Читать книгу Botham: My Autobiography - Ian Botham, Ian Botham - Страница 11
ОглавлениеBy the time I was selected for my first Test, the third of England’s Ashes series against Australia at Trent Bridge on 28 July 1977, I had no doubts that I was ready to make the jump. Nevertheless, in the moments leading up to the first morning of the match, I have to admit I was a bundle of nerves.
The point is that no matter how confident you may be in your own ability, you never really know whether you can be a Test cricketer until you go out on the field and get involved. After all, how many great county players have never made the grade when their ability suggested otherwise?
It was the fear of that unknown which caused me to be uncharacteristically quiet in the Trent Bridge dressing room that morning. I can’t really remember much about what went on; everything seemed to be happening so quickly. I’ve no doubt that a thousand and one people came up to me during the days and hours before the match to wish me luck, but I simply cannot remember a single word anyone said, and that certainly applies to the moments immediately before we went out to play.
I do remember, however, that I was barely capable of speech myself. I had a knot in my stomach as big as a fist and my mouth felt dry. I had arrived in the Test arena, but the question flashing through my mind was: ‘What the hell happens now?’
I was lucky to be part of a team where new members were not treated as juniors, an atmosphere which had been created by Tony Greig, who was still a member of the team at this stage, although his involvement with Packer had resulted in the cricket authorities insisting he should not be captain. But Mike Brearley, his successor, made sure that tradition continued. Brears encouraged us to talk about the game, and every single player, whether they were making their first appearance or their forty-first, was asked to contribute. I had sampled the atmosphere of the England dressing room before of course, not only during the one-day internationals at the end of the previous summer, but also during the Centenary Test at Melbourne that winter (rather too energetically, it seems, for the peace of mind of some senior players who were the victims of my practical jokes!). So it was not as if I walked through the door to be hit by a wall of blank faces. What’s more, the approach to man-management adopted by Greigy and Brears meant that there was no such thing as a pecking order, even though this was the match when the one and only Sir Geoffrey Boycott was making his long-awaited return to Test cricket after three years of self-imposed exile, following the selectors’ decision to award the captaincy for the 1973/74 tour to the West Indies to Mike Denness instead of him.
In some ways, I was also helped in those final minutes prior to going out on to the field by the fact that there were so many small details to attend to: just remembering to put my jockstrap on under my flannels rather than over, for instance. And I do recall that my tenseness was eased somewhat when Mike Hendrick came and sat next to me and started to talk about shooting. Mike was a keen sportsman himself, and just chatting with him about something other than cricket helped take my mind off things. But no matter how hard I tried to remain calm and focused on what I was doing, the nerves simply wouldn’t go away.
I remember I was desperate for us to field first. No one could ever accuse me of excessive patience at the best of times, but on this occasion the last thing I wanted was to have to sit around on my backside waiting. I wanted to get in the thick of things as quickly as possible. So when Brears returned from the pitch to announce that Greg Chappell, the Aussie captain, had won the toss and decided to bat, I felt a huge sense of relief.
As time passed, however, the nerves returned. The longer the wait the worse it got, and by the time I was given the ball for my first spell in Test cricket I was like a piece of elastic stretched to breaking point.
I had tried to remember Closey’s advice about not being intimidated by anyone or any situation, but the harder I tried the worse it got. I was like an actor going on stage for the first time. You can rehearse your lines until you are word perfect but there is still no guarantee that, when the time arrives to open your mouth and deliver them for real, any of them will actually come out, or even if they do, they will come out in the correct order. However, the moment had arrived; there was nothing for it but to take a deep breath and go for it.
As it turned out, had I been playing in my second Test rather than my first I might even have taken a wicket with that very first ball. Rick McCosker played nervously forward and edged the ball through the vacant third slip space. If I had been absolutely sure of myself I would have insisted to Brears that I should have three slips. What a start that would have been!
The incident taught me a valuable lesson all the same. Junior member of the team or not, from now on I would insist on getting the field setting I wanted.
The remainder of my first spell in Test cricket was something of a struggle, the problem being that even though I had got the first ball out of the way, I was still trying too hard and the adrenalin was pumping too much; I was almost bursting out of myself. Consequently, I strayed down the leg side too often and was generally wayward. When Brears told me to have a ‘blow’, I felt disappointed that I had not done myself justice. The question ‘Is Botham good enough?’ remained unanswered. On seeing how pumped up I was, Brears decided to let me have my head by giving me a second spell immediately after lunch. And then came the moment when everything that had happened in my life so far seemed to make perfect sense.
Greg Chappell attempted to drive a short, widish ball from me which instead nicked the inside edge of his bat and rattled into his stumps. As Chappell returned to the pavilion, I tried to look casual, as though this was the kind of thing that happened to me all the time. In fact, my heart was trying to jump out of my chest. Closey had always told me that I should fear nobody. But Greg Chappell? Of course it was a lucky wicket but to hell with that, I was in the book and Greg Chappell, one of the greatest batsmen of all time, was my rabbit!
Flushed with that success I then took the wickets of Doug Walters, Rod Marsh, Max Walker and Jeff Thomson. At one stage my figures were four for 13 in 34 balls, and I finished with five for 74. It all happened so fast that I never really had a chance to savour the moments one by one; all I do recall is that they couldn’t find a hat to fit my head for some time afterwards. And what better way to round off that day than being presented to the Queen, who was in the Midlands for the Silver Jubilee celebrations and was visiting the ground on that first day.
