Atherton every single time for me. Not only does his simplistic career average say little about him (need to look deeper than that in almost any career of any length) but Trescothick's scorebook-average flatters him enormously. His scorebook average against Test-class teams is 41; his first-chance average, over his entire career, is actually just over 30. And while that accurately sums-up the fact he was never a Test-class player, even Trescothick had his moments, mostly during the summer and winter of 2004 and 2004/05. And his mostly good 20s, 30s and 40s undoubtedly helped smash the wayward Australian seamers onto the back-foot in 2005 too. Exclude this and he did nothing of note whatsoever, but the fact he was mostly awful shouldn't completely obscure the fact he played an important part in this time.
Anyway, Atherton. What so few people seem to realise is that his injury was not a constant thing. There were 2 series where it affected him really badly; knock these out and you have a summation of what Atherton was capable of without the injury. And really, I don't see any reason to consider these 2 series (Zimbabwe in 1996\97 and Australia in 1998\99) of any importance whatsoever. So he couldn't score when he could barely move; WTF does this matter? He played another 90-odd Tests where he did score, very well.
Atherton, of course, also had 2 Tests at the start of his career (which he shouldn't have played) and 10 at the end where his performances were not good at all. Again, there's nothing unusual there whatsoever, more players than not have bad starts (especially when selected too early) and ends.
Since I last posted an Atherton analysis, StatsGuru has been improved, and I can now offer a true assessment of the part of his career that matters. So
here it is. Excluding the meaningless series in which he was injured, the meaingless series where he was picked too early, and the last 3 series in which he was on the way down.
The most annoying thing is the fact that there were 4 series against Australia that, in my view, were either completely or fairly meaningless. And this led to the conclusion that he couldn't play against Australia, which as you see from the fact that he played 44 innings against them in the time which
does matter and averaged 35 is completely and totally untrue.
His record against the typically weaker attacks of his day - India, New Zealand and Zimbabwe - is excellent, lending weight to the suggestion that in the post-2001\02 age where most bowlers were poor he could easily have averaged in the 50s.
I watched most of Atherton's career, and am willing to open my eyes to the fact there is a massive difference between the fit Atherton and the unfit Atherton (and that the last 10 games don't really mean too much compared to the 97 in the middle when fit). And I could tell you without even looking at the averages that he'd done damn well. Then you look at the fact he averaged 41.54, when attacks were more often strong than weak, and you see he's been one of the best England batsmen of recent times. Often he was the best in the side.
Why anyone would deny this is beyond me.
Atherton plentifully above average.