Botham

Arise Sir Beefy, your greatness and noble deeds have at last outweighed your notoriety. Not before time too. Many of us feel you should have been knighted in the last century, when as a Herculean contributor to the age of miracles, your power was at its height. But potency sometimes needs to be tempered and redirected before it is rewarded and that has now happened.

Ian Botham was an extraordinary cricketer, whose feats are part of English folklore. But if that fashioned his fame and reputation, the thousands of miles he covered to raise money for leukaemia research —over £10 million — revealed a selflessness rare among modern sportsmen.

The miracle of Headingley 1981, where he made 149 against the Aussies, and the even better century at Old Trafford a few weeks later remain high water marks of sporting audacity. No English cricketer has shaken an opponent quite as violently since, something that proved both a blessing and a curse as public expectation rose as spectacularly as his profile.

Even more incredibly, he performed his deeds not by being a muesli-muncher on mineral water, but by denying himself nothing. Cricketers were not well remunerated back then and Botham couldn’t see the point in sacrifice if the rewards weren’t huge. It was not a Faustian pact either and when faced with the choice of a bottle or two of decent wine, or taking five Test wickets the following day, he’d simply do both.

Occasionally, his hedonism cost him more than a hangover. A three-month ban from cricket in 1986, when police found cannabis at his home, was a shock but once he’d got over the initial jolt he treated the break as a rest cure. When he returned, in the final Test of the summer, he took a wicket with his first ball, a feat that caused Graham Gooch to ask who wrote his scripts.

Being a natural, he operated on a different level of engagement to most players, seeing the game in blindingly simple terms. His secrets were a supreme physical strength and a mind flushed clean of self-doubt. On the 1981-82 tour of India, team captain Keith Fletcher called a meeting with his bowlers in order to work out how they might dismiss India’s forbidding batting line-up in the fifth Test and level the series.

“Easy,” said Botham. “Gavaskar is five feet four in his boots and doesn’t like the short ball so I’ll bounce him out. Vishwanath is even shorter so I’ll do the same to him. Pranob Roy is making his debut so he’ll be a sucker for the bouncer, while Vengsarkar is windy and doesn’t like it up his snout. As for Yashpal Sharma, he’s going to Madras hospital. He laughed at me when I got out in the last Test.”

For a man who never doubted that his deeds would match his words, it would be nice to report that he took five for 30 and India were skittled for not very much. Unhappily, while Gavaskar and Roy didn’t make many, Vishwanath and Yashpal made 222 and 140, respectively, as India declared on 441 for four. His fallibility actually endeared him to team-mates.

His cricketing prowess and the exceptional force of his personality meant all his captains indulged him, except Mike Brearley, though he was fortunate that Botham was young and still respectful of those in charge when they first met.

It is difficult to believe in this football-obsessed age that Botham was more famous than any of them, including the frizz-permed Kevin Keegan. Of course Beefy sported some dodgy hairdos himself back then, such as the blond mullet he had in the mid-1980s. But if crimes against fashion are reason enough for withholding knighthoods, he has clearly been forgiven.