Botham: My Autobiography

BOTHAM

MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY

with Peter Hayter

COPYRIGHT

HarperNonFiction

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published in hardback in 1994 by Collins Willow

First published in paperback in 1995

Revised edition 1998, 2000, 2001

Copyright © Newschoice Ltd and Ian Botham 1995

The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

The publishers wish to thank the following for providing photographs: Allsport, BBC, Benson and Hedges, Kathy Botham, Lincolnshire Chronicle, Patrick Eagar, Hayters, Graham Morris, Pacemaker Press and Thames Television

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780002189590

Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2017 ISBN: 9780007388844

Version: 2017-01-18

DEDICATION

To Kath, Liam, Sarah and Becky and to the rest of my family, my friends and the cricketing public all over the world who have supported me throughout the years

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Foreword by Vivian Richards

1 The End of the Road

2 A Bouncing Baby Botham

3 A Smashing Time at Lord’s

4 Wedding Bells

5 The Rise of an England Star

6 Just Call Me Captain

7 The Miracle of 1981

8 The Lure of the Rand

9 Sex, Drugs and Rock ’n’ Roll

10 Hudson and Hollywood

11 1986 And All That

12 The Ban and the Comeback

13 The Somerset Mutiny

14 In the Outback

15 These Feet Were Made for Walking

16 The Last Dance

17 Ball Tampering

18 Off the Field

19 The Worst Team in the World

20 That’s All, Folks

Plates Section

Keep Reading

Appendix

Beefy’s Fantasy Cricket Selection

Cast of Characters

Career Statistics

Index

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

FOREWORD

Say the name Ian Botham to me and the first thought I have is not of ‘Beefy’ the great cricketer but of a magnificent friend, full of love for people, full of support and ready to give you everything he’s got.

That’s the Ian Botham I have been lucky enough to know since we first met as youngsters at Somerset back in the early 1970s before travelling around the world and playing cricket for and against each other for more than 20 years.

And that’s the same Beefy I’m lucky enough to know today, now that our playing days are over.

As a cricketer, Beefy was a man in a million. In the Caribbean, people are always coming up to me and asking about the man, and it is the same the world over. As an opponent we took him 100 per cent seriously. As a team-mate he was amazing.

Once, playing for Somerset against Essex in a county championship match, he batted with such power that all nine fielders were on the boundary. The singles were there for the taking, but still Beefy kept going for the boundaries. It is a sight I will never forget and probably not see again.

Off the pitch he lives his life to the full, with boundless enthusiasm and magnificent generosity. I remember during one of his trips to the West Indies when I met him at the airport and we went for a few rum punches. Unfortunately for the jet-lagged Beefy, they were about 150 per cent proof, but all he could taste was the orange juice – so he kept knocking them back. Assuring me that he felt fine, he went back with me to his hotel for a wash and brush-up and we arranged to meet in half an hour. But later when I knocked on the door of his room, there was no answer.

Worried, I searched out the chambermaid and persuaded her to unlock the door; and there was Beefy lying fast asleep on the bed. With one of his team-mates I went and borrowed some women’s make-up and proceeded to turn him into Beefy the beautiful drag artist. He never stirred once during this time, nor did he realize we had taken a series of photographs of him in this state!

Those pictures are not in this book – even great friendships have a breaking point – but this is the story of a great cricketer and a great person; a man who lives life in all its forms to the full and, above all for me, a man who has been a great friend.

1 THE END OF THE ROAD

I knew it was all over the morning it took me five minutes to get out of bed.

It was two days after I had played for Durham against Glamorgan in the second round of the NatWest Trophy at Cardiff in the mid-summer of 1993. My left hip had been playing up all season, and my left knee and shoulder ached as well, but to be honest it was difficult to distinguish one pain from another. I was worn out from head to toe. Sitting on the edge of the bed that morning, I suddenly realized that my body was sending me a message that I just couldn’t ignore any longer. To borrow Tony Greig’s well-worn phrase, it was ‘Goodnight Beefy’.

For many sportsmen, coming face to face with irrefutable evidence of their mortality is the moment they dread above all others. How many times have you read of people in all walks of sport going on one season or one match too long? And how many times have you read of the bitter price they have paid for doing so? I had always said that one day I would wake up and just know that this was the end, and that when that day came I would accept it without making the decision any more difficult for myself and those around me than it inevitably is.

