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Botham: My Autobiography
Ian Botham

Peter Hayter


Originally published in 2000 and now available as an ebook. The bestselling autobiography of cricketing legend Ian Botham, includes his first-hand insight into the 1999/2000 winter tour to South Africa.Ian Botham’s bestselling autobiography is an intriguing cocktail of sex and drugs allegations, personal upheavals, confrontations with his peers, and remarkable achievements both on and off the field.From his heroic deeds against the Aussies art Headingly in 1981 through to the dark clouds surrounding the court case with Imran Khan, from battling in the mud for Scunthorpe United FC to walking half the length of the country for Leukaemia Research, it’s all here in this unforgettable story of a truly larger-than-life character.In an extra chapter for this revised edition, Botham digs deep to unravel the reasons behind the sorry state of English cricket, and provides a compulsive insight into the 1999/2000 winter tour to South Africa where England attempt to recover from a traumatic year under the new leadership of Nasser Hussain.







BOTHAM






MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY

with Peter Hayter










COPYRIGHT (#ulink_2d0ca82e-cc94-5d5a-849d-2a4c54384df3)

HarperNonFiction

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

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://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

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780002189590

Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2017 ISBN: 9780007388844

Version: 2017-01-18


DEDICATION (#ulink_b64211c4-3184-53fa-a679-69562b881fb1)

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 (#uc221cc66-6192-5a59-b72d-a1e01b3f0430)

Title Page (#u2c435d5b-d3db-5173-8684-87e8d30bc945)

Copyright (#u254392ad-4f4f-52f0-aac5-560b54616210)

Dedication (#u59886475-60f3-5dfd-b216-dd83f5852c5e)

Foreword by Vivian Richards (#u625fae97-2acc-565f-a1a5-02ed3805c0f3)

1 The End of the Road (#ub53f48ec-7b93-5b04-804a-b541eee41d36)

2 A Bouncing Baby Botham (#udfc71b0c-d830-5a49-8936-6deaad377ce8)

3 A Smashing Time at Lord’s (#ua75a38cd-ea76-557b-8543-40531653d009)

4 Wedding Bells (#u3eaeb68b-68e1-5785-bb4a-327fa156f32c)

5 The Rise of an England Star (#u7d7df1bb-59a4-55c4-9efd-1974cebb1448)

6 Just Call Me Captain (#uca48ff8f-ce70-5189-bad8-44f3835c6a22)

7 The Miracle of 1981 (#ubbf4cfa9-6054-562b-9683-44456f20571c)

8 The Lure of the Rand (#uc2699d98-94d7-5f5c-af35-cf163ce68b2c)

9 Sex, Drugs and Rock ’n’ Roll (#u9a684f6e-f52c-5cb5-a328-f324dd8cee3f)

10 Hudson and Hollywood (#ua75e62cd-1941-558f-bc71-0346a563e0a6)

11 1986 And All That (#u680aeac0-bc36-5317-b3ce-c224e3affb6e)

12 The Ban and the Comeback (#u0b0aff7f-8592-5582-a0a0-d992aeb11d79)

13 The Somerset Mutiny (#u6ec8ed5e-4b0a-5778-b24b-c24c7d19f57a)

14 In the Outback (#u06fec46e-fe15-509f-9a93-01a5340ccebc)

15 These Feet Were Made for Walking (#u57997b02-cfc8-5683-931b-fa164b6a32e7)

16 The Last Dance (#udf8c2455-7087-5b21-92ab-1e5ec278c671)

17 Ball Tampering (#u57d31156-0443-562d-82c0-75bf18065f60)

18 Off the Field (#u260b2623-d5f8-5a74-a100-92326103a848)

19 The Worst Team in the World (#uc66e798c-6c72-52c0-9861-22d2f5e3430f)

20 That’s All, Folks (#u3ca2ad3f-1d8d-5fe0-90ce-567ccf8e3891)

Plates Section

Keep Reading (#u9a7a4011-a3e9-52bd-8883-803964cf27bf)

Appendix (#u4e010a04-7646-5a29-bc04-d016c8bbaa7d)

Beefy’s Fantasy Cricket Selection (#u4e010a04-7646-5a29-bc04-d016c8bbaa7d)

Cast of Characters (#u5f1ebe45-1e19-586c-bcee-691b0a7bb51b)

Career Statistics (#u821d7ad4-76c1-5c20-94fb-f7bd967bf947)

Index (#u04aaf515-97b8-545f-847d-5949476f5889)

Acknowledgements (#u1fa273d2-767d-5135-937d-797ea6efb1a3)

About the Author (#ufbf7e2a2-9345-5064-bb13-9e4e1adad815)

About the Publisher (#u0ddec112-0e06-5ec5-b7c6-7ae956ac7dc9)


FOREWORD (#ulink_681854a0-6b25-5c0e-a7e2-cdae1f8d2307)

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 (#ulink_33636152-c011-59fa-a5f4-ebe32dc4c1ab)

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.










Just before Ted resigned at the end of the 1993 season, and after his comments about England’s poor showing having something to do with the juxtaposition of Venus in relation to the other planets, he complained that every time he opened his mouth he was ‘harpooned and lampooned’ by the press. It was probably one of the simplest tasks of their journalistic careers.

