I was kept in hospital overnight but the news from the specialist was good. He told me that although the tendons were severed there was, fortunately, no damage to the nerve and the injury would take about three weeks to heal. The reason I recall this incident so well is that it triggered something which gave me my first taste of the darker side of the newspaper industry. Unbeknown to me, while I was in hospital Kath was about to receive unwelcome late-night visitors at our home in Epworth.
There was a knock on the front door to which Kath responded. On our doorstep were two men who introduced themselves as reporters from a national paper.
‘Evening Mrs Botham,’ said one of them. ‘Can you confirm a report we have had that Ian has been badly injured in a fight in a pub and is out of the England tour?’
Donald Carr had told all of us not to say anything to anyone about what had happened until the TCCB had had time to prepare a full statement. Kath, remembering Donald’s instructions, was tight-lipped.
‘I’m afraid I’ve got nothing to say.’
Then the other reporter intervened. ‘Come off it, luv. We’ve got the story and whatever you say, even if you say nothing at all, we are still going to print it. Why don’t you come clean?’
Kath tried to be polite and told him there was nothing she could add. Next day, however, a story full of innuendo appeared in the tabloids which suggested that I had been involved in a punch-up. From that moment on, both Kath and I realized we had to be extremely wary of the press.
Kath and I arrived in Australia before the start of November 1978 and although it was still a good two weeks before my hand would heal well enough to allow me to play, my determination and will to be fit meant that I was ready for action a fortnight before the first Test was due to start in Brisbane – a recovery that confounded the medical experts.
It might all have been for nought, however, thanks to a dodgy oyster. The night before the Test was due to start, Kath and I visited a seafood restaurant where I tucked into a plate of Oysters Kilpatrick. I don’t know about Patrick, but they bloody nearly killed me. I was up all night going various shades of white until, finally, Kath called the paramedics. They gave me something to ease the pain, but unfortunately the side-effects of the drug were such that I was sent into a slumber which a herd of elephants wouldn’t have disturbed. I finally woke at around 10 a.m. on the morning of the match and arrived at the ground twenty minutes before the start of play. I was lucky to have made it there at all.
Brears, now with a full chin of beard and christened the ‘Ayatollah’ by the locals, lost the toss and the Aussies decided to bat. Disastrously, as it turned out, for they were 26 for six and then 53 for seven before struggling through to 116 all out. I took three for 40 and then scored 49 as we built up a 170 run lead. They did better in their second innings and set us 170 to win the match – a total we reached with seven wickets in hand.
I’m not a superstitious person but the next game, my 13th Test match, certainly didn’t go my way. For the first time I came out of a Test without a wicket and ugly match figures of none for 100. Even so, England won by 166 runs.
It was not long before another example of Geoff Boycott’s peculiar nature surfaced. In a tour match against South Australia at Adelaide, just before Christmas 1978, he again showed his priorities were Boycott first, the rest nowhere. For that game, Boycs had been dropped down to number 11 below Edmonds, Emburey and Lever, and by the time he arrived at the crease we needed nine to win off the last over with Geoff Miller going great guns with a half-century to his name. That became two for victory off the last ball. What happened? ‘Dusty’ managed to get the ball away to the point boundary and they ran one to tie the match. Would Boycs turn and go for the second? Not if there was the slightest chance of Boycott being run out.
We went into the third Test at Melbourne fancying our chances of making it 3-0 in the series. It was not to be, however, as Brears suffered his first defeat as captain in 16 Tests and Allan Border started his Test career on the winning side. Our batting had begun disastrously in each innings. I was back among the wickets – three for 68 and three for 41 – but, chasing 283 to win in our second innings, we were soon in trouble at 6 for two and capitulated to 179 and defeat by 103 runs.
This was a big shock for the whole party. We had so dominated the first two games and now here we were battling to regain our supremacy. With the score at 2–1, it was far from easy. In the fourth Test at Sydney, I scored 59 out of a disappointing England total of 141, and by the end of the first day the Australians had reached 56 for one.
On the second day, we dug deep and restricted the Aussies to 283 and a lead of 142 runs, but we were soon in trouble again when Boycs was out first ball in the second innings, leg before to Rodney Hogg. It was Boycs’ first duck for England for nearly ten years. Derek Randall then began a salvaging operation with a brilliant 150. The Aussie crowd moaned that our scoring rate of 346 in 146 overs was a mite slow, and, surprise, surprise, they even suggested that Arkle should: ‘Ave a go, yer mug’. To hell with them, we were fighting for the Ashes.
The last day arrived with the Aussies needing 205 to win in 265 minutes, certainly a reachable target under normal circumstances, but the wicket was beginning to crumble and our spinners John Emburey and Geoff Miller managed to extract enough turn to share seven wickets and have them all out for 111. We were 3-1 up and back in the driving seat.
Our subsequent 205-run victory at Adelaide meant that Brears became the first England captain since Douglas Jardine in the 1932/33 ‘Bodyline’ series to win four Tests on an Ashes tour down under.
England had never beaten the Aussies by a margin as large as 5-1, but that was the prospect ahead of us as the series reached its finale at Sydney. Brears had a real go at us about commitment, saying that the series may have been in the bag but the job was not done. We responded by winning the match by nine wickets. I had now played eight matches against the Aussies and won seven.
On flying home in mid-February, I met my daughter Sarah for the first time. She had been born two weeks before I returned, and thankfully without any of the traumas Kath had suffered over Liam’s birth.
But the wheels of international cricket continued to turn. The first half of the home summer of 1979 was taken up with the World Cup, where I made the first of my two appearances in a final at Lord’s. We were well beaten in this instance, Viv Richards taking us apart with an awesome 138 not out and Collis King’s late blitz taking the West Indies to 286. Although Brears and Boycott put on 129 for the first wicket we were always behind the clock.
The World Cup was followed by a four-Test series against India during which I got back in the groove, twice taking five-wicket hauls in an innings and making my top Test score to date of 137. Luck and the will to win were paying handsome dividends. That 137 at Headingley in the third Test was a typical Botham knock, with the ball flying to all corners of the ground. The match had been interrupted by the weather, but by lunch on the Monday the century was in the bag, although I was disappointed to miss by one run the chance to score a Test century before lunch.
The victory by an innings and 83 runs in the first Test at Edgbaston enabled us to win the series 1-0 but not until we had survived a thrilling draw in the fourth and final Test at The Oval when the Indians, needing 15 from the final over to square the series at 1-1 could not quite manage it and were forced to settle for the draw. In fact, all four results were possible with three balls to go after Sunil Gavaskar had made a memorable 221 to take his side to within reach of their target of 438. That match also marked my first personal milestone in Test cricket. I began my 21st Test needing just three runs to reach the landmark of 1000 runs and 100 wickets in Test cricket quicker than anyone had ever done before. I soon collected those runs on my way to 38. The least said about my second innings in that match the better. I was run out for nought.