From the moment I was given an opportunity to extend my career by undergoing back surgery in 1988, I knew I was playing on borrowed time. In grabbing that time and making the most of it, I will always be grateful for the patience and skill of surgeon John Davies. However, I didn’t want to be one of those sad figures who doesn’t know when to call it a day and who is consequently ridiculed by his enemies and pitied by his friends. Moreover, it became obvious to me that although my body might be able to take a little more punishment in the short term, the long term effects could be extremely damaging; and the one thing I knew for certain was that I didn’t fancy spending my retirement years in a wheelchair.

The bottom line, however, was that after twenty years in the professional game my love affair with playing cricket was over. Not only was I physically wrecked, but the events of the 1993 season meant that I was totally disillusioned with the game. Without the drive, I simply didn’t want to go out on the pitch any more. Under those circumstances it would not have been fair on me, my team-mates or the public to carry on.

I had always intended that the summer of 1993 would be my last as a professional cricketer, but I had been determined to go out at the top. So when I said in April that I was aiming to win back my place in the England side and play in the Ashes series against the Australians, it was not just the normal pre-season optimism: I meant it. I was convinced I had plenty to offer, especially after suffering with everyone else the woeful excuse for a performance that England had served up on the winter tour to India and Sri Lanka, as a result of which they had not only been beaten in all four Tests but thoroughly thrashed and totally humiliated.

Frankly, I had been disgusted by what had gone on out there. Graham Gooch played the best cricket of his career when leading from the front as captain, during which period he passed David Gower’s record as England’s highest run scorer in Test cricket. I have nothing but admiration for the way he made up his mind to play at the highest level for as long as possible and kept himself fit enough to do so. But I have always found that as England captain what he couldn’t come to terms with was that the right way for him was not necessarily the best way for everyone.

When it came to the Indian fiasco, I think his biggest mistake was allowing himself to be persuaded to go in the first place. I would never criticize anyone for missing a winter tour. I’ve done so myself in the past and I understand completely why other cricketers have as well. As players get older the amount of international cricket played and the pressure involved, as well as the business of leaving your family at home for months at a time, mean that if you don’t take an occasional winter break you are vulnerable to burn out. It’s not a matter of picking and choosing when it suits you to play for England, it’s just that players need time to recharge their batteries and rediscover an appetite that can easily become jaded.

If Gooch wasn’t keen enough to take on the job of captaining his country on an overseas tour without having to have his arm twisted, then he really shouldn’t have gone at all. Once he had made the decision, he then had the bright idea of surrounding himself with his old mates John Emburey and Mike Gatting, and discarding David Gower for some unknown reason. The omission of Gower was nothing short of a scandal and England paid for it dearly. For my money there were people on that tour who looked and played as though they didn’t want to be there. They lacked desire and, what is infinitely worse, they lacked pride; once things started to go wrong they simply gave up. Nothing was ever their fault, and there was always an excuse for their abject failures: if it wasn’t the smog in Calcutta, it was the prawns in Madras. And by sending out a ‘pastoral counsellor’, the Reverend Andrew Wingfield Digby, instead of a team doctor the Test and County Cricket Board proved once again that the lunatics had taken over the asylum. I didn’t go along with much of what Ray Illingworth said during his tenure of the job as chairman of selectors, but even he had the sense to see that ‘Wingers Diggers’ was surplus to requirements.

Even though the Indian tour had been a disaster from beginning to end, I was under no illusions about how hard it would be for me to regain my place. I got the impression after the 1992 World Cup in Australia, where in controversial circumstances which I will expand on later I ended up a two-time loser in the final against Pakistan, that my critics would have been quite happy for me to have disappeared from international cricket there and then. There are people in the game who would have thrown me out years ago after the troubles I went through in the mid-1980s, people who were jealous of my success and who simply could not live with the fact that, through no fault of my own, I was perceived to be bigger than the game. In fact, I really don’t believe that the selectors had wanted to pick me for the tournament in the first place, but they were forced to because they couldn’t find anyone capable of replacing me as a genuine international-class all-rounder.

Despite losing my place during the following summer against Pakistan, I was still enthusiastic about the possibility of a comeback against Allan Border’s 1993 Australians. On the evidence of what had happened in India, I was even more convinced that I could do a job at Test level. I certainly hadn’t seen any performance to make me think that the players being picked were so good that there was no way back. If the team had been playing well that would have been fair enough, I would have said ‘Thank you very much’ and looked back on happy memories. But to see an England team floundering with me as a helpless bystander was unbelievably irritating. I had a lot to offer and it was being wasted.

