In one of the toughest jobs in sport, Nasser Hussain has inevitably known some bad weeks. Being booed as he stood on the Oval balcony defending his losing team was one. The “Nasser Insane” headlines after his gaffe with the toss in Brisbane were another. He came close to quitting after the Ashes were abjectly lost in Perth, and was pushed to the brink of instability by the Harare dispute.

But the past seven days have been as bad as any. A man who has astutely played the media game was alarmed to find events running against him. He was powerless to do anything about it. With Michael Vaughan, the new golden boy of English cricket, crowned one-day captain on Tuesday, former England players suddenly seemed to be queueing up to criticise Hussain.

As some feared, two captains appeared to be more than England can handle at any one time; certainly too many if both are to remain popular. There was no chance of Saint Michael attracting flak, so it had to be Hussain. Ian Botham, Mike Gatting and Adam Hollioake, a contender for the one-day job himself, all went public with their views that Hussain should step down forthwith from the Test job as well; he was 35, and it was time to move on. Angus Fraser wanted Hollioake to lead both sides. Anybody but Nasser, it seemed.

Hussain was shocked by Gatting’s attack in particular. Gatting had more or less accused him of having put the “I” in captaincy; accused him of selfishness for stating in a newspaper column that he wanted to play 100 Tests, captain England in more Tests, and lead them to more victories, than anybody else. These aims meant him playing on, and staying as captain, well into next year. Gatting was saying Hussain had lost sight of the team’s interests.

As people in his position usually end up working in the media, Hussain has long taken a close interest in the trade. This summer he is writing his own column rather than having it ghosted. How the media might react to events has governed a surprising amount of what he has done. To somebody who is desperate to be remembered as a decent leader, these latest attacks stung and by Friday he had gone on to the counter-offensive.

Fresh from a session in the nets in Chelmsford, he looked relaxed but less assured than of old. Diminished, slightly. There is no denying the trappings of power are slipping from his hands, and that is a process nobody can reverse.

“Everybody has ambitions,” he said, “that’s part of being a professional sportsman. If I don’t play well this summer, somebody else will come in. It’s not a problem. I’d rather be trying to fulfil my ambitions than say, ‘I’ve got 18 months left, I’ll plod along and see what happens’. I don’t apologise for having ambitions. It’s a very English mentality that when somebody goes out and states, ‘I’m ambitious’, he gets knocked.”

Reflecting on his two-month break from the game, he added: “Up until this week, I had seven or eight excellent weeks . . . When you are captain, you are in that hot environment of the kitchen, and sometimes it does get very hot.

“The easy option is to say, ‘No, Michael, Marcus or Adam, you do it all. You carry on’. I’m taking the difficult road, not the selfish road. I’m putting my neck on the line, because if we lose to Zimbabwe or South Africa, it will be me the finger is pointed at.”

Revealingly, asked what advice he would give Vaughan about captaincy, he replied: “Always keep the press happy. Which is difficult. And always look after your own game.”

One of the lighter moments of the week came in another bout of media-watching as he stayed in one night to monitor Phil Tufnell’s progress on I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! He’s no fan of the programme, but was fascinated to watch the former England left-arm spinner. “He’s just how he is in the dressing room,” he noted with an incredulous shake of the head. “He just hasn’t pressed the self-destruct yet.”

Asked whether he’d like to dispatch Gatting to the Australian jungle, he added a hasty “No comment.”

The interview was not about revenge, he added. But it was about damage limitation. The interview wound up with him confirming that he would not be looking to play beyond September 2004 — “if that’s not a selfish thing to say.”