Lives in Cricket No 30 - MJK Smith

140 Triumphs and tribulations as Chairman * * * * * * * ‘I don’t know whether they asked MJK to be manager because I was captain and they thought we’d get on,’ Mike Atherton muses. ‘But we did get on,’ he says emphatically of the two tours, to the West Indies and Australia, on which they were together in the early months of 1994 and the following winter. Atherton smiles as his mind goes back to an Italian restaurant in St John’s Wood where those who had just chosen the party to tour the Caribbean repaired for a meal. With a sweeping gesture to emphasise a point, Mike knocked a glass of red wine over Micky Stewart. ‘MJK said the best way to get rid of red wine-stains is with white wine and proceeded to tip half a bottle of quite decent Chardonnay over Micky Stewart.’ With the number of support staff on tours now in the high teens, Atherton looks back on a less professional age when those who travelled with the team comprised a manager, a coach, a physio and a scorer. He laughs at the amateur nature of some of the arrangements in the West Indies: ‘A mate of mine happened to be coming out who was a doctor. So I asked him to bring out some supplies – anti-inflammatories and so forth. He arrived and gave them to the physio. MJK gave him a cheque and it bounced!’ A role that is now largely confined to arranging travel and hotels involved a greater input on cricketing matters and discipline in Mike’s time. On playing issues Mike never imposed his thoughts on the captain, though his contributions at selection and team meetings were welcomed. Atherton also appreciated a shoulder to lean on: ‘He was an extremely nice man, relaxed and affable, which is quite important because it can be quite stressful at times, captaining England. He didn’t get uptight when things were going wrong.’ There were times, Atherton felt, when Mike could be ‘a bit scatty, a bit hair-brained.’ Despite this he stresses that nothing went seriously wrong. ‘It didn’t bother me,’ he adds. The West Indies tour had been a largely happy trip, though on-field performances veered from the abysmal to the heroic: the nadir of 46 all out to lose a match that should have been won in Jamaica; unexpected success at the fortress of Bridgetown; a world record 375 from Brian Lara in Antigua – but refusal to capitulate when England batted. In Australia there was a more depressing passage with an endless list of injuries causing no fewer than six players to be added to the squad. ‘Chris Lewis we found somewhere in a night club,’ Mike recalls, striving to remember all the reinforcements