IT is hard to imagine what it must be like to be a cricketer standing at the crease in a Test match arena with 40,000 spectators watching you, facing down a guy who is trying to knock your block off from 22 yards with a 100 mile an hour missile.
It's hard to imagine how you could do that for 10 hours, in blistering hot conditions in South Africa, watched by millions of television viewers worldwide.
Mike Atherton's unbeaten 185 in 643 minutes at the Wanderers ground in Johnannesburg in 1995 is rated as one of the finest knocks by an English batsman. It salvaged a draw for England and began the first of Atherton's duels with the great South African fast bowler, Allan Donald.
Three years later, the return took place at Trent Bridge in a do-or-die final 40 minute session of a Test match which England went on to win when Atherton survived a justified appeal for a gloved catch. The England batsman later signed the offending glove for Donald to raffle during his benefit year.
The fact that Atherton has been there and played at the highest level is what makes him one of the best sportswriters of his generation - now cricket correspondent for The Times, and also a broadcaster with Sky TV.
This week he turned up at the University of Brighton in Eastbourne to deliver a 90-minute talk to students and cricket lovers about his career and sports in general.
Mike Atherton doesn't tell too many jokes. It's hard to imagine the former England cricket captain would light up a dressing room after a hard day's play with a few bawdy tales and one-liners to his colleagues. One suspects he was a bit of a loner.
There were certainly not belly-aching anecdotes about the antics of 14-year career which saw him play 115 Test matches for his country. He spoke about depression in sport, why he believed that money invested in the London Olympics could have been better spent on providing new schools and hospitals, how he approved of the use of technology in sport, and even why he is useless at gambling!
Interestingly, at a lecture hosted by the university's journalism department and attended by many journalism students, Atherton was asked how he felt about taking up a second profession without any training at all. "But what training do I need?" he asked, pointing out how he was used to writing 5,000 word university dissertations in three hours and so appreciated the value of deadlines, how he was widely read and how he also knew his sport.
It was a fair comeback, notably when he hit back with the post-Leveson barb questioning how many journalists working today had received formal training.
It is hard to argue against Atherton since, as an award-winning journalist, he has proved his qualities of writing and objectivity beyond doubt.
In the cricketing world, he has followed the likes of Mike Selvey, Derek Pringle and Angus Fraser who have swapped cricket ball for laptops to carve out successful careers as sports writers. What qualities they share which their fellow hacks don't is an appreciation of playing the sport at the highest level, truly understanding the pressures of those who they are reporting on.
I don't agree with Atherton's assertion about training, however.
Does he know the laws of defamation and contempt, copyright, or the laws governing social media? How knowledgeable is he about public administration with the running of local and central government or the governing of sports? Does he truly understand the science of writing, or the relationships between news media and social media, and how is his 100 words a minute shorthand or does he just record interviews with a microphone?
I offer the briefest of overviews about a sports journalist's training. It's not namby-pamby study, it is industry relevant.
What relevance does law have to sports journalism, you may ask? - the answer is Harry Redknapp, John Terry and Anton Ferdinand, Ryan Giggs, Lance Armstrong and the Sheffield United football Ched Evans who was convicted of rape for starters.
What I find uncomfortable is the increasing number of ex-sportsmen and women who muscle their way into journalism; print, radio or television - on the back of being a name and whose career is then fast-tracked to the top. As analysts, absolutely. Their insight and knowledge can be absorbing, their objectivity less so and their questioning banal. Let's call it the Sally Gunnell factor.
Atherton made one interesting point about the use of social media and how, when you looked around a press box, few journalists were actually watching a game, they were heads down with their laptop writing updated copy for the website, blogging or Tweeting. "I would have thought the priority would be to watch the game and understand the game," said Atherton, who has little compunction to Tweet or sees that value of joining the Twitterati. Why should anyone be interested in a knee-jerk reaction? Shouldn't journalism be about considered opinions set in context? Absolutely!
Interestingly, Atherton looked back on his previous life as a Test match cricketer with some affection, but not a huge amount of warmth. That is what he did in the past yet he has moved on since then, he insists. He has not retained any memorabilia in his home, there are no photographs lining the walls or adorning mantlepieces of his greatest innings.
It's a measure of the man that he is very focused and he is an individual who made his name in a team sport.
It is why Mike Atherton has made it to the top in both of his chosen professions.
Someone alerted me to this, so i thought I'd take a moment to reply. First, thank you for the kind remarks. Second, I wanted to qualify what you said about 'training' because I don't think I answered that question as fully as I might have done. Clearly, I wouldn't dismiss training of any kind- especially not for those who work at the sharp end of the paper. I do think that reading widely is fundamental for the type of sports writing that I engage in, however. As for former players taking up press box seats, the key question is how well do they do the job and how seriously do they take it. Some do, some don't. As always it is difficult to generalise- but cricket generally has been lucky with the likes of Selvey, Pringle etc as you mention. best, Mike Atherton
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