Atherton tweaks the the West Indians chasing moghuls in India … and elsewhere

Mike Atherton, in The Times and the Weekend Australian, 26 May 2009, with title “Swatting balls in Delhi doesn’t compare to facing up at Lord’s, it’s just Gaylic”

Pic by Getty Images

 

LET’S call it Gaylic, shall we, the language of the modern, supranational, jet-setting Twenty20 cricketer. It is almost universal now, cricket’s version of Esperanto if you like, and it doesn’t matter whether it is IPL, BPL, Big Bash or the original, the Friends Life t20, the language is the same – cash is the game – and the building blocks of this new language are taken from its founder, the biggest, baddest Twenty20 cricketer in town: Chris Gayle.

Gaylic was being played out over the loudspeakers with deafening effects during the first Test at Lord’s. While his fellow West Indians were fretting about swing, seam and the slope, and other variables that make batting at Lord’s in May such a difficult task, Gayle was freewheeling for the Royal Challengers Bangalore. Every shot he played echoed all the way to Lord’s.

Strauss under Stress at Galle and Beyond

Michael Atherton in The Weekend Australian, 31 March 2012 and the Times, under a different title: “Fall of Galle leaves discordant Andrew Strauss in need of a big innings”

GALLE has rarely been kind to England captains. More often than not, they have travelled the coast road back to Colombo having been gently basted in the sun, knowing that they have come off second-best. No England captain has left Galle a winner. Nasser Hussain, Michael Vaughan and Andrew Strauss have all struggled there, both as captains and batsmen, Vaughan’s twin draws (hanging on, nine wickets down in 2003, and then saved by the rain in 2007) a triumph compared with the innings defeat suffered by Hussain and the 75-run defeat inflicted on Strauss yesterday.

Watching Strauss in the aftermath of defeat, it was Hussain I was thinking of. During England’s first ever Test match in Galle, Hussain was in the middle of a horror trot.

Atherton reviews Pakistan’s whitewash of England

Michael Atherton in The Australian 8 February 2012 following the Times

WITH the fourth day drawing to a close – and after the opening thrusts of this Test, few would have thought that a possibility – a remarkable turnaround, on two fronts, was completed: not for more than a 100 years has a team bowled out for less than 100 in the first innings of a Test match gone on to win as Pakistan did in Dubai; and, even more remarkably, this by a team that was rudderless, disgraced and derided the world over less than two years ago.

Monday’s victory, the first whitewash by a Pakistan team over England, put the seal on the transformation that began on one of Pakistan’s darkest days at Lord’s in August 2010. Salman Butt’s fall opened the door for a 37-year-old who had been in and out of the team the previous few years, but more out than in, as more obviously talented players were preferred.