In This Issue

When England played Pakistan in the fifth Test at The Oval in the summer of 1987 they were one down in the series and had to win to tie. Pakistan batted for two and a half days. Javed Miandad scored 260 over 10 hours and they were finally all out for 708. England made 232 and were asked to bat again. By the end of the fourth day they had lost three second-innings wickets. When Chris Broad was out on the fifth day, Mike Gatting, the England captain, was at the crease and needed someone with dogged determination to drop anchor, bat all day for the team, not do anything flash, self-indulgent or reckless and forgo personal glory to save his country. Next man in? Ian Botham.

IT Botham, the free spirit of the England game, easily bored, a tempest rarely becalmed, virulent scourge of opponents for over a decade, responsible for a series of sustained down-the-order shot-fests of towering power and ferocity. Gatting was a fine stroke player but had to restrain himself as, with no chance of winning the match, they boarded up for the draw. At the other end was the brilliant Pakistani wrist-spinner, Abdul Qadir, who had already taken 10 of the 14 England wickets to fall.

At close of play Gatting was 150 not out and Botham was still there after well over four hours with 51 to his name. Reining in all his instincts, he had proved again that his reputation for selfish indiscipline was unfair. Yet the previous summer it appeared that Botham, England’s greatest ever player, might never play for his country again.

Beefy, it turned out, in the summer of 1986, liked a spliff, a bifter, a reefer, a joint. His friendship with Viv Richards, born of many years playing together for Somerset, possibly went beyond cricket and into other Caribbean pastimes.

Botham acquired the habit of wearing a red, gold and green wristband perhaps from Richards, an Antiguan with a keen interest in his African heritage. The red representing the blood shed on African soil, the gold symbolising the riches plundered from Africa by imperialists and the green for the lush fertility of the African land are the most important symbol of Rastafarian culture and the three colours make up the flag of Ethiopia as well as being used in many African and West Indian flags. Richards had to deny he was a Black Power advocate when he displayed the colours.

Botham wore them too, not just on his wristband but on a jumper playing golf or in blazers worn by him and Richards at a special cricket match organised by his then manager. The man portrayed as a hard-drinking, womanising, angry bruiser had brushed up close to the easy-going reggae culture of the man he regarded as his older brother, Richards, and it led to more trouble for him when it came out that he had made acquaintance with cannabis.

He revealed his love of a toke in an article in the Mail on Sunday, which seems an astonishing misreading of the possible consequences. The readership of that newspaper had, at that time, voted en masse for Margaret Thatcher and would do so again in 1987. They had previously shown little interest in a liberal attitude to drug use and did not care to be reminded that the world beyond their net curtains was not as they would wish it to be.

Botham triggered an immediate ‘disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’ backlash, coupled with moralistic attacks in all the other newspapers, whose noses may have been put out of joint by Beefy’s exclusive deal with the Mail on Sunday. There was more to the story than met the eye, inevitably. Botham was forced to settle with the Mail on Sunday, having previously tried to sue them, and did so by providing them with a confession, of sorts.

Botham was banned for nine weeks over the summer, which would mean missing several England Test matches – plenty of time for barbecues and big fat joints in the garden then.

Botham’s rubbishing of the establishment figures that ran the game led to trouble within cricket and his newsworthy exploits outside cricket sold newspapers. When he lost his place in the England team it was the first time he had been dropped since his debut in 1977. That had also been the year of John McEnroe’s breakthrough at Wimbledon and by the time Botham finished his playing career he would, like McEnroe, be unarguably among the best of all time, and would upset the entire establishment running the game in England on the way. He would also become the most popular sportsman in the country. There will never be a cricket team, never mind just an England side, that would not be improved by the inclusion of Botham.

The spirit of rebellion was in the air in 1977 as the Sex Pistols were barred from BBC radio and prevented from reaching No.1 in the charts with their contribution to the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, ‘God Save the Queen’. Botham was not channelling Johnny Rotten though, as he bashed his way around England’s cricket fields. His rebelliousness did not appear to be a calculated thing. He seemed to have more energy, vitality and gusto than anyone else. The relatively sedate pastime of cricket was too frail to hold him. There is just too much time, with too little to do, at a cricket ground, too much time for Botham’s inner rubber band to wind and wind itself taut, before spinning him into a confrontation, a row or a boozy release.

In 1977 my dad sometimes put my brother and me on a train to Southend to watch Essex play cricket. We were also taken to Lord’s to see England. We had been taught to score, in little cricket scorebooks, while sitting at the boundary line at Woodford Wells CC. None of the club players were known to us, so my dad would give them nicknames based on their appearance.

Black Hair c Baldy b Wrong Foot 18

Long drives on summer holidays were made to the accompaniment of Brian Johnston on Test Match Special. We were also taught a solitary cricket game, known as ‘Dob Cricket’. Using a pin, the player sticks it into a page of newsprint where the lettering is densely packed, each letter of the alphabet was equivalent to some action in cricket. Scores were realistic, even though it was not possible for the pin to differentiate between a batsman who was a clueless No.11 and the great Viv Richards. The game was good enough for a schoolboy anyway and fostered a love of cricket.

No game devised, though, could have incorporated the talents of Botham, who changed the parameters of what is possible. It was 1981 when Botham redefined cricket excellence and set a standard by which every hapless English cricketer has been judged since.

[Watching the Headingley Test], it was easy to be lifted out of your seat in excitement. It became necessary to watch standing up, because his best blows would cause you to jump and shout out:

‘YES! GO ON, BOTH! WHERE’S THAT ONE GONE? LOOK! IT’S GONE MILES! MILES!’

Living up to those standards for the rest of his career weighed heavily but his achievements were still remarkable. In 1986 he was recalled to the team, after his marijuana suspension, needing one wicket against New Zealand to equal Dennis Lillee’s world record number of Test victims. With the crowd roaring him in once again he managed it with his first ball and within 12 balls had broken the record. He then picked up his bat and smashed fifty in no time.

Following his retirement from cricket he continued to inspire with remarkable feats of distance walking, all to raise money for Leukaemia Research. The pace of his walks was extraordinary as he ignored pain and left would-be accomplices by the roadside. News crews would struggle to film him as puny local reporters were forced to run alongside the striding, unsmiling giant, hoping for a comment. The millions he has raised will have contributed enormously to developments in the treatment of leukaemia patients, perhaps prolonging the life of some mother’s son. Or some son’s mother.*

* Alan’s mother died from leukaemia when he was six.

Extracted from My Favourite People And Me by Alan Davies, published by Michael Joseph at £18.99. Copyright © Alan Davies 2009. www.penguin.co.uk

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