Boycott marked his comeback with a century, needless to say, then 80 not out in the second innings, and I managed to make 25 with the bat as we cruised to victory by seven wickets. As for Test cricket, the whole thing seemed so simple! The only negative feature of the match had been Boycott’s run-out of his team-mate Derek Randall, something I will come back to later.
There is no doubt that my early success for England was due in no small part to having Mike Brearley as captain. As he proved by trusting me with that second spell at a crucial period of my debut match, he had this great knack of recognizing what made every single player tick and exactly what was needed to bring out the best in them. Technically and tactically, he was as astute a captain as you will ever see. I remember one incident in particular from those early days that made me realize just how he put those qualities to use in the field. Earlier in that season I played under him for MCC against the Australians at Lord’s. He noted in that match that I had been bowling too many bouncers. He identified the need for me to use the weapon more sparingly, and then told me so in no uncertain terms at Trent Bridge. An observation on a player had been stored away in his head, and then used to great effect when he needed it. When I helped bowl out the Aussies that day, I hardly sent down a bumper at all. Yet, if Brears had not pushed the right buttons, the combination of my nervousness, my desire to do well and my sheer bloody-mindedness might have had an altogether different result.
The irony of my success in that Trent Bridge Test debut match was that during the game, the man who had done so much to shape my approach to the game, Brian Close, was announcing his retirement from first-class cricket.
Over the years Kath and I have often discussed what might have happened if I had had the benefit of Closey’s presence on and off the field for a while longer. He was a wonderful stabilizing influence on me, although he gave as good as he got on the field and in the bar. When he indicated to me that I was overstepping the mark, there was no beating around the bush and I respected him for it. As my career progressed the absence of Brian Close and later Kenny Barrington, at the very moments when I needed a firm hand to guide me, meant that I was left instead to my own devices. My attitude was that Beefy knows best; however, in certain situations, that simply wasn’t true.
Of course you have to learn your own lessons in life, but some people are better equipped to do so than others. The early successes I experienced simply reinforced my philosophy that I was going to take everything coming to me even if that meant some people getting hurt in the process. Kath was the one who was hurt most of course, and that is a recurring theme throughout my career. It is easy to say that if I knew then what I know now, things would have been different but I am really not sure that’s true either. A few years ago I caught sight of an advertising hoarding in Australia from which I can’t recall the product being promoted, but the message was unforgettable. It read ‘Life: Be in it’. I was determined to do that, even if it meant being in it up to my neck. If Closey, Kenny or even Brears had stayed around longer than they did, at least on certain occasions, when I was precariously poised on the line separating right from wrong, there would have been someone close to me with the guts to stand up and say: ‘Don’t be such an idiot’.
In the meantime, the only things that concerned me were reaching the top in cricket and having a good time in the process. My first Test match was a big hurdle cleared: it hardened my resolve to go out and conquer the world, and helped me to reappraise my targets. Closey had taught me there was no point in going out on the field with any other attitude than that I was the best cricketer alive. I wanted to be the best and if that meant Kath and the family were pushed down my list of priorities, then that was the way it had to be.
I could see the possibilities opening up in front of me. Kerry Packer’s intervention in the world of cricket meant that the game in the future would offer substantially higher financial rewards than it had done in the past. This was the age of the first million pound transfers in football and the elevation of sportsmen and women to superstar status the world over. It was the time of winner takes all, and I wanted to be one of the winners.
Fortunately, under the sobering influences of Closey and Brears, I was still able at this stage to appreciate that there were other things in life except me.
We brushed the Aussies aside at Headingley thanks to Boycs, who followed up his Trent Bridge heroics with a massive 191 in the fourth Test at Leeds, thus becoming the first player to score his 100th first-class century in the Test arena. In front of a packed Headingley crowd (the gates had to be closed on the first two days well before play started) Boycs made sure that the Aussies had no chance of coming back in the series. I got a bit carried away by the excitement and my failed attempt to hit Ray Bright out of the ground from the third delivery I faced meant that I had secured my first Test duck in only my second innings. The Aussies, shell-shocked at having to bowl at Boycott for twenty-two and a half hours since his return to the England side, capitulated without much of a fight in the first innings when I took five for 21, and although I was wicketless in the second innings we eventually crushed them by an innings and 85 runs.
During this match an incident occurred that was indirectly responsible for changing my life. Attempting to field the ball in the deep during the second innings, I stepped on it awkwardly and experienced a searing pain in my left foot. It was a particularly daft way of getting injured. My foot hurt like hell, but it was not until after the match that I found out I had broken a bone, an injury that apparently had been aggravated when I continued to bowl. As a result I was ruled out of the last match of the series at The Oval.
On returning to Somerset from Headingley, I went for treatment at Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton. On my way to see the specialist I walked through a children’s ward where there were kids with their arms in plaster, heads bandaged and legs in traction. At the end of the ward, I suddenly came across four youngsters sitting around a small table playing Monopoly.
‘What are they doing here? I asked the specialist. ‘Visiting, are they?’
‘No,’ he replied. ‘Unfortunately they’re suffering from leukaemia. Two of them have very little time to live.’
