Latest news with #MikeAtherton
News18
12-05-2025
- Sport
- News18
England Criticised As RCB Youngster Picks IPL Over Test: 'Bring Your Player...'
England will warm-up for their upcoming five-match Test series against India at home in June this year with a one-off Test against Zimbabwe later this month. The contest, a four-day affair, isn't part of the ICC World Test Championship, will be played at Trent Bridge in Nottingham from May 22. England have named a 13-man squad, led by Ben Stokes, for the contest. Former captain Mike Atherton though has criticised the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) for not picking the highly rated young allrounder Jacob Bethell for the fixture as he's currently plying his trade in the IPL 2025 for the Royal Challengers Bengaluru.
Times
09-05-2025
- Sport
- Times
Can delightfully simple James Rew break the Bazball mould?
It was a startling statistic that Somerset's James Rew had recently become the youngest Englishman since Denis Compton in 1939 to score ten first-class centuries. It was certainly one that made you wonder: first, from a purely selfish perspective, about how many hundreds I had at that age, of 21 years and 114 days. So a quick email to the brilliant and always helpful Sky Sports statistician Benedict Bermange brought the answer of one, but, as that was against Oxford University, we can rule that out immediately. So none, then. My friend and colleague Mike Atherton? He had six hundreds at that age. Not bad. Compton actually had 17, Len Hutton 13 and WG Grace 11. Interestingly, Nottinghamshire's Joe Clarke had nine. But now
Gulf News
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Gulf News
Part of me wished I'd died: Andrew Flintoff opens up on crash trauma and anxiety
Dragged under a car for 50 metres with no helmet and his head scraping the track, the former England all-rounder feared he had been 'damaged beyond repair' in a horrific crash while filming the television programme Top Gear in 2022. 'Part of me wishes I'd been killed,' he admits in his new Disney+ documentary Flintoff. 'This sounds awful… I was just thinking, 'this would have been so much easier'.' The 47-year-old's words are not those of a man seeking sympathy but of one laying bare the mental toll of surviving a trauma he never saw coming. Flintoff suffered serious facial injuries and broken ribs when his Morgan Super 3 overturned on the test track. The open-topped three-wheeler can reach speeds of 130mph — and Flintoff wasn't wearing a helmet. Two years on, the former Ashes hero is still living with the scars — some visible, others buried deep. He recalls the dread of stepping out in public for the first time since the crash, ahead of his debut as an England assistant coach in 2023. 'That day in Cardiff, it took me 10 goes to leave my hotel bedroom,' he told The Times in a candid interview with former teammate Mike Atherton. 'I was so anxious and worried… even standing in a lift with Ben Stokes made me nervous.' A painstaking rebuilding phase The man once known for his swagger on the pitch now speaks with the vulnerability of someone rebuilding himself, piece by painstaking piece. His surgeon, Jahrad Haq, described Flintoff's injuries as among the worst he's seen in 20 years — likening the reconstruction to completing a jigsaw puzzle with missing parts. 'I didn't think I had it in me to get through,' Flintoff says in the documentary. 'I was frightened to death.' But slowly, he has started to find his footing — both in his personal life and professional world. Welcomed back into the England fold by the likes of Joe Root and Jos Buttler, Flintoff began his coaching journey with the Under-19s and was appointed head coach of the England Lions in September 2024. He also took charge of Northern Superchargers in The Hundred. 'There's still flashbacks, anxiety, and other stuff,' he says. 'But I'm accepting of it now. I don't think I'm ever going to be better — just different.' Resentment and change in attitude While he expresses resentment at how he was treated both in sport and on television — 'just a commodity' — Flintoff now finds comfort in smaller victories: the sound of his kids, a conversation over breakfast, or simply making it out the door.
The Guardian
19-03-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
Off the scent: how Atherton and Katich thrived in cricket without all senses intact
On the weekend, a friend and I went walking. As we strolled along the River Goyt, a sweet smell hit us like a packet of Love Hearts, which, as it turns out, is pretty much what it was. We had inadvertently walked past the Swizzels factory – producer of Parma Violets, Rainbow Drops and more in the Sett Valley since the company moved out of blitzed London in 1940, to an old textile mill in New Mills, Derbyshire. Alongside the sugary cloud drifted a junk shop of memories, sweets handed out at jelly and ice-cream parties, shared on the curb outside the corner shop, sucked on the way home from school. Later on, we passed a man pushing a mower to and fro on his front lawn and that fresh hit set off a whole other chain of flashbacks. As a cricket lover, you probably know where this is going. In the UK, where there are four seasons, albeit more confused these days, and the winters are long and damp and quite barren of natural smells, cut grass is the first sign the cricket season is on the way – quite quickly on the way now. There are only 16 days until Surrey walk out (probably wearing beanies and carrying handwarmers) to start their County Championship title defence. Smell is the most underrated of all the senses; the least glamorous, the most neglected, often held at bay by the indignity of a runny nose. But it is also the sense most connected to memory and is linked to the part of the brain involved with emotional and behavioural response. Which is why we have such a strong reaction to mown grass: sitting next to the cricket season to come is also the cricket season past, with people and players we have loved, but who have now slipped away to rest a while on the bench in the shadows. Alongside the lawnmower and the daffodils and the hawthorn blossom and the rudely fragrant hyacinth bulbs calling out from shop fronts, the world is slowly coming to life as the days stretch towards the spring equinox, first overs and beyond. It is one of the great pleasures in life to go for a walk in March and smell possibilities all around. But this isn't the way for every cricket lover or every cricketer. There are at least two Test players who have never sniffed the linseed oil, the groundsman's cuttings, stale kit or Deep Heat or, in Mike Atherton's case, even the odour of sweet toasted corn floating out of the Kelloggs factory round the corner from his former home ground, Old Trafford. Atherton has no memory of having had a sense of smell. His mum first noticed when he was six or seven years old. 