I am still at a loss to explain exactly what his role in the England set-up was. All I know is that he frequently caused huge embarrassment to himself and others. It is hard to take seriously a chairman of selectors who calls his premier fast bowler Malcolm Devon and then gets all excited about the prospect of picking a batsman called Jimmy Cook, who just happens to be South African.

I recall the time that John Morris and Jonathan Agnew realised they had no chance of going on the winter tour to the West Indies in 1989/90. They had arrived at the Porter Tun Room in the City of London for the Cricket Writers’ Club annual dinner on the eve of the NatWest Final to which several past and present cricketers are invited as guests of the members. This is the time when, traditionally, most of the talk is concerned with who will be in the squads for upcoming winter tours. When Morris and Agnew set off for the evening they must have thought they might have been in with a squeak. After their conversation with Ted they knew they had another think coming. ‘Excuse me, chaps’, Ted called out as he was walking down Chiswell Street in search of the venue. ‘You two look like cricketers. Do you know where this dinner is taking place?’

These stories may be amusing in hindsight, but as a professional I find that kind of amateurish behaviour hard to tolerate. Ted might have been a fine player and a lovely guy socially, but as far as I was concerned he was taking money under false pretences, money that could have been diverted to many other projects that would have served the game better.

But my opinion of him is not just based on the obvious gaffes he committed at regular intervals. For it was during that disastrous series of 1989 that I found not only was Dexter a man I could not respect, he was also a man I simply could not rely on at all.

Our performances throughout that series were undistinguished to say the least. Looking back, we had started off on the wrong foot even before a ball had been bowled. After the 1988 winter tour to India had been called off due to the Indian Board of Control’s objection to the inclusion of players who had been on the first ‘rebel tour’ to South Africa in 1982, England were looking for a new captain. The original choice of Dexter and the manager Micky Stewart had been Mike Gatting, but when that was vetoed by the chairman of the TCCB, Ossie Wheatley, who for some reason felt that Gatt had still not served sufficient time for his supposed misdemeanours, they turned reluctantly to David Gower. That meant that England were going into a vital series with a captain who the selectors had not wanted in the first place. This caused problems right from the start.

When Gower won the toss prior to the first Test at Headingley, Ted stuck his oar in straight away by persuading him that the inclement weather forecast (which incidentally turned out to be wildly inaccurate) meant England should ask Australia to bat first. And they did, all day and all the next day, scoring 601 for seven declared before going on to win the match by 210 runs. When I returned to the side after injury for the third Test at Edgbaston, we were already two-down and no one was really sure who was running things – Gower, Stewart or Dexter, least of all the captain himself!

At the same time, one of the worst-kept secrets in modern cricket history was starting to seriously undermine team spirit. The South African cricket authorities, led by Dr Ali Bacher, were in England recruiting players for another ‘rebel tour’ to be played that winter while the Test side were due to take on the West Indies in the Caribbean. The dressing room, and everywhere else it seemed, was awash with rumours of just how much money was on offer, who was going and who was not. It had reached the stage where the England committee asked players to sign a declaration of availability for the winter tour.

I had been targeted by the South Africans in a big way and was interested in what they had to say. Of course I was intrigued by the possibility; I would be lying if I said otherwise. So when Bacher rang me after the Edgbaston Test, I was definitely listening. The cash on the table for signing up for two winter tours was staggering. Even when I called their bluff by asking for half a million pounds, the organizers did not seem unduly perturbed. Everyone understood that those who did go could more or less kiss goodbye to the thought of playing Test cricket again for a long time and, in my case, probably for ever. Financially, however, it would have made a lot of sense. Although I was also under no illusions as to what would have happened to existing and future commercial contracts, I knew that most of my Test playing career was behind rather than ahead of me and that, had I accepted the South African money the financial benefit to myself and my family would have been enormous.

By this time, Micky Stewart, on behalf of the England management, was doing his best to persuade me not to go. They wanted me in the West Indies, he said, and he pleaded with me to make myself available. They made it quite clear that if I did so, I was more or less guaranteed a place on the plane.

It took a lot of soul-searching to come to a decision. I discussed the situation fully with Kath and my solicitor and long-time friend Alan Herd and once again, as I had done in 1982, I came to the conclusion that I had more to lose than gain.

The bottom line was pride: professional and patriotic. The West Indies were the one side against whom I felt I still had something to prove, both to myself and to the public. I had never fulfilled my potential against them as I should have done, and I wanted another crack. So I informed Micky of my availability and he accepted the news gratefully.

Then they proceeded to let me down badly. The night before the squad for the tour was due to be announced, Kath answered the phone. Ted was on the line.

‘Hello Ian,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid we’re not taking you to the West Indies.’

‘You what?’ I replied. ‘You begged me to make myself available for the winter tour and I told the South Africans where to go as well. And now you are saying you don’t want me after all.’

‘Er well, I didn’t ask you personally,’ he replied feebly.

I felt like I had been stabbed in the back. I went berserk and slammed the phone down on him. I don’t think I have ever felt so devastated. Seeing what a state I had worked myself into, Kath left the room; she knew I was not going to be fun to be around for a while. I was so enraged that if Ali Bacher had been sitting there with a contract and a pen I would have signed without a moment’s hesitation, and to hell with the consequences. I took myself off to the drinks cabinet and emptied a bottle of brandy in an effort to get it out of my system. Then, to really rub it in Micky and Ted later denied that they had persuaded me to make myself available. As far as I am concerned their denials were a lie.