It was shattering news for me. I couldn’t take in what I was hearing. In that moment all those feelings of self-satisfaction over the events of the past couple of weeks disappeared. The specialist went on to explain, in layman’s terms, just what happens to the body when a child suffers from leukaemia. I listened open-mouthed. How could these children, who were playing so happily and who looked to the naked eye as right as rain, be about to die? I suddenly thought of Kath and the baby we were expecting, and a shiver went down my spine.
The doctor then told me that a lack of funds meant the hospital could no longer hold the annual party for the children which, for some of them, would be literally the only thing they could ever look forward to again. I had no hesitation in deciding to pay for the party there and then. It was not a huge amount of money; they just wanted to be able to buy sausage rolls, crisps, party hats and the like, but I wanted to do something and it was the only thing I could think of.
Over the years, the seed that was planted that day grew and grew, and I’m proud to say that the leukaemia walks have not only put the disease on the map in terms of national awareness but, through the generosity of people up and down the country, they have also raised substantial funds for the never-ending fight to beat this ghastly disease. To think, all that started because I stepped on a cricket ball.
A few days later I was in hospital again to witness the birth of my son, Liam. Again, this was only made possible because of that foot injury. Liam’s birth was far from straightforward, however; Kath was in labour for over 26 hours in all and had a terrible time of it. It had all started with minimal fuss, when in the early hours of 24 August, Kath announced she had gone into labour. Around midmorning she told me it was time to head for the maternity ward at Doncaster Royal Infirmary and it was there that the problems began. Originally I had told Kath categorically that I would not be present at the birth because I felt I would just be getting in the way. So according to plan, I dropped her and her mum off, waved goodbye and returned home to wait. But once I was informed that she was really suffering badly, I went back to the hospital and thereafter never left her side, apart from a brief moment when I was advised by the midwife to take a break. When I entered the delivery room for the first time, Kath was in absolute agony, crawling around on her hands and knees and screaming out in pain. My first reaction was shock, then, when I had pulled myself together, I ran off to get hold of the midwife. Unfortunately, because this was a Bank Holiday weekend, the hospital appeared to be short-staffed; the woman who came appeared under stress and clearly made an incorrect assessment of the situation. She told Kath not to make such a fuss, that everything was perfectly normal and that she was just getting hysterical for no reason. At one stage she actually got quite annoyed with Kath and told her ‘Stop being silly.’ What none of us knew, until much later, was that Liam had been in an inverted position in Kath’s womb. No wonder she had been in such terrible pain.
Finally, the doctor arrived and he soon resolved the situation. I was present at the birth, although by that stage Kath was so exhausted that she probably had no idea I was there at all. In the event, Liam was born at 3.50 a.m. the following morning. It was an extremely emotional moment for both of us; indeed the whole experience had been so harrowing for Kath that she went private for the birth of our second child, Sarah. Incidentally, when the gynaecologist reviewed Kath’s case notes over Liam’s birth, he expressed his amazement that she had not had a Caesarean operation.
Becoming a father changes a lot of men. It is supposed to be the time when the word responsibility becomes more than something you laugh about. That, however, was never going to be the case with me. Despite the difficulty of Liam’s birth, it was simply not in my nature to think of anything other than the next day, the next challenge and the next pint. After all, I was not yet twenty-two and there was a lot more of life yet to come.
Having come through one traumatic experience, Kath was soon facing up to another demanding task, this time sewing name tags into the sackloads of kit which I was required to take on my first overseas tour to Pakistan and New Zealand that winter of 1977/78. It was a job she hated but over the years, as she got used to what was needed and learned to ignore the TCCB tour guidelines on preparing for trips, she found ways round the problem. For a while she used a laundry marker and then, later still, simply did not bother at all. Even at this early stage I realized what kind of system I was dealing with at Lord’s: my measurements were sent to the TCCB weeks in advance, yet when the kit turned up the trousers would have been too long in the leg for Joel Garner!
This was another particularly difficult time for Kath. Having been away from her the previous winter when I was on the Whitbread Scholarship in Australia, here I was disappearing again only a couple of months after Liam’s birth. Everything in my life revolved around thoughts of the tour. I was terribly excited about the prospect, and as Kath told me later, I was like a kid getting ready to go back to boarding school. When the day arrived and I set off on tour with England, I was determined that this was going to be the start of something big. That something big turned out to be a tour round the toilets of Pakistan; but more about that later.
Part of the education process I was undergoing at the time was learning about my team-mates in the England set-up.
The things that make Geoff Boycott tick would give Mike Brearley enough material for a dissertation in his current career as a psychoanalyst, but coming face to face with the man during this formative period of my career, the biggest impression he made on me was just how selfish he could be. Of course all top sportsmen, whatever their level, need to have that quality, but in my opinion and in the opinion of many people who played with ‘Fiery’ over the years, Boycott simply went too far, too often.
The first time I had seen Boycott’s egotistical nature at work on the field had been during my Test debut at Trent Bridge the previous summer.
After we had bowled the Australians out for 243, we slumped to 34 for two in reply. Then Boycott played the ball straight towards a fielder he had not noticed in the covers and set off for a suicidal single, except that he had no intention of committing suicide. Derek Randall, playing at the other end and in front of his home crowd at Nottingham, had to selflessly sacrifice his wicket as the ball came in to the wicket-keeper, allowing Boycott to remain and go on to make what was admittedly a terrific hundred. Boycott’s attitude then, and forever after, was that as he was the best batsman in the side; whenever a similar situation occurred it was the other batsman who should be the one to sacrifice his wicket.