'We lived in a village called Woodhouses [in Greater Manchester] where there are more pig farms per square mile than anywhere else in the country,' he says. 'At tea time, they would feed the pigs and there was apparently an almighty stink and she began to realise I was not registering any of this stuff.' However, it wasn't something that he had ever thought about until the Covid pandemic. 'Then, when everyone else was talking about losing their sense of smell, and what a loss it was, I thought, for the first time, what am I missing?' Practically, it means he needs someone to tell him if his food smells bad and he has begun to think his taste buds might be different to everyone else's – he sometimes struggles to tell the difference between tea and coffee and tends to like spicy food rather than anything more subtle. It also means he may have made a few olfactory faux pas in his time: 'My teammates could probably tell you about some stinky shirts I might have worn out of ignorance.' But he is typically no-nonsense about the whole thing, signing off with: 'What goes in my nose is air, it doesn't mean anything. If you're going to lose one sense, then that is the one to lose.' Sign up to The Spin Subscribe to our cricket newsletter for our writers' thoughts on the biggest stories and a review of the week's action after newsletter promotion Another Test cricketer without a sense of smell is Simon Katich, who lost the ability to sniff an old baggy green after an attack of glandular fever. That also knocked him down the waiting list for a Test place after the rookie Ricky Ponting muscled into the vacant spot in the Australian middle order while Katich languished in bed. Not being able to sniff the difference between parsley and sage did not hold him back when he got to the semi-finals of Australia's Celebrity MasterChef in 2009, impressing the judges with his crispy salmon with wilted spinach and mashed potato, and then a 10-layer crepe cake. Can we take anything away from these two fine cricketers being unable to smell? Could it be that their inability to register the stinking pheromones of an angry fast bowler – thinking here in particular of a furious Allan Donald pawing at the ground at Trent Bridge in 1998 – helped keep them calm? Might a lack of flamboyance at the crease be related to their inability get a sensory hit from a morning espresso or never having to endure the whiff of a post-match nightclub? Fun as it might be to ponder, no amount of ruminating can stop the passing days. There is something in the air: the season is coming. This is an extract from the Guardian's weekly cricket email, The Spin. To subscribe, just visit this page and follow the instructions.
Telegraph
25-02-2025
- Sport
- Telegraph
‘Pakistan at home, India with home advantage': ICC under fire for Indian favouritism
India's 'home advantage' during the Champions Trophy has been criticised by former England captains Nasser Hussain and Mike Atherton. Pakistan are hosts of the ongoing tournament, yet had to travel to Dubai to face India on Sunday. India have refused to visit Pakistan during the tournament, and are guaranteed to play all their matches – including the final, should they qualify – in Dubai. Every other side in the competition must go to Dubai to face India should they play against them, leaving India as the sole nation that are guaranteed to play all of their games in the same venue. While other countries had to consider the possibility of playing in United Arab Emirates as well as Pakistan, India picked their squad knowing that they would play on the same pitch in Dubai. India picked five spinners in their squad, in anticipation of turning wickets in Dubai. After two comprehensive wins, over Bangladesh and Pakistan, India have already qualified for the semi-finals. 'It is an advantage. For the best team in the tournament to have that advantage...', said Hussain, England's captain from 1999-2003. 'I saw a tweet the other day: Pakistan – host nation, India – home advantage. That sort of sums it up, really.' As well as familiarity with the conditions, India also do not need to travel between different venues during the competition, staying in the same hotel throughout. 'All the other sides have to pick for different conditions – Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Dubai, and then they have to travel and adjust to those conditions,' Hussain said. 'It is an advantage, but what else could happen? ICC, once India refused to come here to Pakistan, what else could happen? You can't have a tournament like this without India-Pakistan, that's not going to happen. It had to be in Dubai. They [India] sit happily and comfortably there, knowing that they will probably play six games there, and if they win all those they will win another global tournament.' Mike Atherton, England's Test captain from 1993-98, also believes that India enjoy a major advantage in the tournament. 'About the advantage India have in playing in Dubai, only in Dubai, which seems to me to be a hard-to-quantify advantage but an undeniable advantage,' Atherton said. 'They're playing at just one venue. They don't have to travel between venues or, you know, between countries as a lot of other teams have to do. Therefore, the selection can focus on Dubai, you know, can focus in on the conditions in Dubai, where they are playing their semi-final as and when they get through to that. That seems to me an undeniable advantage.' India may have also, potentially, benefitted from playing in the final game of the group stages. Had they been chasing qualification, India would have known exactly what they needed to do. Instead, India's game with New Zealand will merely determine which team finishes first in the group. The two sides to qualify from group B – including, potentially, England – will not know where their semi-final venue is until after India's match. The group stages ending with an India fixture continues a trend in global events that has raised concerns about the integrity of the tournaments. In both the 2021 and 2022 T20 World Cups, India played the last group game in the tournament – meaning that, should qualification be determined by net run-rate, the side would know exactly what they needed to do to qualify. The potential benefit was even greater as, on both occasions, India played among the weakest sides in the group – Namibia in 2021 and Zimbabwe in 2022. In the 2023 one-day international World Cup, India yet again played the last group game – once again against a less-fancied side, the Netherlands. In last year's T20 World Cup, India were guaranteed to play their semi-final in Guyana, regardless of where they finished in the preceding stage. While every other country had to prepare to play semi-finals at two potential venues, India could focus all their energy on planning for Guyana's spinning conditions. They duly thrashed England in the semi-final.