I was hoping that the selectors would learn from their mistakes and give me one last chance. My record against Australia was second to none. Allan Border knew that, the Australian management knew it and so did most of their players who had played against me at some time or another. The minute my name was down on the scoresheet the team automatically got a psychological boost, and for that reason alone had the selectors decided to pick me, morale would have been lifted and the Aussies would have been on edge from the word go.

So when I enjoyed some success in the traditional opening fixture of the Australian tour, for the Duchess of Norfolk’s XI at Arundel in May, I felt confident that the message must get through, particularly as one of my victims was Border himself, the Australian captain and my great mate and rival. In addition, Ted Dexter, the chairman of the selectors, was there to see what I could still do. Judging by what happened later that day, he must have had his eyes closed.

I had been genuinely keyed-up for the match. A party of us had travelled down from Durham: Kath, my wife, my youngest daughter Becky, and county colleagues Wayne Larkins, David Graveney and Paul Parker. The night before the game we enjoyed a meal at a bistro where all the talk was of producing a vintage performance to stake my claim to the all-rounder’s position. There was an enormous amount of interest in the match, as there always is when the Aussies are in town. When morning came it took us about an hour to travel the half mile to the ground because of the traffic. I like to think that many of the 16,000 capacity crowd were there to see me put on a show against the old enemy. Certainly the level of commitment shown by the Australians and the seriousness with which they approached the match were not in doubt. When I was hit for four in my first over some visiting Antipodean shouted out: ‘It’s ‘93 now mate, not ‘81’; I had the greatest delight in silencing him a few minutes later when I removed Damien Martyn cheaply.

However, unbeknown to me, Dexter was at that moment in the process of pulling the rug from under me. When I heard of the content of a radio interview he had given after I had bowled that day, during which he appeared to pour scorn on my performance, I hit the roof.

I was in the bar relaxing after the match when a couple of journalists came up to me and told me what had happened. Apparently Dexter had been asked what he thought of my bowling. ‘Are the Australians trying to play him into the side?’ he muttered, as if they were purposely trying to make me look good. When the interviewer, Mark Saggers, who was understandably taken aback by what Dexter had said and thought he must have been joking, invited him to say something serious, Ted declined. In fact, he simply said nothing at all, leaving his remarks open to the only interpretation possible – that he thought my efforts weren’t worthy of real consideration or comment.

Naturally, I was fuming. But when I got wind that the press, scenting a story, wanted to interview me about what Ted had said – or not said – I decided the best thing to do was to leave, go back to the hotel and try and put the whole matter out of my mind. That evening those of us who had travelled down together went to the disco across the road for an impromptu night out, by the end of which I had more or less forgotten all about Ted Dexter.

Then when I read the newspaper reports of the incident the following morning, that set me off again. Kath said it sounded very much as though Dexter did not want me in the England set-up at all. How dare he imply that the Aussies were trying to con the selectors into picking me by throwing their wickets away? Anyone who knows the slightest thing about them also knows that getting out to me is the last thing an Aussie wants to do, especially Border, for whom the events at Headingley in 1981 still hurt badly. The ball that bowled him at Arundel went through the gate between bat and pad as he tried to push it through the off-side. That was a weakness of Border’s which I had probed successfully in the World Cup match in Sydney where I managed to take four wickets in seven deliveries without conceding a run and scored 53. We went on to win the match comfortably, and that was probably the moment when the Australians lost their chance of qualifying for the final stages. Wisden wrote: ‘The combination of the old enemy, the bright lights and the noisily enthusiastic crowd demanded a show-stopper from Botham, and he provided it’. Did Border give me his wicket that night as well?

By this time I had worked myself up into such a fury that I was determined not to let the matter drop. I demanded an apology from Dexter. Two days later the phone rang at home at nine in the morning. It was Ted.

He mumbled something about what he had said being a throw-away line which he had come up with because he wanted to avoid the interview being all about Ian Botham. It didn’t wash. After all, I had just bowled the Australian captain and under the circumstances the first thing any interviewer was going to ask him about was my England prospects. It was the time of year when everyone is speculating on who is, or is not, going to make the team. Dexter went on to offer, by way of some bizarre justification: ‘You’re the master of the one-liner, Ian – look at what you said about Pakistan being the kind of place you would send your mother-in-law for a paid holiday’.

‘Yes, Ted,’ I replied, ‘and the board fined me £1000 for that one.’