The first time that I personally came face-to-face with Boycott’s selfishness was on the initial leg of my first tour to Pakistan. It was during this series that Mike Hendrick and I roomed together, or should I say, ‘bathroomed’ together as that was where we spent most of our time, taking it in turns to crawl between toilet and basin. We had contracted amoebic dysentery, not a pleasant illness to have in the heat of the Pakistan, and although I’m not a whinger, from time to time it got so bad I never thought I would be able to wear light-coloured trousers again. At one point I actually thought I was dying. It didn’t help that we were hardly living in the lap of luxury when it came to some of the hotel accommodation. At least we were never lonely, as when we got to our room there were all kinds of pals around to keep us company such as rats, cockroaches and other local wildlife. On turning off the bedroom light, you could often hear them scurrying along the skirting boards, under the floorboards and behind the walls.
However, both Mike and I were determined to give it our best shot to try and establish ourselves in the side, and we attempted to pull the wool over the eyes of the management over the seriousness of our condition. Reporting for duty on the morning of the final warm-up match before the Test in front of the disbelieving selectors and physio Bernard Thomas, we managed about 50 yards of one lap around the ground before collapsing in a sorry heap.
And then came Boycott. He had got wind of the fact that Mike and I had begged our wives for and had received Red Cross parcels of tinned food to ease our condition. One evening there was a knock on our door. It was Boycott.
‘Hello, lads,’ he chirped. ‘I’ve got some Dundee cake here and I wonder if you would like to swap …’
He was unbelievable! Mike and I were going through hell and all the time Boycs had this little hoard of goodies stored away for his own consumption. Now, when he knew we had something to trade, it suddenly became available.
Being unable to get on the field and give it my all proved a great frustration for me, not least because, despite my successful introduction to Test cricket, I had found out that I still had something to prove to the man who mattered most. Just before going down with dysentery, I had had a private chat with Mike Brearley about my role on tour. I was full of myself and I wanted to be heavily involved yet I felt I was not really getting a fair crack of the whip. Brears simply informed me that he considered Chris Old as his premier all-rounder, and he had chosen to go with him. I told Brears that I didn’t agree with his assessment of our relative merits. But he was spared any further confrontation with me as the dreaded belly-bug laid me low.
In fact (and this is somewhat ironic bearing in mind what I have already said about Brearley’s influence on my career) it was not until he himself was out of the picture after returning home with a broken arm and Boycott had taken over as captain for the New Zealand leg, that I had my chance to get things moving again.
The first Test at Wellington was one of the strangest I have ever played in, and not simply for the fact that after 48 years and 48 Tests between the two countries it was the Kiwis’ first win over England. Strong winds blew throughout the match and these conditions seemed to affect our Geoffrey. After winning the toss he put New Zealand in and they made 228. Then when it came to our turn for a bat, I was witness to one of the most tedious innings I have ever seen in my life. Boycs’s 77 made on the third day went like this: 10 runs in the first hour, 12 runs in the second, 6 runs in the third (including a boundary), 12 runs in the fourth, Zzzzzzz. The innings lasted seven hours 22 minutes and he faced 304 balls. Call International Rescue.
As a team we must have been bored out of our minds because although we needed only 137 in the second innings to win we completely fell apart, scoring 64 all out to lose by 72 runs. In fairness, the main factor in the Kiwis’ first ever win over England was the brilliant bowling of Richard Hadlee, who took ten wickets for 100 in the match.
Boycott’s behaviour in the second Test at Christchurch was even more amazing. We were determined to level the series and I set myself to play a big innings. It was not the most spectacular of my career but my maiden Test hundred was one of the most satisfying. I was given tremendous support by our ‘keeper Bob Taylor who had been with me for almost five hours when I repaid him for all his efforts by running him out. I was on 99 when nerves got the better of me and I shouted for a suicidal single. After compiling a big first innings total, we just failed to enforce the follow on. But when we did eventually bowl New Zealand out we desperately required quick runs to give us enough time to bowl them out a second time and win the match.
As captain, Boycs knew more than anyone else exactly what was needed, but he was so wrapped up in his own performance that he singularly failed to get the scoreboard moving. Consequently, we only had about 20 runs on the board after 11 overs. Then things turned ugly after a disgraceful incident involving the Kiwi seam bowler Ewen Chatfield and Derek Randall. (Chatfield had nearly died on the field at Auckland on England’s visit in 1975 after being hit on the head by a bouncer from Peter Lever. The ball had smashed into his temple and fractured his skull. His heart actually stopped beating for several seconds and only prompt action by the England physiotherapist Bernard Thomas, who used mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and heart massage on the New Zealander, saved his life.) Sadly, Chatfield at that moment committed one of the cardinal sins of cricket. As he reached the wicket to send down a delivery, he suddenly stopped and nicked off the bails while Randall was backing up. As every schoolboy cricketer the world over knows, this is, as they say, ‘just not cricket’. It’s fair enough if the batsman is seeking to gain an unfair advantage by racing out of the crease too soon, but even then the normal procedure is to issue a warning before carrying out the threat to run him out if he tries it again.