To this day I’ve never been given a satisfactory explanation. From what I have been told it was Gooch, who replaced David Gower as captain when he was sacked at the end of the series and then also found himself out in the cold, who did not want me. Maybe I’ll never find out for certain. What I do know is that it was another phone call from Ted, on quite another subject, which finally removed any doubts that my England career was over.

A few days before the Trent Bridge Test against Australia in early July 1993, I answered the phone and, bearing in mind how he and the other selectors had studiously ignored my performances all summer, I was surprised to hear Ted on the other end of the line. That surprise quickly turned to amazement when I heard what he had to say. He asked me if I would be interested in taking the England A-team to Holland as captain.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Trying to avoid a conversation with him because I had heard enough and didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of even discussing this farcical suggestion any further, I replied that I had prior engagements and left it at that. But when I put the phone down I was seething. Ted had spent half the summer messing me about and now he had the cheek to ask me to get involved in a clog-dancing mission. All I could think of was that this was supposed to be some sort of peace offering for excluding me from the Test side, or a fancy public relations exercise. Either way, I was thoroughly cheesed off. It was just about the last straw.

The Test side was losing and showing no signs of improving. When they picked the side for the third Test from a position of 2–0 down with four to go, the party of thirteen contained five uncapped players. And then I received this call from Dexter asking me if I would like to waste my time in Holland. I knew now that my last chance had gone forever. If Ted really didn’t want me to be part of the new set-up, why didn’t he have the decency just to say so, instead of all this messing around? In the back of my mind I can’t help thinking that the real reason why Gooch, Dexter and company did not want either David Gower, Allan Lamb or myself back in the picture was that, if we had succeeded, they would have been left with an awful lot of egg on their faces. Against that sort of reasoning I knew my international career was over no matter how well I performed.

Once I discovered where I stood, I started to think about Durham. I wanted to be sure in my own mind that I was doing the right thing by them.

To be totally honest, there was no point in my playing any more championship cricket because we were near the bottom of the table and the county needed to rebuild. Although I had proved to myself that I could still perform with the bat by scoring a century against Worcestershire, my last match had ended with a two-day defeat by Surrey at The Oval. I had batted twice on the second day, faced eight balls, and made eight runs. We lost by an innings and more than 200 runs. I knew I was not going to be around for the following season and started to think about retirement in a positive way. At Durham there were four or five players whose contracts were on the line, and it was not fair that I should take up a place in the team while they were in limbo and likely to have only a handful of games in which to prove their worth.

At that point eight championship games remained, and I reasoned that by leaving there and then those fringe players would get a fair crack at earning contracts for the next season. It would also help the club because it would give them a chance to assess the talents of those players as they planned ahead. With those thoughts in my mind, there was obviously not a lot of point in my carrying on.

There was one significant advantage in getting out of the game at this stage. I’m sure that it is the hope of every father who plays professional sport that he will one day be able to watch his son performing at the same or higher level. I have not proved the exception to the rule, even though I have never pushed Liam to play cricket, rugby, or tiddlywinks for that matter, and have merely made sure that I was available if he needed me.

But no one in the family, least of all Liam himself, was under any illusions about the problems he might have to confront simply because of who he was. The fact that he has always been a naturally gifted sportsman and he is my son, means that he has been prey to the long-lens treatment. To a certain extent there is no harm in that, as long as the photographers and newspapers involved haven’t over-stepped the mark (and, by and large, they haven’t).

True to form, however, just around the time of my retirement, the thing we feared most happened. Liam, having been selected to play for England Under-15s against the touring South African boys in 1992, had showed enough talent and promise to be offered a summer spell with Hampshire. On his first day at ‘work’, a 2nd XI match against Worcestershire at Southampton, his club captain Mark Nicholas told me he had never seen so many reporters at the county ground. Liam took the whole thing in his stride, even being relaxed enough to tell the assembled throng that he intended to be even better than his Dad. Cheeky bugger! Liam, being a Botham, then managed to play a good game as well as talk one by taking four wickets.

So far, so good. Then, a couple of weeks later, the inevitable happened. A friend of mine from one of the national papers told me that people had been asking questions about an alleged incident involving Liam and some other Hampshire cricketers in a nightclub. Here we go again, I thought.

Liam had been playing for Hampshire seconds against Warwickshire in Leamington Spa. One evening after the close of play he went with some of the players to a local nightclub. Because he wasn’t born yesterday he made sure that he drank only soft drinks, but someone there recognized him and told the manager he was under age. The manager talked to Liam, told him what had happened and informed him, regretfully, that if there were any complaints he would have to ask him to leave. Half an hour later, the same guy complained again and Liam duly left with the minimum of fuss.

Apparently, this non-event was enough to get the Sunday Mirror terribly excited and a story duly appeared along the lines of Liam Botham, son of cricketing legend Ian, blah, blah, blah … being kicked out of a nightclub. What bothered me most was that this kind of thing is actually believed by people who should know better. These ignorant idiots, who for some reason have convinced themselves to believe everything they have read about me over the years, turn around and say ‘There, look at Liam Botham, like father like son’, and the mud sticks.

The problems of living and working under the scrutiny of the media were only one of the reasons why Liam made his decision to give up cricket in favour of his chosen professional sport, rugby union.

