Lives in Cricket No 52 - Schooled in Cricket (2nd edition)

173 – although we all went to different schools. “Johnny eventually suggested I join the ground staff at Somerset and that he would recommend me and he was pretty sure that they would take me on. I was only 15 then and the following year [1954] I made my debut (for Somerset) against Pakistan.” The veteran Australian star Colin McCool who was with Atkinson at Somerset wrote at the time in Cricket is a Game : “A deal of importance is attached to the fact that Graham Atkinson, a fine opening batsman, has played all his cricket with Somerset. I can’t attach much importance to that. ... The point is that by the age of 15 [the age when Graham arrived at Somerset] a player has his grounding in the game. If he’s going to be any good he’s got a sound basis, if he’s not he’s already riddled with faults like the average village player. “By the time [he] arrived in the west he was already a good player, because he had developed the right attitude to the game. His technique was sound and he gathered experience greedily...” McCool predicted he would get the England cap which unluckily never was to come his way. That grounding had come in huge measure from both the work of his coach at Rothwell and Atkinson’s experience of facing top bowlers in those nets at Rothwell which included Bob Appleyard – whose recovery from TB coincided with Atkinson’s development. Without bragging, Atkinson mentioned to me that he usually got the better of that great bowler. Atkinson knocked loudly on the England door for a time. It was the beginning of the 1963 season when he was picked for MCC’s traditional opening game at Lord’s versus Yorkshire at the end of April. Atkinson scored a mere 176. Geoffrey Boycott – who was still making his way for Yorkshire and was their twelfth man for that match remembers that innings in his autobiography and reflects A few of his proteges