Graham Gooch led England to Australia in 1990 aiming to recapture the spirit and performance of the previous winter's tour to the West Indies, and with it the urn.
ATHERS: "I'd been short of runs up to that point on the Tour so I was a bit low on confidence and it was a scrappy innings as a result. David Gower played a beautiful innings and on a slow-ish pitch the spin of Greg Matthews, with a bit of Allan Border thrown in, posed few problems. We felt we had the better of the game and we changed the batting order around in the second innings, opening with Gooch and Gower, because we wanted to have a bit of a dart at the target but in truth chasing down 255 wasn't realistic. We lost the match late in Australia's second innings when Carl Rackemann (nine off 102 balls) hung around for quite a long time with first Matthews (56 balls) and then Reid (32 balls). Gooch tried to bowl the spinners more and more on a wearing pitch but maybe in hindsight, he could have turned to Devon Malcolm a bit earlier. We had a bit of a dart at the run-chase but it was never really on."
The 'Tiger Moth' Incident
ATHERS: "David initially asked me to go on his fly-by on the 1990/91 Ashes tour but even at that early stage in my Test career I thought it probably wasn't a good thing to do, so I politely declined and scurried away to the nets! We were playing against Queensland out on the Gold Coast at a place called the Carrara Oval and as the game went on we knew David was up there somewhere. The next thing I knew he and John Morris, who had accepted the goggles in my absence, were flying as good as through the ground's floodlights. We all thought it was tremendously funny and as they came over the ground we all pointed the plane out to our manager Peter Lush, who thought it was a tremendous hoot as well - until he realised that two of his players were up there. Then he rather lost his sense of humour and proceeded to slap a fine on the pair once they had landed safely and made their way back. In a sense the episode gave an insight into the tension that surrounded that tour. David felt the tour was lacking a bit of fun and therefore set out trying to inject some life into it, but that didn't go down well with Graham Gooch. When I look back now it was a fairly harmless episode but the fact that the management overreacted demonstrated the tension that was within the squad at that time."
Fourth Test, Adelaide
Australia (386 & 314-6d) drew with England (229 & 335-5)
Mark Waugh - preferred to his brother Steve - announced himself on the Test stage with a first innings century to give Australia the upper hand despite Gooch's 87. The England skipper followed up with a century, putting on 203 with Atherton for the first wicket, but again the target - this time 472 runs - was out of reach...
ATHERS: "We'd played against Mark earlier on the tour when he turned out for Australia A in Hobart in what was then the traditional game before the first Test. Steve Waugh had played really well in the 1989 series but had looked a bit shaky against the quicker bowlers and his young brother came in for him for this game. Mark was a very different player. Whereas Steve was nuggety and not particularly attractive to watch, but would get the job done, Mark was very elegant and graceful. I remember that we weren't particularly happy at the time that the Australian selectors had brought Mark in for Steve, particularly as Gooch rated him highly. He played beautifully on what was a very flat pitch and that was the start of a long, successful Test career for him."
Fifth Test, Perth
England (244 & 182) lost to Australia (307 & 120-1) by nine wickets
Australia wrapped up the series in emphatic style, Craig McDermott stealing the headlines with first-innings figures of 8-97 that included the wicket of Lamb (91). The home seamers shared out the second-innings wickets before, fittingly, Boon (530 series runs at 75) saw Australia home in partnership with Marsh (63no)...
ATHERS: "McDermott was a bit wild and woolly when he first came into the Australian team in the mid-80s but after he lost, then regained his place in the side he became a better, more clever and consistent bowler. He might not have been quite as quick as he was in 1985 but he still had a yard of pace, good stamina and bowled a full length for a fast bowler, moving it away from the right-handers. All in all he was a very good new ball Test match bowler who fitted in well with what was a pretty decent Australian team, but one that would be surpassed once Warne and McGrath were on the scene."
Reflections
ATHERS: "With Border at the helm, Australia had come out of their 1980 doldrums and had a decent pace attack (McDermott, Reid, Alderman) to complement a solid top order (Taylor, Marsh, Boon). They were a better team than us and 3-0 was probably a fair reflection of the discrepancy between the teams. Goochie was really disappointed with the result given that the team had performed far better than many people expected in the Caribbean the previous winter only to perform below-par this time around."
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