This time Randall was just backing up in the normal way; the umpire had no option but to uphold Chatfield’s scandalous appeal and that was the spark for some bad feeling between the sides. When I got out to the wicket to join Boycott, having been promoted up the order to try and increase the scoring rate, I drew the attention of Chatfield to how we felt about what he had done.
‘Remember, mate,’ I said, ‘you’ve already died once on the cricket field. Anything can happen.’
But at that moment I also had another purpose in mind. Bob Willis, the vice-captain, had sent me out to the crease with the clearest, if most extraordinary of instructions.
‘Go and run the bugger out,’ Willis said.
As I arrived at the wicket, Boycs came up to me and moaned about how he was trying his best but he just couldn’t get the ball off the square. I told him not to worry and that I would sort everything out. So I did: I sorted him out by about ten yards. I hit the ball into the off-side and called him for a run. He never stood a chance. On being given out by the umpire, he just turned and looked at me blankly. ‘What have you done? What have you done?’ he mumbled as he walked past me back to the pavilion.
By the close of play, we had a lead of 279, enough to help us push home an advantage the next day. But when I got back to the dressing room, I found Boycs still sulking and sitting on a bench with a towel over his head. He was not talking to anyone, and certainly not to me. This wall of silence remained well into the following day.
The only player he did converse with was his Yorkshire team-mate and ally Geoff Cope, with whom he spent the next morning wandering around the outfield agonizing over the declaration and his position as captain.
In the end, we declared at the overnight total then bowled New Zealand out easily to win by lunch time on the final day. That morning session was perhaps one of the most bizarre of my career. Boycs was still not talking to me, so when I was bowling he communicated with me via the other fielders. Whoever was fielding at cover or mid-off would be sent over to say to me ‘Boycs wants to know if you want another slip’ and I would respond ‘Tell him that would be nice’. The fielder would then trot over to Boycs and pass on the message. It was all so unbelievably petty. After the match was over and won, needless to say Boycs took great delight in informing the press of how well his plans had worked out.
The victory, no matter how it was achieved in the end, was especially sweet for me because of my first Test hundred, an innings that proved to me that as well as learning things about people I was also learning things about the game. In my early career, batting was a very straightforward business. ‘Get out there and give it a whack’ was my philosophy. But if I was going to succeed at the highest level the time had come to give it a bit more thought than that. It was thinking and learning from my experiences in the first Test at Wellington that helped me make the century in the second Test at Christchurch that proved so decisive. At Wellington, Richard Hadlee got me out twice by tempting me into the hook and getting me caught once at square leg and then at deep backward square leg for 7 and 19 respectively.
When we got to Christchurch I remembered the lesson. This time when Hadlee bowled short to me I just let the ball go. It was still an aggressive innings, but it was controlled aggression. It was a lovely feeling to have reached this milestone, and when it was over I just wanted to go out there and do it again.
Another 50 in the second innings to go with my five-wicket haul and my century in the first proved a vital contribution to our levelling the series at 1-1. It also meant that I was well on the way to establishing myself; and the following summer against Pakistan I managed to do just that. In the first Test at Edgbaston I made another century in our victory by an innings and 57 runs, and it was here that I had my first encounter with the kind of controversy that has cast a constant shadow over all my dealings with Pakistan.
The Pakistan players and management were unhappy at the way Bob Willis had bowled at the nightwatchman Iqbal Qasim as they followed on, chasing our 452 for eight declared. Qasim came to the crease late on the Saturday evening to see out the last over, which he did with ease. Then on the Monday, he survived a number of lifting deliveries from Willis without any fuss. Mike Brearley, back in harness after recovering from a broken arm, commented after the match that he felt Qasim was a competent and able player. When Willis tried another approach, by coming round the wicket, he caught Qasim with a lifter that hit him in the mouth, forcing him to retire hurt.
The Pakistan manager, Mahmood Hussain, accused Willis of using unfair tactics, but as I saw it, the problem was not Qasim’s lack of ability but the fact the visitors were heading for defeat by an innings inside four days. The way Qasim had batted up until that point proved he was no rabbit.
Nevertheless in the interests of fairness, a compromise was reached between the two managements, and the teams went into the next match at Lord’s with a collective total of five players classified as non-batsmen and to be spared the ordeal of the bouncer. Willis and Hendrick were the English players singled out, while the Pakistanis had preservation orders slapped on Qasim, Sikander Bakht and Liaqat Ali. The protection, however, did not spare them from defeat as I enjoyed my best match yet for England.
I scored my third Test century, 108, as we reached 364. In their first innings Willis took five wickets and Phil Edmonds four to force the follow on, and second time around it was my turn with the ball as I took eight wickets for 34. I had been put on at the Nursery End to allow Willis to change ends and I just needed one sniff to get into my rhythm. I took seven wickets in the morning session as their last eight wickets fell for 43, to complete the best return by an England bowler since Jim Laker had taken nine for 37 and ten for 53 against Australia at Old Trafford in 1956. They tell me that this was the best all-round performance ever by an England player.
New Zealand were our next opponents in that ‘split’ summer of 1978, and although my batting tailed off slightly, my bowling continued to reap rewards. In the three-match series, I took six for 34 in the second Test at Trent Bridge and followed that up with six for 101 and five for 39 in the final Test of the summer at Lord’s as we completed three straight wins.
