We know what's ahead of us. Me as a captain, the bowlers, the batters, all have to prepare mentally and decide how to cope with that. This goes back to how you are as a person. Are you Atherton-like: go back into your shell and shrug your shoulders for five hours. Perhaps you're more Dominic Cork-ish and in their face. Whatever suits you. But sit and think about how you're going to react.

"We know what's going to happen. It might not be the same people. It might not be Michael Slater making 18 off the first over, as it was in the last series, and the whole momentum's gone. With the bat and the ball they're going to come at you. Are you going to go after them or are you going to sit back and let them come to you? As captain I have to have visualised it all so that it doesn't hit me on the first morning in Brisbane, so you can react and not panic."

At that point the battery on Nasser's mobile finally expired and he was left to contemplate the future in the silence of the motorway.

Stephen Fay is editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly

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