Michael Atherton

From ARFOPEDIA

To sum up Athertons greatness we first have to look at English cricket during the 90's.

Think Mark Ramprakash (52 tests, averaged 27.32), Graeme Hick (65 tests, averaged 31.32), Usman Afzaal (3 tests, averaged 16.60) etc etc etc. There were some good batsmen in the 90's (Alec Stewart, Graham Thorpe, Robin Smith that was about it tbh) and we had a couple of decent bowlers but in general England were shit.

Atherton's brilliance was that he still managed to score nearly 8000 runs in such a crappy team. Described by cricinfo as turning opening the batting into trench warfare Athers will always be remembered as FB even when he failed miserably at ball tampering.

Possibly his finest moment was against South Africa when everyone basically told him and Jack Russell that the test was lost but they arrogantly stuck their fingers up to everyone and drew the test anyway.

The downside to Athers' brilliance was that often if his wicket fell, the entire innings would collapse. Some might argue that strictly speaking it was hardly his fault. He also collected a disproportionate number of ducks, and although he was certainly not the only one, a certain fb cunt called Glenn McGrath continually held Athers in his gaze like a tiny bunny in the headlights of an extremely irritating 18 wheeler artic.

Athers was never the most brilliant captain, regularly playing too negatively and often failing to inspire his teammates to match his levels of performance. But again, given the talent he was forced to work with, this is perhaps a harsh criticism. He honourably stood aside in 1998, allowing Stewart to take over while Nasser Hussain and later Michael Vaughan learned the ropes while Atherton remained in the team.

Also Atherton is now a FB commentator who worked for Channel 4 during the 2005 ashes and is now moving back to sky as the ECB are cunts.

"Have you ever pulled a stomach muscle Smithy?"
"No need for that."