I never had any doubts that Liam was good enough to make a career for himself in cricket. His performance on first-class debut for Hampshire on 28 August 1996, two days short of his 19th birthday, proved the condition known as golden balls was indeed hereditary. Pulled out of a 2nd XI game he turned up for the county’s match against Middlesex at Portsmouth after the start of play, dismissed Gatt with his seventh delivery and finished with figures of 5 for 67. Had he been able to operate outside the glare of publicity over who he was and rather just be judged on how good he was, he might even have gone all the way.

But his decision was based as much on how he saw the two sports progressing as much as any feeling over living in the spotlight. Frankly, for a young man equally good at rugby and cricket, by the time he had to choose, there seemed little choice to make.

Of course, I would have loved to have played with or against Liam at county level. And I was delighted when he was brought in as a last-minute replacement for a charity match between the Rest of the World and my own England XI at Hove a few weeks before I announced my retirement. But realistically it was never going to happen in any other way. By announcing my retirement when I did, rather than dragging it out to the end of the season, I felt I could at least try and deflect some of the inevitable attention away from him as he attempted to take his first steps in the game.

I don’t regret many things in my life but the circumstances surrounding my final game have left me with a tinge of guilt. Although I was more than happy to be bowing out against the Aussies, it was such a spontaneous decision that I didn’t even get an opportunity to tell my parents about it. I didn’t exactly know what to tell them and, besides, the telephone did not seem the right way to go about it. As usual, it is the people nearest to you that you think about least. In all likelihood my father Les would have wanted to be there for my swansong; in some ways it was a relief that the game itself was a non-event.

I had decided to keep the news quiet until I had had the chance to talk to Geoff Cook, the director of cricket and David Graveney, the captain, about my plans. Dean Jones was the only one of my team-mates who knew in advance. I have always been very close to him and knew that, in the tradition of a true Aussie, if you tell him something in confidence you can be certain it isn’t going anywhere else. I told him on the Saturday morning when I picked him up on our way to the game. Dean said he wasn’t surprised. He told me that he and his wife, Jane, had been talking about me quitting only the week before, speculating on when it would happen. When I arrived at the Durham University ground, I saw David and Geoff, told them my decision and swore them to secrecy. At first David was dumbfounded, but when I explained that the body had had enough he accepted it. Mathematically, we still had a chance in the Sunday league competition and I told him that if he wanted me for the last few games, I would be happy to oblige. Once I told Geoff the reasons for my decision, he agreed that I had done the right thing and I appreciated that.

The information was so watertight that none of the other players knew about it until the following day, when the Mail on Sunday, who had managed to get wind of the story somehow, let the cat out of the bag. When I reached the ground for the second day’s play the place was buzzing. Geoff felt he had to confirm the story, but I was determined not to say anything publicly to anyone until I had fulfilled my newspaper column commitments by giving Chris Lander of the Daily Mirror the exclusive to which he and they were entitled. The rest would have to wait.

The third and final day’s play eventually started late in the afternoon because of rain, but there had been no sitting around for me. From the moment I arrived at the ground, it was like a circus. First there was a press conference that lasted 55 minutes, probably the longest of my career. Someone asked if I thought the rain would turn the day into something of an anti-climax, but I joked that as I had spent a lot of the last twenty years praying for a cloudburst, in some ways this would be a fitting end. I had hoped that my last day in first-class cricket would end more quietly than it did. I just wanted to drift back into the dressing room, pack up and go. The rain delay destroyed any prospect of a result, contrived or otherwise, but the skies cleared enough for us to play a pretty meaningless three or four hours in the afternoon. If ever there was a case where umpires or captains should be given a little bit of discretion in deciding to end the match, irrespective of the weather, this was it. The crowd was marvellous but nobody gained anything from us going out there except those who had spent so much time in the beer tent that they would have been captivated by watching Humpty Dumpty sitting on the wall. Steady, I wasn’t that overweight!

In my final spell of bowling I decided to have a bit of fun to try and cheer everyone up by doing my Jeff Thomson impersonations, among others. Then, after a few overs I turned to David Graveney and said: ‘Thanks David, I think that will do’. It was quite a moment. As I turned to take my position in the field, the reality of what I was doing suddenly hit me – no more bowling, no more batting, no more anything. The pavilion clock showed there was still half an hour to go but that was it from me, my time was over. It was the end.

Both batsmen, David Boon and Matthew Hayden, came down the wicket to shake my hand and I cannot remember anything that happened between that moment and the time stumps were drawn. I had, as they say, lost the plot. In fact, the only thing I do recall was my appalling attempt at keeping wicket for the final over of the match, minus pads and gloves. However, I was soon brought back down to earth when at the close of play I went into the dressing room to clear my locker. The bastards had pinched the lot!

On arriving home I threw myself into a small party we had arranged for close friends. I finally crashed at ten to five the following morning after talking Egyptian into the small hours with Alan Herd. It was only a short nap as I had to leave the house at 7.15 a.m. to catch a plane to Alderney where we have our second home. I have no idea how any of the others got home. It is quite possible, of course, that one or two might still be there now.


2 A BOUNCING BABY BOTHAM (#ulink_6148be70-324b-5894-a4f6-b17ca1c23579)

There was a time three months into my mother Marie’s pregnancy when the entire Ian Botham story might have been over before it had even begun.

