From: vigneswa@ecs.umass.edu
Newsgroups: rec.sport.cricket
Subject: Gooch Cocktail Party........
Date: 6 Jan 93 16:32:03 GMT

	How many batsmen did open the innings for England with Graham 
Gooch?  Who are they?  How many batsmen did open with Sunil Gavaskar?
Well, read this article (Thanks: Charles Randall, The Daily Telegraph).


	It looks as though history will remember Graham Gooch as the opener
who went solo.  The number of players who  have opened  with Gooch in  Test
cricket could muster a decent cocktail party, Alec Stewart entering as 15th
last  summer.  Whether  Mike Atherton (No 13)  can re-establish  himself as
Gooch's partner should be one of the interesting aspects of the India tour,
which  begins today  when the  party leaves for  Delhi.  The Gooch-Atherton
pairing looked the one most likely to survive, from 1990, before the Lanca-
shire  player's back injury and  operation last year ended the union.  Alec
Stewart's  occupancy  in his place  has by no  means been  set in concrete,
mainly  because the  Surrey captain's Test record as a batsman  and wicket-
keeper has proved  noticeably inferior  to his success  as a batsman alone.
Atherton, while recuperating from his  vertebra fusion operation, distanced
himself completely from cricket last winter, preferring to watch Manchester
United play football rather than catch televised glimpses of his colleagues
in the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. 

	Atherton managed to remain sane and sober.  He has reflected on his
strategy:  "It was a  conscious thing.  I had  played  a  lot  and wanted a
complete  break.  I also wanted  to avoid the frustration of worrying about
who  was making runs  in my place."  He might have  worried because Stewart
scored  runs  impressively in  his place and became vice-captain, with  the
prospect  in March of  taking charge of  England during the  Sri Lanka  leg
after Gooch returns home. Atherton has usually given the impression that he
knows  what he wants  and where he is going.  He emerged to captain England
under-19s as a 16-year-old at  Manchester Grammar  School, going on to lead
Cambridge  University, the  Combined  Universities  side in the  Benson and 
Hedges  Cup and  England A in  Zimbabwe.  As with Stewart, he has the right
credentials  for  captaincy - the  correct  blend  of  approachability  and
gravitas, with a sharp  cricketing brain as well.  Atherton, always willing
to keep life in perspective, seems  almost unflappable, though he claims he
is as  intense about  cricket as anyone.  "I can't believe anyone plays the
game at this level without worrying about it," he once said. Atherton, from
Cheshire, does  not possess  a public  school BBC-type accent, or  anything
like it.  Neither does Stewart - or anybody else on the  India tour.  David
Gower, if he had  been selected, would have been the exception.  

	Relatively  pale in  complexion  for a cricketer, Atherton  has the
1990-91 Australia  tour  as  his sole  senior  trip, contrasting  with  the
perfectly  bronzed  streetwise  Stewart, who  has experienced  West Indies,
Australia and New Zealand, before the World Cup.  Atherton, who will  be 25
a couple of  days after England's return, has good  temperament and batting
technique.  In golfing terms he has a simple swing with which little can go
wrong.  The record  books have  begun to  feature the name Atherton, though
not yet in a Bradmanesque way. He has made the earliest first-class hundred
in a  season, on  April 13, 1991, became  the youngest Lancashire player to
score a  Test hundred at the age  of 22 and  holds the record  third-wicket
partnership for Lancashire, 364 with  Neil Fairbrother, his  tour colleague
and county captain, made in 1990.  Atherton's innings of eight runs against
India at  Lord's in 1990, when Gooch made 333, must have been the most dis-
parate contribution to an opening pair since 1938, when Bill Edrich made 12
to Len Hutton's 364  against Australia.  Most batsmen  would remember 1990,
the season of the low-seamed ball when bowlers seemed to bowl underarm with
an orange. Yet Atherton claimed what may remain a career-best with his leg-
breaks, six for 78 at  Trent Bridge.  Last summer was a  triumph for him at
Lancashire after his "nightmare" 1991 season.  He upped his highest innings
to 199, and his  five championship centuries  confirmed his appetite at the
crease even if his success against Pakistan was limited.  

======

Well.  There were 15 batsmen accompanied Gooch to face the opening bowlers
of the world.  Thery are:

01. Mike Brearley                        02. Geoff Boycott 
03. Chris Tavare                         04. Geoff Cook
05. Tim Robinson                         06. Mark Benson
07. Martyn Moxon                         08. Bill Athey
09. Chris Broad                          10. Tim Curtis
11. John Stephenson                      12. Wayne Larkins
13. Mike Atherton                        14. Hugh Morris
15. Alec Stewart

Someone else may tell us who walked in with Gavaskar to open for India.

======

Vicky:
UMass, Jan 06
Newsgroups: rec.sport.cricket