Atherton, Donald ready to resume hostilities

Johannesburg: England's opening batsmen certainly believe in the safety in numbers theory and displayed a brave front on Wednesday when suggestions of a resumption of the ``Anglo Boer War'' style confrontation between Mike Atherton and Allan Donald was downplayed by their new coach Duncan Fletcher.

Only 27 days into his new job, Fletcher, the former South Africa A and Western Province mentor and mastermind now overseeing England's latest strategy plan, felt too much was being made of the Trent Bridge hostilities between the combatants when the Test series starts at the end of November.

Ironically Steve Dunne, the New Zealand umpire who turned down that particular appeal against Atherton off Donald's bowling in the Trent Bridge dust up, is handling, with David Orchard, South Africa's first Test of the season when they meet Zimbabwe in Bloemfontein which starts on Friday.

Flanking Atherton at the media briefing in a posh Sandton hotel were Alec Stewart and Mark Butcher. Although Stewart, relieved of the England captaincy earlier this year, batted at five in the fourth Test against New Zealand, which England lost by 83 runs, he has often been Atherton's partner.

When he was eventually cornered, Fletcher agreed there could be some interesting individual battles, but fast bowlers were always keen to gain the psychological high ground early on in a series.

``There's a lot of pride among the top batsmen when they meet bowlers such as Donald and yes . . . it could interesting,'' was about all he was going to offer on the subject, preferring to comment on the fitness of three players whose tour prospects were shaky until a week or so ago.

The irrepressible Darren Gough seemed to be cheerful enough when sprinting up the escalator before meeting the media while Darren Maddy and Alex Tudor have been cleared but there is a suspicion the 21-year-old Surrey all-rounder is not 100 percent fit and Chris Silverwood, from all accounts, is still on standby in Bangladesh where England A are on tour.

If the new England coach was not prepared to comment outright on Atherton-Donald confrontation, you could gather from his tone that some thought had been obviously been given to a resumption of hostilities at the Wanderers.

Which means that Donald's form against Zimbabwe in the Test starting Friday is going to be monitored from whatever TV coverage is on offer if not a ``spy operation'' by one of The Management team.

Atherton's own comment was, like that of Fletcher's a typical shrug, he was looking forward to ``getting some runs again'' and hoped ``my form will go someway to helping England win (the series)''. But the ``Boer War'' theory, first raised in Trent Bridge during the fourth Test last year was carried over to the infamous Leeds match where a particularly odious Pakistan umpire, Javed Akhtar, looking more like the manager of a third division soccer side than a member of the ICC panel, gave the South African batsmen how his interpretation of the lbw law differed from that from the official code.

What with his shoulder injury Atherton was not considered fit enough to play for England in this year's World Cup so there was no way Donald was able to bowl to the highly miffed Lancashire opener and former captain.

The pace and aggression generated by Donald when bowling to Atherton at Trent Bridge is still considered one of the finest spells of Test match play of the 1990s.

It was even given space on Australian TV where the hardnosed Channel Nine team agreed it was ``like watching the West Indians letting themselves go at Allan Border''.

England captain Nasser Hussain made all the right noises when he said the aim was to win the series and felt the statistics had shown the batsmen were far better than recent form (against New Zealand) suggested and expressed confidence of quality performances throughout the tour.

It is their batting though where England are at their most vulnerable and this is also the view of some seasoned commentators who saw enough during the World Cup to wonder about sliding standards.

"As we are looking to the future we have brought along a number of young players on this tour," said Fletcher. "We try not to listen too much to the views of others and feel we are better placed to know where we are going."