That marked the end of my first year in Test cricket. The apprehensive debutante had come of age; I could be well pleased with my record from eleven Tests of three centuries, eight five-wicket hauls and one bag of ten wickets in a match.
Off the field, things were going fantastically well too. As far as the public were concerned, the void created by Tony Greig’s defection to Packer had been well and truly filled. The Fleet Street publicity machine was working overtime to keep tabs on the new ‘superstar’; the sponsorship deals, exclusive newspaper articles, and all the other trappings of success were becoming part of our everyday lives. Helped by my agent, the legendary Fleet Street figure Reg Hayter, to whom I had been introduced by Brian Close, a mutual friend, I grabbed everything with both hands. After all, you never know when it is all going to end and I realized that this was the time to cash in. Unfortunately, these developments simply caused more problems for Kath. We had some great times during this period, but because of my off-field commitments, they were becoming fewer and farther between. Most of the functions to which I was invited, whether cricket dinners, pro-am celebrity golf tournaments or other publicity events, were for men only, while the rest of the time was usually spent enjoying typical bachelor pursuits – rounds of golf or nights in the Somerset pubs, for instance. Kath told me later that she felt very much like a spare part, particularly as she was carrying a nine-month-old Liam around with her at the same time. Looking back, I can’t blame her for thinking like that. All I can offer in my defence is that my world was travelling at 100 mph. It was heady stuff and my head was spinning.
When it became obvious that I was going to make the trip to Australia that winter, Kath made it quite clear to me that the prospect of another long separation did not fill her with joy. In fact, when I had returned from Pakistan and New Zealand a year earlier, we vowed we would never again be apart from each other for so long. Kath was pregnant again and after consulting the doctors she had been told that she could only come out to Australia provided she returned by the middle of December. If we were going to have any decent time together, it had to be right at the beginning of the tour. The TCCB have never been keen on wives coming out on tour but we wrote off with a formal request and were told that we would be notified in due course. When the TCCB secretary Donald Carr rang to tell me that the answer was no, I told him that this was not good enough and I urged him to do everything in his power to change the decision. The conversations continued throughout the evening but I was getting nowhere fast. Finally, my patience snapped and I issued an ultimatum. ‘If you won’t allow Kath to join me I shall withdraw from the tour’ and I meant it. The next morning an early call from Donald indicated that the ploy had worked and Kath was able to join me for about two and a half weeks.
Many observers chose to concentrate on the fact that we achieved our 5-1 success under Brearley against an Aussie side badly damaged by defections to Packer, but they tended to forget that we had lost some great players of our own. In any case, you can only beat what’s there.
I was lucky to make the tour at all, my part in the proceedings being delayed after I cut my wrist badly from accidentally putting my hand through a swinging pub door at a send-off party. I was kept in hospital overnight but the news from the specialist was good. He told me that although the tendons were severed there was, fortunately, no damage to the nerve and the injury would take about three weeks to heal. The reason I recall this incident so well is that it triggered something which gave me my first taste of the darker side of the newspaper industry. Unbeknown to me, while I was in hospital Kath was about to receive unwelcome late-night visitors at our home in Epworth.
There was a knock on the front door to which Kath responded. On our doorstep were two men who introduced themselves as reporters from a national paper.
‘Evening Mrs Botham,’ said one of them. ‘Can you confirm a report we have had that Ian has been badly injured in a fight in a pub and is out of the England tour?’
Donald Carr had told all of us not to say anything to anyone about what had happened until the TCCB had had time to prepare a full statement. Kath, remembering Donald’s instructions, was tight-lipped.
‘I’m afraid I’ve got nothing to say.’
Then the other reporter intervened. ‘Come off it, luv. We’ve got the story and whatever you say, even if you say nothing at all, we are still going to print it. Why don’t you come clean?’
Kath tried to be polite and told him there was nothing she could add. Next day, however, a story full of innuendo appeared in the tabloids which suggested that I had been involved in a punch-up. From that moment on, both Kath and I realized we had to be extremely wary of the press.
Kath and I arrived in Australia before the start of November 1978 and although it was still a good two weeks before my hand would heal well enough to allow me to play, my determination and will to be fit meant that I was ready for action a fortnight before the first Test was due to start in Brisbane – a recovery that confounded the medical experts.
It might all have been for nought, however, thanks to a dodgy oyster. The night before the Test was due to start, Kath and I visited a seafood restaurant where I tucked into a plate of Oysters Kilpatrick. I don’t know about Patrick, but they bloody nearly killed me. I was up all night going various shades of white until, finally, Kath called the paramedics. They gave me something to ease the pain, but unfortunately the side-effects of the drug were such that I was sent into a slumber which a herd of elephants wouldn’t have disturbed. I finally woke at around 10 a.m. on the morning of the match and arrived at the ground twenty minutes before the start of play. I was lucky to have made it there at all.
Brears, now with a full chin of beard and christened the ‘Ayatollah’ by the locals, lost the toss and the Aussies decided to bat. Disastrously, as it turned out, for they were 26 for six and then 53 for seven before struggling through to 116 all out. I took three for 40 and then scored 49 as we built up a 170 run lead. They did better in their second innings and set us 170 to win the match – a total we reached with seven wickets in hand.
