Ian Botham (1997) — The Botham Report, London: CollinsWillow

Ian Botham loomed uncertainly over 90s cricket. With his playing career over, and his best days gone long before that, Botham’s mammoth achievements in the late 70s and early 80s, along with a media presence that reflected an ongoing desire for the spotlight, ensured he remained in the public consciousness as a symbol of a better, bygone era, when England had a decent all-rounder and won the Ashes with some regularity.

As the team continued to produce inconsistent performances, the media and public yearned for a player to reproduce his deeds and replace him in their affections, with the older Botham identified as a candidate to ‘sort out’ English cricket and become a new kind of saviour, off the field.

By the time of his retirement, few serious calls for Botham’s return as a player were being made: after experiencing diminishing returns in the 80s, and undergoing serious back surgery that reduced the effectiveness of his bowling at the end of the decade, Botham’s international days looked to be over when he was dropped by Graham Gooch for the tour of the West Indies in 1990. However, he fought his way back into the team and earned one last moment in the sun during the 1992 one-day World Cup, before being dropped again after struggling against Pakistan the following summer.

Part of Botham’s strength as a cricketer was a supreme belief in his own ability, but when he stated that he could still do a job for England in the Ashes series of 1993, he was certainly in the minority. When chairman of selectors Ted Dexter made it clear that a recall wasn’t on the cards, Botham retired in the middle of season.

He later pivoted to campaigning for a role in the selection and management of the England team, and by the time Ray Illingworth had been in charge for a year or so, Botham was already touting himself as his replacement, publishing a chapter in the 1995 edition of his autobiography outlining his intentions.

Botham never struck me as a potential authority figure within English cricket, and without having seen him at his peak as a player, I had no attachment to the idea that his past heroic on-field deeds might somehow inspire the next generation if given a coaching or managerial role.

In the early 90s, he appeared to be more of a light entertainment personality with an eye for media opportunities, appearing as team captain on A Question of Sport or popping up in advertisements for Shredded Wheat. After later making his commentary debut for Sky, he also lent his name to the UK release of a cricket game for the PC (1) in which he was required to pretend that he knew the fictional co-commentators of the pre-existing Australian edition, one of whom was undertaking a terrible Geoffrey Boycott impersonation. (2)

The Botham Report seemed like just another extension of this media work, based on the sound commercial logic that there were lots of people who a) thought there was plenty wrong with English cricket and b) admired Ian Botham, and many of them would buy a book that combined these elements.

Quite whether he ever actually wanted the responsibilities for which he was campaigning is another matter, although after Ray Illingworth was sufficiently miffed by Botham’s constant criticism to bite back in the media, suggestions that the great all-rounder’s suitability for an off-field role were limited had to be withdrawn following the threat of legal action.

In many ways, The Botham Report is a strange product, with the first section entitled ‘10 Years of Hurt’ apparently identifying the away Ashes victory in 1987 as a peak from which English cricket had been falling ever since. Never mind that England, including Botham, were dismissed as no-hopers prior to that tour, (3) on the basis of dire recent results, but it does handily take readers up to the year of publication.

While there is fertile ground to be turned over, including the end of Botham’s playing career and the soap opera of the Illingworth years, after the 1997 Ashes defeat there follows a slightly uneasy pivot towards chapters covering his one-time Sky colleague Mark Nicholas’s unsuccessful attempt to become TCCB Chief Executive, the withdrawal of Patrick Whittingdale’s sponsorship of the England team in 1995, and the decision of Botham’s son Liam to choose rugby over cricket.

It feels difficult to hear Botham’s voice during the drier discussions of board committee politics — one suspects co-writer Peter Hayter is doing the heavy lifting here — especially when compared with the earlier passion he displays while discussing the travails of the contemporary England team.

Botham, a few years after being on the receiving end of a similar book decrying the problems with English cricket, rarely turns on the players, whether defending Atherton’s captaincy, or railing against the poor treatment of those hailed by the media as pretenders to his crown, Darren Gough and Dominic Cork. (4) Indeed, most convincing among the later chapters is the one that details the overwork of England players, particularly pace bowlers, by the combined physical demands of county and international duties.

By the time The Botham Report was published, some of the fire had gone from the earlier days of media feuds with Illingworth. English cricket had entered the slightly more stable era of Davids Lloyd and Graveney, and Botham had even been brought into the fold as an advisor on the 1996/7 winter tours of Zimbabwe and New Zealand.

As a result, the critique loses some momentum by the time it delivers the results of a questionnaire issued to county captains, coaches and executives — unsurprisingly a hotch-potch of the sensible and quite clearly mad takes — and a blueprint for future success. One suspects that the typical reader is more interested in the juicer, gossipy stuff that precedes it.

Despite that, an updated edition did follow, and remains on sale as an eBook, with publisher HarperCollins proudly announcing, ‘A new chapter for this paperback edition highlights the progress English cricket has made since Botham’s involvement, as reflected in the team’s performance on the 1997/98 winter tour to the West Indies.’ (England lost the Test series 3-1 in 1997/8, just as they had in 1993/4.)

Botham never did get the position he craved, although he had an unofficial role in selection during the power vacuum created by David Lloyd’s departure in 1999. Whether it was the implementation of certain changes suggested by this book, the resulting upturn in the team’s fortunes, or just a sense that his time had passed, he later retreated, apparently content to offer opinions on the team’s latest crisis from the safety of the commentary box.

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Notes:

(1) Ian Botham’s International Cricket 96, originally released as EA Cricket 96, itself a port of the earlier SNES game Super International Cricket.

(2) Botham’s contribution amounted to a few extra video clips on the menu screen, including one welcoming you to the game by saying, ‘I’m Ian Botham, and you’re not’. It wasn’t until I saw the recent Chevy Chase documentary that I realised it could have been a reference to Chase’s Saturday Night Live catchphrase rather than just a generic and witless remark. Then again, it could just have been a generic and witless remark.

(3) As per Martin Johnson’s infamous early-tour assessment in The Independent: ‘There are only three things wrong with the English team - they can't bat, they can't bowl, and they can't field.’

(4) The fevered mid-90s excitement over the all-round credentials of Gough and Cork had rather dissipated at this point, which is perhaps why Botham doesn’t discuss them in such terms here, with both at various stages of re-establishing themselves as the kind of players they always were in the first place: bowlers who batted.

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