Both my parents had been good at sport, highly competitive and fit as fiddles. Les, who was a keen cricketer, ran for East Yorkshire, had a soccer trial for Hull City boys and played for Combined Services, while Marie had played cricket, badminton and hockey to a reasonable standard. For some reason, however, they had acute difficulties in starting a family.

Marie had suffered four miscarriages before she became pregnant with me. Then, a third of the way through this pregnancy, she went through a particularly rough patch of health, and there were very real fears that she was going to miscarry again. Towards the end she was confined to bed, and it was obviously a worrying time for her and Les. What must have made it worse for her was that Les, serving in the Fleet Air Arm, was stationed in Northern Ireland so he was absent when the time came for Marie to enter the maternity hospital in Heswall, Cheshire. There must have been an overpowering sense of relief when, on a drizzly 24 November 1955, the first shout was heard from a bouncing 10lb loz baby Botham and a telegram was duly sent to inform Les he had become a father. In the excitement, when he finally arrived on leave a week later, he managed to oversee a complete muddle in the registering of my birth. My parents had been married in Scotland and for sentimental reasons had settled on the Scottish spelling of ‘Iain’. But the birth certificate read ‘Ian’ – so that was to be my name. It also (thankfully) read ‘Terence’ rather than the family’s traditional second name for boys, ‘Herbert’ (although some would say I have been a right one ever since). There is a familiar ring about a Botham father being out of town for the birth of a Botham child. I was in Australia on a Whitbread Scholarship in 1977 when Kathy discovered she was pregnant with Liam; I missed Sarah’s birth because I was on tour; and I was again missing for the arrival of Becky when I made my first walk for Leukaemia Research from John O’Groats to Land’s End.

Once on the planet, it seems I was determined to make my mark from the very start. Soon after I was born the family moved to Londonderry where we were put up in services’ married quarters, and it was here that I showed the first signs of the adventurous side of my nature. Mum recalls how she left me sitting with a box of toys inside a playpen in the living room while she was working in the kitchen. A few minutes later she was surprised to find me crawling around her feet. Puzzled, she carried me back to the playpen and convinced herself that, perhaps, after all, she had not put me inside in the first place. When I appeared in the kitchen for the third time she realized something was up and decided to keep an eye on me through the crack in the door. She couldn’t believe her eyes. I was lifting the edge of the playpen onto the toy box, crawling out under the gap and then pulling the playpen down to the floor again, leaving everything in the right place. Everything, that is, except me.

Once I had found a way out of my confinement, nothing was going to stop me as I found a variety of ways to get myself out and about and to cause parental palpitations. If I was left outside the house in my pram, brake or no brake, I would bounce it up and down until I eventually succeeded in getting the thing moving. I managed to cover some fairly impressive distances but, luckily, everyone knew who I was and where to return me. By the time my sister Dale was born in Ireland in February 1957 – I have one other sister, Wendy, and a brother Graeme – I was 15 months old, up on my own two feet and walking. Of course, that posed a new set of problems for Mum and Dad who were constantly running around trying to contain my wanderlust. Dad decided to fence in the garden but that was more of a challenge than an obstacle. For baby Botham, if it was there, it was there to be scaled. I regularly managed to escape and often the only evidence of me ever having been in the garden was a pair of dungarees left hanging on the fence.

At one time I even got as far as the driver’s seat of a big armed forces’ truck, where I was found playing happily with the steering wheel and fingering the hand brake. The cab was so high off the ground that nobody could work out exactly how I got there, and I shudder to think what mayhem might have been caused if I had prised the hand-brake loose.

If these were the first signs of the free spirit that was later to shape my life for good and sometimes for ill, my competitiveness took only slightly longer to manifest itself. After 18 months in Northern Ireland we returned to the mainland and Cheshire. During a toddlers’ 20-yard dash at the navy sports day, I hit upon a novel method of dealing with the opposition, which involved me barging into the rest of the field, leaving most of them on their back-sides, and consequently finding myself about as far ahead as you can get in a 20-yard race. Surprised, I stopped to look where the rest of the runners were, only to find them all back on their feet and streaming past me. Unfortunately, running was never one of my strong points; distances I could manage most of the time, but sprints and races were not my forté. Years later, a certain tactical naiveté led to my first sporting calamity at Buckler’s Mead School in Yeovil. As house captain for the school sports day, I had asked for volunteers for someone to compete in the mile race. Thank you, volunteers, for your vote. I was so determined to do well that if I had to run I was going to win or die trying. When they carried me off, I was about a lap ahead – it was just a pity that there were still another two to go.

Life as a toddler in Ireland had also been significant for the first of my many trips to hospital. A hard crack on the head led to my first stay in a hospital ward as I was kept in the Londonderry Hospital for four nights of observation. No serious damage was done that time, but it caused enough of a scare for the doctors to suggest that I should be fitted with some kind of protective headgear. Just telling me to mind how I went would have done no good at all, so Dad ended up making me a special foam helmet. Inevitably, it was only a matter of time before I was back in casualty. On settling in Yeovil, where Dad took up a position with Westland Helicopters after a year in the North West, Mum virtually had a waiting room chair reserved for herself in the local hospital.

