Bat and ball / Frank Gregan / 01 July 2008 /

Frank Gregan wonders whether Michael Atherton, of all people, should be taking the moral high ground over the Collingwood affair.

"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." I can only assume Michael Atherton did not study Theology at Cambridge, having fired into Paul Collingwood last week in the press. I think Mr Atherton needs to rearrange those well known words - pot, kettle and black because no matter what your take on last week's 'incident' it was not comparable to ball tampering which is a deliberate act of cheating.

I watched the last fifteen overs of the game in my local with about thirty other cricket fans catching up on the state of play and having a beer on the way home after work. At the end of the match the run out did not get a mention amongst the pub crowd but the overthrow that cost England victory did.

Collingwood looked a forlorn figure as he sat out the final one day international on Saturday as a result of a four match ban for a slow over rate. It's a lonely life being a cricket captain. There would have been eleven players having their say out on the pitch when the run out incident occurred but only one man was ever going to carry the can for it. He has been contrite since and conducted himself with great dignity, all that he can do now is get his head down and move on.

I've been in a situation myself where an accusation of cheating has been levelled at a club that I was managing. As ever, like the cricket captain it is the football manager that takes the flak. Invariably it is a collective decision and there is so much that goes on that the paying public does not see or hear about. In my instance I made a grave error of judgement and was hammered by the non league press as a consequence.

It centred around an injury to one of the assistant referees when there was no fourth official in attendance. I was offered the choice of two replacement officials, one had consumed five pints of lager during the afternoon and was an employee of my Chairman and the other was an opposition supporter adorned in our opponents' replica shirt! The referee informed me that it was my decision whether I wished to continue.

To a man, all my players wanted off, they were getting beat 1-0 at home in a critical game and it was definitely to our advantage to have the game abandoned. As it turned out the referee had got it wrong, it wasn't my call, he could have insisted on the game continuing. In the end it was taken out of my hands and it was my Chairman during a telephone conversation with the League Secretary who elected for an abandonment of the game.

Who, why and therefore are of little importance in situations like that. In football the buck stops with the manager and in cricket it's the captain. In hindsight I knew I had made the wrong call and should have conducted myself in a more sporting manner. The bottom line is if I had have wanted that game to continue it was in my power to have made it happen. I didn't and I have had to learn from that error. Collingwood has made his apology and conducted himself well in the aftermath, I hope he is allowed to move on and get on with his career.

He still has to sit out three more ODI matches, one against Scotland, the Twenty20 against South Africa and the first of the five match series against the Proteas. He is eligible for the test series which starts next week in which England are priced at [3.1]. South Africa will prove to be a far sterner test than New Zealand and I'll be having a hefty wager on the Proteas at [2.24] to win the series. If the weather stays set fair the [21.0] available on a 4-0 South African whitewash may look to have been a massive price later on in the summer.

Aside from last week's controversy Paul Collingwood has a whole host of problems. His form has not exactly been sparkling and he is under pressure to keep his place in the test side. What he didn't need last week was a literary rock being bounced off his head by a former England captain who used to keep dirt in his pocket!

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