Love enjoy and show good stories

Michael Atherton is one of the esteemed and decorated England cricketers who played 115 Assessments and 54 ODIs from 1989 to 2001. He now enjoys a successful job as a broadcaster with Sky Activities and as a journalist with THE DAYS as their chief cricket correspondent.

Atherton visited Pakistan early on last month, before the Covid-19 outbreak forced the postponement of the Pakistan Super League, to focus on a documentary on the revival of cricket on Pakistan, which may very well be aired within the Pakistan team's build-up for the summertime tour of England.

"Love the game. Benefit from the game. Tell good stories. I still believe that it is about good storytelling. I know statistics and strategy and those kind of points are essential and are very much in the centre of the present day landscape. But I think telling good stories continues to be in the centre of what journalists, broadcasters, documentary-makers and commentators, whatever inform very good stories in regards to a great video game," Atherton said throughout a podcast with the PCB when asked about his advice to the present and future generations of cricket correspondents.

He believes that it has indeed turn into a whole lot harder for players with the introduction of social media than it had been during his period as a player.

"I think it really is harder for players nowadays than I played. There was no social press when I played. Of course, you still acquired criticism from commentators and journalists and perhaps the tabloid media was a bit more powerful in England then than it really is now. The public media fascination didn't exist after that and I think it really is tougher for adolescent players now since it is very hard to move away from social mass media. The players should be on social media for all types of factors: for personal sponsorships and standard availability.

"But that level of vitriol and criticism is very tough to cope with particularly if you are fresh. I was thinking about a number of the young England cricketers. I saw a number of the Under 19s this winter in South Africa, who got dumped out from the tournament at an early stage and took a fair little bit of criticism on social mass media. At 19, that is fairly hard to manage, but it is a fact of life.

Atherton as well believes that the players no longer have something called an individual space as a result of social media engagements.

"That's how life has gone a bit. Folks are a lot more open than perhaps these were in my own generation. Today, in fact, there can be an eight-part Amazon Prime documentary series on the Australia cricket workforce where the cameras have been around in the dressing place. They have been in every team appointment and I think the filmmakers had 2,600 hours of footage there and that is just beyond the cricket."