I had my first operation in Yeovil General Hospital at the age of four. I had been out shopping with Mum in town when I suddenly collapsed with a terrible stomach pain. There was a panic, I was rushed to hospital and less than an hour later I was on the way to the operating theatre for surgery on a hernia. To make things easier for me, my parents brought in my teddy bear, Mr Khrushchev, the name inspired by the influence of television in my early upbringing. To make me feel better the hospital staff pretended the bear had been through the same ordeal as me and had undergone the same treatment. On my discharge I gave probably the first and last hint that I might possibly be interested in anything other than sport as a career. Mum told me to thank the doctors for looking after me and, according to her, I said: ‘The doctors don’t make you better. They just stand there at the end of the bed, say “Good morning” and ask the nurses how you are. It is the nurses who do all the work and make you better. I think I’ll be a doctor when I grow up’. By the time I had another hernia operation four years later, I understood more about how the system actually worked and abandoned that idea for good.

For the next six years, home was 64 Mudford Road, Yeovil, a house with plenty of trees and a large garden, although not large enough for my liking. What lay beyond the garden gate still proved an irresistible draw and led to one of my first encounters with the iron fist inside the velvet glove of Marie Botham. It was only the shock of being told that Dale and I were found running across the busy main road that led Mum to administer the spanking, for that had certainly not been the normal reaction to our misdemeanours. When Dad came home at lunchtime to find us in bed, he thought we were ill. Punishments usually took the form of the ‘you have nearly pushed it too far’ warning movement of Mum’s hand towards the wooden spoon she kept in the kitchen as a deterrent. But as I grew older the occasional smack was administered, superseded at my secondary modern school by the cane, a regular adversary, and they certainly did me no harm. Pity there is not more of it these days.

It was about this time that my sporting life began in earnest. The house at Mudford Road backed on to the playing fields of Yeovil Grammar School, where I could often be found watching the older boys playing cricket. I was frequently discovered here by Len Bond, an assistant groundsman at the school, who would cart me back home in his wheelbarrow. My love affair with sport began in earnest when I moved from Miss Wright’s private school at Penmount to Milford Junior School in September 1962. The school day worked on the basis that I went home for lunch, until I discovered that if you stayed for a school dinner you could also play football. I managed to persuade Mum and Dad to let me stay on even though I was in my first year and you were not meant to play football until the second. My ally was Richard Hibbitt, the deputy headmaster who was in charge of games. He saw how keen I was, made room for me and was soon asking my parents for permission to pick me for the school team. That was all the encouragement I needed, and by the ripe old age of seven I was already practising my autograph for the day when I would be famous.

I didn’t have to wait long for my first appearance on national television, although Songs Of Praise from St John’s in Yeovil was not exactly what I had in mind. At the time the family attended church fairly regularly, and as the church choir was struggling for numbers I was drafted in. I should point out that my singing talents, which are legendary, had no bearing on my selection. I was so bad that when the big day came I was told politely but firmly to mime. Ironically, when the programme went out, I was the chorister who received the most attention from the cameras. Indeed, my ability as a mime artist was to stand me in good stead in pantomime later on in life.

Considering the number of times I have been called upon to scribble my name since then, all that handwriting practice at the age of seven was of great use. Not that you would ever have convinced my parents or teachers at the time: for them it was another distraction from the real job of inwardly digesting. My form mistress at Milford, Mrs Olwyn Joyce, was heard despairingly telling my parents that she wished the school had been built in a traditional style rather than with modern, panoramic windows. Being easily distracted by the sight and sound of a bouncing ball, I was forever staring out of the window watching other classes playing games and wishing I was out there with them.

There were no such problems with Mr Hibbitt. He even forgave me for breaking a school window since the damage had been caused by a cricket ball. Although I had been bowling daisy cutters at the garage door from the age of six and disappearing into the local park for games of cricket at every available opportunity, Mr Hibbitt showed me that there was money to be made from sport when he placed a pile of coins on a good length on the pitch and told us that if we managed to hit them, the cash was ours. I cleaned up, as I did later when, at thirteen, I made my debut for Somerset Under-15s against Wiltshire. The deal was 6d per run, and my score of 80 ensured a jackpot which my Dad was forced to cough up but did not risk again. Needless to say, my one great sporting achievement at Milford came in the form of a six which Mr Hibbitt reckoned would have carried at either Taunton or Lord’s. Then, one sports day I took part in a contest to see who could throw the cricket ball furthest on the playing fields of Buckler’s Mead.

I was standing at the throwing line when the teacher doing the measuring in the distance shouted at me to have my go. It had to be pointed out to him that not only had I already done so, but my ball had landed many yards behind the spot where he was standing. Later, incidentally, in the summer of 1968 the same thing happened when I managed a record throw of just over 207 feet in the Under-13 tournament of the Crusaders’ Union National Sports Day at Motspur Park in South London. The judges did not believe the distance I had achieved with my first throw and made me throw again. They measured this one and I came home with the Victor Ludorum Cup for my age group and a record that stood for many years.

