Heroes and Contemporaries (Text Only). David Gower
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captain. Mike Brearley’s return to the captaincy did, however, take the pressure off Ian, resulting in incredible performances with the bat at Leeds and Old Trafford, and with the ball at Edgbaston. Frank Keating relates that the Guardian received a reader’s letter: ‘Sir, on Friday I watched J. M. Brearley directing his fieldsman very carefully. He then looked up at the sun and made a gesture which suggested that it should move a little squarer. Who is this man? Yrs etc.’ I’m not really sure that, in fact, Brearley could persuade the sun to move, but he certainly transformed Ian Botham into an Apollo-like figure that summer of 1981.
The Australians learned their lessons, too. Once Ian is under way he can keep going in such devastating fashion that no bowlers can live with him. The mistake they made in England was to try to protect the whole field from him, instead of attempting to restrict him to one side of the wicket. In Australia in 1982–3 he attracted the critics once again, myself included, during his build-up to the Tests, by an apparently over-casual approach to State games. His oft repeated ‘Don’t worry about me, I’ll be all right for the Tests’ became increasingly irritating.
When the time came, in the first Test at Perth, the awaited explosion didn’t occur. The fortunes didn’t smile on him with the bat, and his bowling was generally disappointing. In Adelaide he batted well; he and I thought we might be able to save the match had we been able to last out another session or two. But he was caught at cover, cutting the spinner, a disappointing end from what was perhaps a slight misjudgement. It was a poor shot by the standards of his earlier summers but if two or three more had battled on as bravely as Ian did England would have escaped defeat. In Melbourne the most obvious thing Ian did was to bowl the ball that won the match. Freelance photographer Graham Morris was on his way home to England, flying between Sydney and Singapore. When the news reached him of England’s win, he sprayed the plane with champagne shouting ‘Botham for God’ and was put off at Singapore. That’s the effect Ian can have on people!
It was mostly Ian’s bowling that worried his friends during the series. He didn’t seem to move that potent weapon, his outswinger, tending to bowl only inswing, and he ran in more often like a stock bowler than a strike bowler. In the World Series Cup he had a side-strain which restricted him even further; after Adelaide he admitted he had bowled badly and apologized privately. Bob Willis became loth to put him in to bowl, hesitating to assume that he would bowl ten overs.
For Ian it was a frustrating and mediocre tour and by the end of it he was not in the best physical or mental shape. I believe he needed a break after something like fifty-eight consecutive Tests and fifty-seven consecutive one-day internationals. When the game is going well you feel you can go on playing forever; when you are having a thin time you soon feel exhausted, drained. What Ian needed was time to do the other things he enjoys so much so that he could rekindle his enthusiasm for cricket.
Just before the tour began Ian gave a television interview to Peter Alliss that summed up his philosophy in a way that has rarely been apparent in his other media interviews: ‘When the wheel of fortune is stuck with your name on it, you’ve got to make the most of it, you’ve got to nail it because there will come a time when nothing goes right. If you could get a hundred, or five wickets, every time you went out you wouldn’t be human, you’d just be a machine and there would be no fun in the game. The press built me up into a superstar and then seemed to enjoy hacking away at that statue. The thing I enjoyed most about 1981 was plastering it up again’.
He was then asked about the incident in Madras when Dick Streeton, in common with most of the English press, criticized Botham for making gestures at India’s Yashpal Sharma. Ian’s reply almost certainly contained what he couldn’t remember saying to Streeton! ‘It’s easy to sit back and criticize from a distance. It’s very different out there bowling on a flat slow wicket when it’s very hot and the sweat is pouring out of you and you’re all keyed up to do well. I’ve no regrets about what I did.’ Peter Alliss then asked Botham what his reaction would be if young Liam had made a similar gesture. Back came that disarming grin: ‘I’d probably clip him round the ear.’ Ian then explained his attitude as a professional which is something we all share to some degree. ‘Cricket may be a game to some but not to me. It’s not just a game, it’s my living. I give it everything I’ve got and when I’m doing that I know I am liable to lose my temper.’
That famous temper first won him the attention of the media when he was little more than a boy playing grade cricket in Melbourne. The story goes that Ian Chappell, then at his most famous as Australia’s ruthless and winning captain, was supposed to have made some derogatory remarks about England and English cricketers in the hearing of a group inside a bar close by the Melbourne ground, much used by cricketing people. Words were exchanged and the unknown Botham is then supposed to have flared up, dumped Chappell on the seat of his pants and chased him out of the bar. I have heard it said that Ian is still waiting for the chance to finish it off. But, let it be said, I have also seen Ian respond with no more than a smile and a few words to some pretty intense provocation from Australians who were drunk enough to imagine themselves sufficiently tough to take him on.
However his reputation is such that stories, true or false, will always be attributed to him – the press always seems ready to pounce, as with the supposed brawl between Ian and Rodney Hogg in Sydney. It didn’t happen. Both sides were invited, on New Year’s Eve, to Pier One, a restaurant on a converted wharf in Sydney, to celebrate and watch the fireworks over the harbour. There were seven or eight England players, perhaps four or five Australians. No one stayed till midnight.
Botham, Lamb and myself left about eleven p.m. I was standing with the Australians as my two England colleagues walked past on the way out. There were a couple of jokes and a couple of laughs but certainly no hostility, not even a raised voice – Ian and Rodney Hogg get on well together. When Ian learned what had been published in England his immediate reaction was: ‘They’re gunning for me again.’ When we read something like that abroad, when the player involved is struggling to find some form, the immediate reaction is one of hostility to the press. Once Ian had decided on legal action the affair passed over very quickly and the Sun newspaper printed an apology.
Ian found himself in another flare-up over reported remarks about Australian umpires. Doug Insole, the manager, fined him with some reluctance, accepting that Ian believed that any comments he had made were not to be quoted. Later he aroused much sympathy over this in the dressing-room where feelings were running fairly high after the two Sydney Test incidents – when John Dyson’s run out wasn’t given and when there was the contention over the bat and boot issue with Kim Hughes. Yet in the end Ian had to accept that this time it was his own fault for he knew it was his responsibility to see that anything quoted by him in the newspapers had to be passed by the appropriate authority in advance.
Whatever may be printed to the contrary, Ian Botham is very close to Bob Willis. They have a huge respect for each other’s capabilities. Bob has a standard phrase for Ian for when he gets a bit worked up: ‘No violence, Guy [this being the original nickname, Guy the Gorilla, bestowed by Geoff Boycott] no violence.’ Whatever words may fly between them the basic feeling they have for each other precludes any possibility of a serious rift in friendship or cooperation.
I should emphasize too that the one time Ian played under me I had his complete support. He offered all possible help; you seem to get the best out of him by letting him have his way when setting the field or bowling a spell – then he really does make things happen.
(YORKSHIRE AND ENGLAND)
Geoff Boycott is enough of an enigma to puzzle the Sphinx. When he feels wanted, when he knows the proper respect due to him is there, and when he’s given a successful and pleasant atmosphere, the old Fireball can glow. Geoff Boycott needs to be happy.
There are at least two sides to Geoff. He must be one of the few people in the world who can make either instant friends or instant enemies.
I never knew Geoff when he was at his peak, indisputably one of the two or three best players in the world. We first met as players when I joined him in the England team shortly after his return from