By Simon Hughes

OPENING batsmen have the most careworn expressions because they have the most stressful jobs. They lay the foundation, set the tone, tempo and texture of a team's performance - and they know it. The only reason their nails are not bitten to the quick is because they're wearing thick gloves.

Good opening partnerships are a huge morale boost and smiles and tracksuited bottoms appear on dressing room balconies. Early departures send many of the team apoplectically rootling around their kit bags for batting trousers and thigh pads and arm guards. Since 42 of England's last 50 opening partnerships have failed to pass a half-century, the middle order has been doing a lot of apoplectic rootling recently.

Not yesterday. The next man wasn't called into action for well over three hours after the late start, ample time to digest not only lunch, but the teatime egg and cress baps as well. After the indecision-bordering-on-panic of the 1990s - nine different opening pairs in 1996 for instance - it made a reassuring sight. Atherton and Ramprakash do not equal Boycott and Edrich, Hutton and Washbrook or Hobbs and Sutcliffe. They do not complement each other with a left-hand/right-hand combination, or fluency accompanied by obduracy, but it's a start.

As at Lord's, Atherton supplied a master class in concentration and shot selection. The judicious leave, a ball after a steered boundary, the phlegmatic expression after being beaten outside off stump, his complete disregard of the wide long hop are all hallmarks of his cussed determination. Atherton is more concerned with the richer overall picture than the quick glorious snapshot.

He inherently understands cricket's 11th commandment - "the ball is only moving for 20 per cent of the day". He wiles away the other 80 per cent doing a spot of gardening, indulging in a bit of banter with umpire Kitchen ('Getting a long way forward today, aren't I Merv?') or dreaming of the salmon run on the river Tay.

Ramprakash, on the other hand, has been a player who tended to wrestle with his conscience between balls, making him rigid and uptight. Three hours experiencing Atherton's relaxation techniques close at hand will have done him good.

This is important. There are people who think Ramprakash is ill-suited to opening for England. The problem is, there are few players who are. Since his debut in 1990, Atherton has had 12 different partners and cannot, himself, go on for ever. Without doubt, Ramprakash has the aptitude. He needs to acquire the mental agility. He has a habit of jamming his chewing gum on his bat if he's not out overnight, and reusing it the next morning. A season at the wicket with 'Iron Mike' and the back of his bat will be a sticky mess.

For the impatient spectator, Ramprakash-Atherton alliances may not make riveting entertainment. Both have an expansive repertoire but prefer to maintain a one-and-a-half-an-over vigil until the coast is clear.

They are too similar in approach to make the ideal opening pair, but they can at least lay the platform for the middle-order exhibitionists.

Complementary pairs give a team rigidity. Australia, when they usurped the West Indies in the mid-90s, had Slater and Taylor, Waugh and Waugh, McGrath and Warne. The side was tongue and grooved together. When Atherton's body finally says no, England's future could be built on Ramprakash and Nick Knight.

From The Electronic Telegraph, 2 June, 2000.

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