By the time I moved to secondary school at Buckler’s Mead, my sheer bloody-mindedness about getting my own way was well established. In general, I enjoyed myself. My lack of aptitude for an academic life was well-known by my mates who christened me ‘Bungalow’. I got into a few scrapes and scraps, but when the punishment was handed out I took it without complaining. The most serious incident came when I walked out of a woodwork lesson and never went back. Woodwork and I never really got on. I would start to make a coffee table and the legs would get shorter and shorter until all that was left was a big tray. My dovetails never dovetailed and I had no interest at all in the subject. The end came when I was in the workroom one day and the teacher, a Mr Black, suddenly turned round because someone had been mucking about behind me. There were no questions asked, he just walked up to me and whacked me on the head with a T-square. I was so angry, I was shaking. I wanted to flatten him there and then. Instead I told him I was going to do him a favour and leave the room. I went straight to the headmaster, explained what had happened and told him I was not the sort of person who would go home bleating about what had gone on in school. I said that I was never going in a class with Mr Black again, and I got my way.

Adolescence brought the usual horrors for me and my family. My ideas about fashion were to cause one or two run-ins. I was a teenager at the time when platform shoes were all the rage – the first time around. Quite naturally I wanted some, whatever Mum said, but shortly after I eventually got hold of a pair, I realized that she might just have been right all along. Mum was always keen to be with me when I bought clothes because she was rightly fearful of the consequences of my colour blindness. This time I spurned her offer and went into town on my own with the inevitable dire results: blue flared trousers, a bright orange shirt with a huge collar, and a pair of immense platform shoes. Mum and Dad were going out that evening to watch some five-a-side football at a local sports centre and I told them I would join them later in my new gear. In the process of putting on this ghastly costume, I managed to trip over my shoes and rip the trousers.

Mum also noticed around this time that I had begun to open my eyes to the possibility that girls might offer more than pig-tails to pull. When I came home one day and announced casually that I required some Lifebuoy soap, Mum’s response was immediate.

‘What’s her name?’ she inquired.

‘Margaret,’ I told her.

‘And what is the attraction?’

‘She can run faster than me.’

We all have at least one tale from this grisly adolescent period which we pray will be forgotten about on Judgement Day. Mine involved my sister Dale and her pet hamster. My return home for the weekend from the Lord’s groundstaff, where I had been taken on as a ‘trainee cricketer’ following a recommendation by Somerset, coincided with its untimely demise. On hearing the news, I went up to Dale’s room, removed the hamster from its cage and, paying scant attention to her grief, proceeded to swing it around by its tail to make sure it really was dead. Dale somehow failed to see the funny side.

I was a real charmer to Dale and my other sister Wendy, putting live spiders in their beds etc., and once I very nearly caused our charwoman, Mrs Whittle, to have a heart attack. I decided it would be great fun to deposit a large plastic snake behind a chair she was about to clean. You could hear the shrieking all down the street.

Every youngster threatens to leave home at one time or another. My big moment came when I announced to Mum I was off to London to see the bright lights. Within ten minutes, there waiting for me in the hall were my bags, packed and ready. When it dawned on me that if Mum did not clean my cricket gear I would have to, I thought better of it. But the real battles at home were over my absolute determination to make a career out of sport. My parents were worried about what would happen if I failed to make the grade or was badly injured, not that the thought ever existed in my mind. When, after I had succeeded in escaping from school at fifteen, Somerset arranged for me to go to Lord’s, Roy Kerslake, a prominent member of the county’s cricket committee, had to do the hard sell on my Dad who was worried that if it should all fall apart I would be a 16-year-old with no qualifications. What swung the decision for him was being told that those who failed to make it to the county circuit would often use their groundstaff experience to find jobs coaching cricket at independent schools.

As far as I was concerned, however, the only choice I had to make was which sport to concentrate on. I already had an offer to join Crystal Palace football club. The manager at the time, a West Country man named Bert Head, wanted to sign me and I asked Dad for some advice as there were other clubs, five from the First Division as I recall, who were after me as well. Les said ‘Right, son. I think you are a better cricketer’, and that was the decision made. Had the offer come from Stamford Bridge, things might have turned out very differently because I was a Chelsea fanatic. When my turn to choose the bedroom decor coincided with their FA Cup winning run of 1970, I gave Mum a Chelsea rosette so that she could buy the wallpaper and bed covers in exactly the right colours. She drew the line when it came to the carpet, but even so the name Chelsea was stencilled all over the house, and when they beat Leeds United in the Cup Final replay at Old Trafford, I went up to my room with a piece of chalk and sketched the trophy on the wall as the finishing touch.

If you were to ask a psychoanalyst to explain the awesome significance of all these early experiences (and I can assure you I have no intention of doing so) I suppose that he would conclude that here were the makings of a character that was determined not to be shackled and to have his own way. Certainly, my hatred of confined spaces is well known. In later years, it was very easy for my critics and others to point to my dislike of net practice as yet another sign of a supposed lack of professionalism. ‘What, Beefy in the nets? He must be ill’, they would jibe.

The fact is that I have always suffered badly from claustrophobia and although some will still take this with a cellar full of salt, nets felt like prisons to me. I genuinely used to suffer acute anxiety from being in them, and I suppose that is why on many occasions my batting practice would degenerate into a slog. As so often with me, it was a case of covering up a genuine fear with sheer bravado. It goes without saying that I am a show-off – I don’t hide from that and I’m not trying to excuse it. If I hadn’t been, I’m sure I would not have been able to produce some of the great performances I did. But I’m sure it is no coincidence that I felt most fired up when my back was against the wall. That was not simply a Roy of the Rovers mentality: the fact is that when you have nowhere to go, the only way out is to emerge with all guns blazing. Imran Khan, the great Pakistan all-rounder and captain, talked about this when he described how his team had come from the depths of despair to win the 1992 World Cup. After they had been humbled in the initial qualifying matches he told his players ‘Be as a cornered tiger … Come out and fight’, and sometimes that is the only option available.