I’m not a superstitious person but the next game, my 13th Test match, certainly didn’t go my way. For the first time I came out of a Test without a wicket and ugly match figures of none for 100. Even so, England won by 166 runs.
It was not long before another example of Geoff Boycott’s peculiar nature surfaced. In a tour match against South Australia at Adelaide, just before Christmas 1978, he again showed his priorities were Boycott first, the rest nowhere. For that game, Boycs had been dropped down to number 11 below Edmonds, Emburey and Lever, and by the time he arrived at the crease we needed nine to win off the last over with Geoff Miller going great guns with a half-century to his name. That became two for victory off the last ball. What happened? ‘Dusty’ managed to get the ball away to the point boundary and they ran one to tie the match. Would Boycs turn and go for the second? Not if there was the slightest chance of Boycott being run out.
We went into the third Test at Melbourne fancying our chances of making it 3-0 in the series. It was not to be, however, as Brears suffered his first defeat as captain in 16 Tests and Allan Border started his Test career on the winning side. Our batting had begun disastrously in each innings. I was back among the wickets – three for 68 and three for 41 – but, chasing 283 to win in our second innings, we were soon in trouble at 6 for two and capitulated to 179 and defeat by 103 runs.
This was a big shock for the whole party. We had so dominated the first two games and now here we were battling to regain our supremacy. With the score at 2–1, it was far from easy. In the fourth Test at Sydney, I scored 59 out of a disappointing England total of 141, and by the end of the first day the Australians had reached 56 for one.
On the second day, we dug deep and restricted the Aussies to 283 and a lead of 142 runs, but we were soon in trouble again when Boycs was out first ball in the second innings, leg before to Rodney Hogg. It was Boycs’ first duck for England for nearly ten years. Derek Randall then began a salvaging operation with a brilliant 150. The Aussie crowd moaned that our scoring rate of 346 in 146 overs was a mite slow, and, surprise, surprise, they even suggested that Arkle should: ‘Ave a go, yer mug’. To hell with them, we were fighting for the Ashes.
The last day arrived with the Aussies needing 205 to win in 265 minutes, certainly a reachable target under normal circumstances, but the wicket was beginning to crumble and our spinners John Emburey and Geoff Miller managed to extract enough turn to share seven wickets and have them all out for 111. We were 3-1 up and back in the driving seat.
Our subsequent 205-run victory at Adelaide meant that Brears became the first England captain since Douglas Jardine in the 1932/33 ‘Bodyline’ series to win four Tests on an Ashes tour down under.
England had never beaten the Aussies by a margin as large as 5-1, but that was the prospect ahead of us as the series reached its finale at Sydney. Brears had a real go at us about commitment, saying that the series may have been in the bag but the job was not done. We responded by winning the match by nine wickets. I had now played eight matches against the Aussies and won seven.
On flying home in mid-February, I met my daughter Sarah for the first time. She had been born two weeks before I returned, and thankfully without any of the traumas Kath had suffered over Liam’s birth.
But the wheels of international cricket continued to turn. The first half of the home summer of 1979 was taken up with the World Cup, where I made the first of my two appearances in a final at Lord’s. We were well beaten in this instance, Viv Richards taking us apart with an awesome 138 not out and Collis King’s late blitz taking the West Indies to 286. Although Brears and Boycott put on 129 for the first wicket we were always behind the clock.
The World Cup was followed by a four-Test series against India during which I got back in the groove, twice taking five-wicket hauls in an innings and making my top Test score to date of 137. Luck and the will to win were paying handsome dividends. That 137 at Headingley in the third Test was a typical Botham knock, with the ball flying to all corners of the ground. The match had been interrupted by the weather, but by lunch on the Monday the century was in the bag, although I was disappointed to miss by one run the chance to score a Test century before lunch.
The victory by an innings and 83 runs in the first Test at Edgbaston enabled us to win the series 1-0 but not until we had survived a thrilling draw in the fourth and final Test at The Oval when the Indians, needing 15 from the final over to square the series at 1-1 could not quite manage it and were forced to settle for the draw. In fact, all four results were possible with three balls to go after Sunil Gavaskar had made a memorable 221 to take his side to within reach of their target of 438. That match also marked my first personal milestone in Test cricket. I began my 21st Test needing just three runs to reach the landmark of 1000 runs and 100 wickets in Test cricket quicker than anyone had ever done before. I soon collected those runs on my way to 38. The least said about my second innings in that match the better. I was run out for nought. No prizes for guessing that my batting partner at the time was a certain G. Boycott.
The winter of 1979/80 should have been feeding time for Beefy again, with a short tour to Australia followed by a one-match trip to Bombay for the Indian Golden Jubilee Test. Sadly, the Aussies had got their act together after the Packer defections and despite my haul of 11 wickets in the first Test at Perth, they won by 138 runs. The next game at Sydney was going to be won by the side calling right when it came to the toss, which the Australians did.
At this point our lack of success was causing a bit of friction within the camp, and unsurprisingly Boycott was again in the thick of it. The pitch was clearly going to favour the bowlers and Boycs didn’t fancy it at all. His reluctance to put himself in the firing line almost provoked the normally mild mannered Mike Brearley into thumping him. The pitch at the Sydney Cricket Ground was in a terrible state: it was saturated after two and a half days of rain and it didn’t take a genius to work out that it was going to be a quick flyer. Boycs took one look at it and started complaining about his neck being stiff and how he didn’t think he was going to be able to play. Brears had his doubts and sent him off to the nets, where he looked in good enough health to us. Finally, he went up to Brears and announced: ‘I’m not playing. My neck’s still sore’.
