which meant I could just concentrate on playing and going for a beer afterwards – and that suited me down to the ground.
Quietly, though, I had already sorted out my objectives. Priority number one was to get in the team, then stay there. From there, the target was a county cap. And next, even at this stage, was England.
First there was the little matter of finding a place to live. My initial fixed abode was in Greenway Road, Taunton, where I was billeted with Dennis Breakwell, the slow left-arm bowler who had recently joined us from Northamptonshire. It was called a club flat, but there is no doubt that the term ‘flat’ definitely represented a breach of the Trade Descriptions Act. Not to put too fine a point on it, it was a complete tip: even the cockroaches passed by on the other side of the street because some of its unique features would have tested the descriptive talents of the most imaginative estate agent. First, it was so damp that there were fish jumping out of the wall. Then, due to the fact that the mod cons had been cut off from the previous summer, there was no electricity or water. We did have the luxury of a toilet but it happened to be situated outside, and flushing it could only be achieved by the skilful application of a bucket of water. The only heating we had was created by burning newspapers and old rubbish. There were no cooking facilities so we made sure to get our fill at the ground or to raid the milk float that clattered down the street in the early morning. It was not the sort of place we looked forward to returning to at the end of the day, so more often than not we didn’t. We spent most of our evenings in the Gardener’s Arms, not just to be sociable but also to have a roof over our heads and a bit of warmth and light.
Here, the most useful aspect of my training at Lord’s was put to good use. When it came to the challenge of sinking three pints in a minute, no one could touch me. At closing time it was off to a club, either the Camelot or the 88-400, or back to play cards by candlelight. We kipped in sleeping bags on the floor. Luxury. Fortunately by the start of my breakthrough season in 1974 the situation had improved somewhat. My salary had been doubled – to £500 per annum – and Dennis and I found a new flat, in St James Street, right next to the county ground. We also had a new flat-mate, Viv Richards.
Viv and I had hit it off the first time we met, when we had been selected to play for Somerset Under-25s against Glamorgan at the Lansdowne Cricket Club. The grapevine had already been humming with stories of the young West Indian, and when we bumped into each other I found that he had also heard of me. The moment he dropped his bag on the dressing room floor something clicked between us and that bond has remained ever since. What also helped to break the ice was the fact that our performances in that match represented a spectacular reversal of roles. Viv, the great batting hope, was bowled first ball but then redeemed himself by taking five for 25. Yours truly, who was busy boring everyone to tears with tales of my brilliant bowling, chucked down a lot of old rubbish then scored a century. Afterwards I said to him: ‘Listen, Viv. You take the wickets. I’ll score the runs’.
Even then, Viv was totally committed to succeeding. He later said that what struck him about me in those early days was my total belief in myself and the fact that I was always positive. What impressed me was that there was never any danger that he was not going to make full use of his immense talent. He had the best eye of any cricketer I have ever seen, and he said he felt that any moment of the match when he was not batting was wasted. I think that came from his childhood experiences of playing beach cricket on his native island of Antigua. He told me once about his childhood, and how on the beach he would be one of a huge crowd of kids waiting for their turn to bat. If you got out, it was quite possible you would not get another chance for days, so you did everything you could to stay in. I respected his near-obsession, but although I was also single-minded about succeeding I didn’t go quite so far as he did in those early days. While he would actually sleep with his bat by the bed, my sleeping companion was a bottle of gin.
These were heady days but things were also close to getting out of hand. The early successes were marvellous, of course, but with them came local fame, and with that some local aggro. I had been in my fair share of scraps at school but the more successful I was on the cricket field, the more the so-called hard men of life wanted to have a pop at me. When I went out to a pub with friends, there would always be the one comedian who insisted on proving to his mates that he was tougher than me, and I had difficulty coming to terms with that. Where some people could just count to ten and walk away, I had difficulty getting past one. I was never one of those who could turn the other cheek; it was always an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
Although later incidents were to have wider-reaching implications, and one almost cost me the chance of captaining England in 1980/81, the first I recall clearly took place in Taunton when Dennis and I were returning home after a few pints at a local club. Suddenly, these two youths appeared from nowhere. One of them dived over a wall at me, grabbed a chunk of hair from the back of my head and ripped it clean away. I have no idea why he did this and I wasn’t going to waste time asking questions or wait for him to pull a knife or bottle. I knocked seven bells out of him in about 30 seconds while Dennis kept his mate occupied by telling him: ‘If you want any trouble, pal, you can have it’.
Viv was also a very handy man in a crisis. I could not bear the kind of racist remarks people would sometimes come out with when he was around. Viv was already a tough person, but I think his early experiences hardened him even more. Later, when on more than one occasion he was abused by idiots in the crowd at Headingley, it still hurt him deeply which was why both he and I were so thrilled by the reception he received when he bowed out from Test cricket in the final match of the 1991 series with England at The Oval. As he walked out to bat in his last innings, the crowd gave him a standing ovation all the way to the wicket. At the end of his knock of 60, during which he had established a career Test batting average of over 50, they did exactly the same thing on the way back to the dressing room. Halfway back he stopped, turned and acknowledged the gesture by raising his bat to all sides and doffing the maroon cap of the West Indies that meant so much to him. It was one of the great moments of cricket, and I consider it a privilege to have been there on the field at the time.
I recall one early example of the kind of man he is. We were in the 88-400 club and Viv was standing at the bar when he overheard two blokes discussing whether it really was Ian Botham they were looking at. Eventually the bet was struck: for £10 one of them was to walk across and stand on my foot. I was blissfully unaware of what was going on even though a man I had never met had come and practically camped on my shoes, but when he returned to the bar to collect his winnings, Viv stopped him and said: ‘My friend seems to be a bit dead tonight. How about dealing with a live person?’
As time passed, the closeness of my relationship with Viv caused some problems between Kath and I because she complained, with some justification, that it seemed as though I was closer to him than I was to her. Living, eating, drinking, batting and bowling together over a period of years, it was inevitable that we grew to know each other inside out, better even I think than we knew our wives or our wives knew us. But that was all in the future. At this stage my meeting with my future spouse was still some way off. In fact, it came about as a direct result of Andy Roberts rearranging my teeth.
When Gerry and Jan Waller accepted the invitation from their friend Brian Close to attend Somerset’s Benson and Hedges semi-final match against Leicestershire at Grace Road, Leicester on 26 June 1974 and to bring along their daughters Kathryn and Lindsay, little did they know that by doing so they were setting in motion the chain of events that was to alter their lives, the lives of their children and that of Ian Botham irrevocably.
Gerry and Lindsay arrived at the ground first after travelling down from their home in Thorne, near Doncaster, but Jan had not been feeling very well so Kath had stayed behind until her Mum had finished her day’s teaching. The pair drove down together, finally turning up at around six o’clock. In fact, Kath apparently had not been too keen