All through my life I have possessed extraordinary self-belief. Even as a kid, there were no doubts about what I was going to do when I grew up. I was going to be a professional sportsman. When I encountered the careers master at Buckler’s Mead this attitude of mine would often lead to a series of pointless rows as I would be summoned to the library to go through the same ritual time and again.

‘Morning, Ian. What thoughts have you had since we last met?’

‘Nothing new. I still want to play sport.’

‘Fine. Everyone wants to play sport. But what are you really going to do?’

I would end up repeating myself, getting angry and saying that there was no point in my attending these advisory sessions because I knew precisely what I was going to do. There were dozens behind me in the queue who had no idea what they wanted to do, and they were the ones who needed a careers master, not me.

Clearly these aspects of my character have been absolutely vital in enabling me to enjoy my career and live life to the full. All sportsmen who make it to the top have to be ultra-competitive, there simply is no other way to succeed. Without the desire to win and the need to be better than the rest, you won’t last five minutes. However, as the Americans are prone to saying, ‘If you want to talk the talk, you have to walk the walk’. As a kid I simply had to win at everything, and that desire to be No.1 has never left me. I make no apologies for the way I have conducted myself over the years and I have no regrets. Life is too short to be forever wondering whether you did the right thing. But I fully appreciate that there has been a price to pay and that, more often than not, others have had to pay it.

I have always found it difficult to admit to mistakes. I had enough trouble conceding that I might possibly have made an error on the cricket field. My cricketing team-mates will tell you that, according to me, I was never, ever, out. If a bowler was lucky enough to take my wicket, I had a never-ending supply of excuses to run through when I got back to the dressing room. As far as I can recall, I don’t think I ever came up with something totally ludicrous; there was always a hint of plausibility in the argument I put forward. No, I didn’t claim to be distracted by UFOs and there was nothing like ‘I crashed the car, sir, because the tree that wasn’t in my driveway yesterday was there now’. But I have to admit to serving up some real beauties in my time; like being put off by someone turning the page of his newspaper, for instance. Similarly, when I was bowling, if a batsman hit me for four it was not because he had played a good shot or I had bowled a bad ball. Invariably it was all part of a grand plan and it was simply a matter of time before the poor sucker fell for it. If I dropped a catch it was obviously because the ball was coming out of the sun. If there was no sun in the sky at the time, then a passing cloud would get the blame. If no cloud, then the moon. I would come up with anything rather than admit that I had been at fault. It was a case of protecting my pride, making myself feel invulnerable. Perhaps the most comical of all of these incidents took place during the Old Trafford Test of the 1989 summer series against Australia when, with our first innings total on 140 for four, a moment when the state of the match dictated that a modicum of discretion was required, I aimed a wild swing at the spinner Trevor Hohns in an attempt to hit him out of the ground and missed. That must be classed as one of my most embarrassing moments on the cricket field, alongside the time I went out to bat against Western Australia in Perth on the 1986/87 tour with a throbbing hangover and no bat.

‘Sorry about that, lads,’ I said, as I slid back into the dressing-room. ‘My bleedin’ bat got stuck behind my pads.’

‘I didn’t notice they were strapped to your bleedin’ head,’ replied John Emburey.

The bottom line was immaturity. For me, the slightest admission of failure or inadequacy was out of the question, and it was the same whatever I did. When, at the age of fifteen I returned home from a school cruise on the Mediterranean having shot up in height on the trip to over six foot, my behaviour was quite extraordinary. Dale and I used to measure ourselves against the kitchen door and it annoyed me intensely that she had always been taller. This time I insisted that Mum measure me and when I discovered how much I had grown, I ran into the garden to find my sister, shouting ‘Dale! Come here now. I want to measure you!’ You wouldn’t have believed my reaction upon discovering that I had finally outgrown her. FA Cup winners have celebrated less. It was pathetic.

If I drove a sports car I had to drive it faster than anyone else, as the men from Saab found out when I managed to write off two in the space of an afternoon’s sponsored racing at a cost of £24,000. When I decided to try and raise money for leukaemia research the only way to do it was to walk the length and breadth of the country (or over the Alps with some unenthusiastic elephants), and if I was drinking with mates, I had to drink them under the table as a matter of principle. I would do anything or try anything to show how big I was, and that included drugs.

I won’t go into details now because you will read more later, but, yes, of course I have overdone the booze in my time and smoked the odd joint. I may have been depressed, I may have been tempted to do it for kicks – and believe me, on the international cricket circuit during the years I played, there were a multitude of kicks to be had – but the fact is that I did so for no other reason than because they were there. I broke the law. I’m not proud of it and there were occasions when I could have gone seriously off the rails.

But when people ask me what I dislike most about myself, the answers are very simple and straightforward. It has taken me long enough to confront the facts, but I am not afraid to do so now. When it comes to getting myself into hot water, a lot of what you will have heard and read about me is absolute rubbish, but some of it is not. I have been a selfish bastard. At times I have also been aggressive, tyrannical, chauvinistic and hot-tempered.

My only plea in mitigation is that if I hadn’t been, none of what you are about to read would ever have taken place.




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