I told him I was not happy about what had been said and I was not going to back down. If someone in Ted’s position behaves like that then it is for him to explain, not for me to sit back and let it wash over me. In the end he did apologize and the matter was finished – that was all I wanted. What did amaze me was that the TCCB let the whole episode rest without further comment. If it had been a player who had opened his mouth and said what Dexter had said, there would have been an almighty stink and an apology would not have been enough to calm things down.

In absolute honesty, I never expected to get picked for the first Test that summer. I felt I should have been because, although over the years my all-rounder’s mantle had fallen to a succession of pretenders, none of them had really looked up to the job. Players like Chris Cowdrey, David Capel and Phil DeFreitas had all been tried and found wanting. Chris was never in my class as a bowler or batsman, although he was a great trier. Capel was never really fit for long enough to be considered a front-line bowler, while DeFreitas flattered to deceive. According to most observers, the latest one to try his hand, Chris Lewis, had shown an alarming lack of what used to be known as ‘moral fibre’. In my opinion, I could still contribute more to the team than he did. Lewis has an enormous amount of talent, but he has a tendency to bale out when the pressure is on, and I don’t think anyone who watched the first Test of the ’93 series against the Aussies would disagree.

But if instinct told me I was not in the frame and Dexter’s performance at Arundel did nothing to ease my fears, the writing was on the wall when Lewis picked up an injury and was ruled out of the third one-day international at Lord’s, to be replaced by Dermot Reeve. Not only was I behind Lewis in the selectors’ eyes, I was now behind Reeve as well. No disrespect to Dermot, but if you had asked the Aussies which of us they would have preferred to deal with there would only have been one winner. Certainly, the Aussies I spoke to were delighted yet somewhat bewildered to learn that I was being ignored.

In his prime, Ted Dexter was a courageous batsman and a brilliant all-round sportsman. He has also always been considered somewhat of an oddball. People who played under him as captain often said that he would wander about in a world of his own, during a match as well as before and after one, and he was renowned for reacting to moments of high pressure by practising his golf swing in the slips. As far as I was concerned, however, he crossed the line between eccentricity and idiocy far too often for someone who was supposed to be running English cricket.

Ted retired from the game long before I had started. As a youngster, I wasn’t really a great spectator of cricket because I was always far more interested in getting out on the local recreation ground to play with my mates. I had obviously heard of Ted; the late Kenny Barrington, his Test colleague and later the manager of England who taught me so much, confirmed that he was a hell of a player. He also confirmed that often Ted lived in his own universe.

The first time Ted made any real impression on me was in his career as a television commentator. The incident happened when he was broadcasting from Old Trafford on one of those typical black, thundery Manchester days. He was sitting under an umbrella doing quick interviews with players when suddenly, in the middle of the conversation, he started hopping around all over the place and began shouting hysterically, ‘Oh my God. I’ve been struck by lightning!’

Years later, when I returned to the Test scene in the summer of 1989, I had my first brush with the wackier side of Ted. He had just taken up his position as the new chairman of the England committee with promises of a more professional approach and a brave new world for English cricket after years in the doldrums. Here he was, the man to lead the charge towards a glorious new dawn, making a complete and utter fool of himself in front of the players.

We had arrived in Birmingham the day before the third Test against Australia and were due to meet in the hotel conference room for the customary pre-match meal, get-together and tactical team-talk. This is the time when the players can exchange ideas about the strengths and weaknesses of opponents and establish a few operational rules. Although those who have played Test cricket with me over the years will tell you that my input was normally minimal and usually confined to ‘he can’t bat, I’ll bounce him out’, it’s true that what is discussed in these meetings can occasionally make the difference between winning and losing. This time, however, Ted turned what should have been a reasonably serious discussion into a night out at Butlin’s. As we filed in, Ted stood in the doorway handing out songsheets.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. There in black and white was the score to the hymn ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ while underneath was Ted’s own version, entitled ‘Onward Gower’s Cricketers’. It is worth reprinting in full, see page 24.

‘Right’, said Ted. ‘Now look, lads, when you get in the bath tonight, I want you to sing this at the top of your voices.’

I thought to myself ‘What the hell is going on? Whatever he’s drinking, I’ll have a pint!’ I had played upwards of 90 Tests and suddenly here was this guy telling me in all seriousness to sit in the bath and sing about knocking the ‘kang’roos’ flat and not upsetting Ian Todd, the cricket correspondent of the Sun. David Gower, the skipper, looked as though he was having a near-death experience. The rest of us just sat there in stunned silence. I can’t imagine what the younger players thought. All I do know is that neither I nor any of the other players did much singing in the bath that night.