Time's Up For The Showman

“The BOTHAM PHENOMENON has been detailed too often for me to need repeat it at all. Let me just skim across the surface of a career that had so much depth as well as so much breadth,” says TED CORBETT, in his appreciation of Ian Terrance Botham.

- Ted Corbett

I want to remember Ian Botham — and I am sure I am not alone in this desire — as a hero. I don’t want to have to make excuses for him, even to myself. I hope, therefore, that he never plays international cricket of any sort again. It is all the more likely that England will not call on his services in the future after the remarkable sequence of events in the first two Tests against Pakistan.

The first, at Edgbaston, was badly hit by rain so that only two deliveries were bowled in the opening couple of days. On the third Botham bowled 13 overs and then retired with a groin strain. He took no further part in the match. During the second Test, at Lord’s, he made two in the first innings and six in the second. He did not bowl. He took two catches — in which he equalled Colin Cowdrey’s England record of 120 in Tests — and dropped two (or three if you want to be either unkind or very precise).

HIS MOST MEMORABLE PART of the match — in which he wore those wrap-around dark glasses that, so one is told, make it easier to see in the glare or make the most of semi-darkness—was to slip in the shower and further damage his groin. He was also hit on the toe, by Mushtaq Ahmed of all people, and it was later found to be either badly bruised or broken.

As a result Botham was left out of the third Test squad and advised by David Graveney, his captain at the newly-formed county of Durham, to rest until he was completely fit. It was good advice by a considerate man who, like me and many more Botham admirers does not want to see a great cricketer demean himself by struggling on when he is either not fully fit or when he is past his best.