Brears saw red; he was literally shaking with rage and I thought for a moment he was going to belt him. Eventually, Boycott was forced to play but we lost the match and with it the three-match series. Other players on that tour had played on through pain and injury, but it seemed that at the first sign of a pitch he didn’t fancy, in my opinion Boycs had tried to jump ship. As far as many of us were concerned, that was the last straw. If Boycs was going to pick and choose his games, he could go and play with himself. I for one didn’t go out of my way to talk to him again on that trip. By the time the third game arrived, it was all over for us, even though Graham Gooch hit 99 before running himself out with his maiden Test century in sight and I scored an undefeated 119 in the second innings.
Before flying to India we made a conscious decision to enjoy ourselves come what may. Bearing in mind the difficulty obtaining decent beer on the sub-continent, we dumped as much of our clothing as we could to make room in our bags for supplies, and then we went out and bought up virtually the entire stock of the local Australian grog.
I had never been there before so I was in for a huge culture shock. It may have been a shortish stay but I soon came to appreciate that this was a thrilling and magnificent country. ‘Deadly’ Derek Underwood, my room-mate, had seen it all before, though there were the odd occasions when even he was taken by surprise. Take, for example, our first night in the Taj Mahal hotel, when he put my smart blue leather shoes outside the bedroom door for cleaning … and that was the last I saw of them! I expect they are still in service all these years later.
There was a lot of unwinding to do after the tensions of the previous five months. Off the field, Deadly was collaborating with his ghost writer Chris Lander on a book but not getting very far. Poor Deadly, he wanted some peace and quiet in order to finish it once and for all, but of course if Lander came to our room, we ended up chatting and drinking to all hours with the result that no work would be done. Then they tried to beat me at my own game by going off to Lander’s suite, but I soon became bored on my own. So I joined them – with the same result.
On more than one occasion I dragged them up to the French restaurant at the top of the hotel. One evening, Deadly became so intoxicated that he started imagining he was on the dance floor and began gyrating on the table where some unfortunate Indian couple were trying to eat their meal. At this point I decided it was time to make a tactical withdrawal. The following morning I went to see the manager of the hotel and asked him if he knew whose meal we had disturbed. He told me and I immediately arranged for them to be sent tickets for the Test match as a form of apology. It turned out to be one of the best moves of my career, because from then on nothing was too much trouble for him.
This was the trip where I really got to know Lander, who was later to become an essential member of the Leukaemia Walk team. It was also the tour where he picked up the nickname ‘Crash’, which came about when Deadly and Lander tried another dodge to avoid me and settle down to work on the book. One night they disappeared up to the hotel penthouse suite where a female entertainer was providing the cabaret in the bar. They reasoned that I would never think of looking for them in the bar if I thought they were working. Bad planning, boys. After a few ‘soft drinks’ (orange juice laced with something a bit special) Lander was flying. Somehow he ended up on the stage, performing the original Karaoke in front of an audience that took a long time to warm up but, once they had, were quite ecstatic. Then, suddenly, the full impact of the drink took its toll.
I’ve heard of singers like Tom Jones walking into the audience to meet his fans. Crash took rather more direct action: he slipped and fell head first into them. Hence the nickname was born.
I managed to do some more damage to him later on tour. One night during the Test match we went back to his room armed with a couple of bottles of brandy and ordered up some tandoori chicken from the kitchen. Suitably prepared for a memorable feast, we got ourselves comfortable and settled back for an evening in front of the television. But on switching it on and despite fiddling for what seemed like an age with the controls, we couldn’t get a decent reception, and in my frustration I hurled a chicken bone at the screen. The bone missed and instead hit the wall behind and bounced off it, before lodging itself in the back of the set, at which point, almost miraculously, the television started working again.
It was a good night and we had a few laughs, but as the television programmes made no sense I decided to take on the job of entertainments officer. I set Crash and Deadly a challenge: standing on the table, they had to drink some brandy, eat the tandoori chicken and read a passage from the Gideon Bible at the same time. Not surprisingly, they failed miserably in this task.
The next morning Crash woke up to find he had spent the night with several pieces of chicken. With head throbbing, he struggled across the room to turn on the television in order to watch the cricket before falling back on his bed. He was meant to be covering the game but was too ill to get there, and this was the best he could do.
He couldn’t believe his eyes. For the England bowler he saw running in and taking a wicket with the first ball of the day was yours truly! The next thing he saw was smoke rising from behind the set. He shot across the room to find a plate load of tandoori chicken simmering away gently in the back of the telly. I can’t imagine how it got there.
In fact, my performance in the match – a century and 13 wickets – probably secured for me the job of England captain once we returned home for the summer series with the West Indies. Little did the selectors know what had been behind it.
All in all, the events of the past three years had been quite an introduction to Test cricket. One thing for which I will always be grateful is that during those extraordinary times on and off the field, Mike Brearley was around when I needed him. I firmly believe that if circumstances had been different, lessons I learned from him would have helped me become a successful England captain.
As it turned out, I was an unsuccessful England captain.
