same, long-standing guidance.
On air I have tried to keep to those guidelines. I have never been afraid of sailing close to the wind when it comes to innuendo, and I have always believed that you instinctively know where to draw the line between fun and bad taste. When I was England coach, dealing with players with families, mortgages and other responsibilities, the one thing I always said to them – we all know what blokes are like, we are all the same when we get together, whether we be sportsmen, press men, whatever; we want a lot of fun, occasionally act a bit over the top, or be a bit laddish – was never to do anything that would prevent your mother and father standing up and proudly declaring to all and sundry: ‘That’s my lad.’ It was as simple as that. As parents, you want to be able to say: ‘Yep, that’s our George … the one with his arse hanging out.’ I am all for being outrageous on occasion, but you have to keep it affectionate.
For example, I hope I don’t behave differently on camera from how I act off it. My view is that I am the same man and that I am pretty natural at what I do. Talking about cricket has always come pretty easily, put it that way, but neither am I afraid to say things out loud that come into my head. It is not always pre-planned but I never regret what I say, even though it can be close to the bone occasionally. During the Ashes in 2009, one of the cameras panned to a young lass, who had the biggest chest you’ve ever seen, walking in front of the stand with a couple of pints in hand. ‘Oooh, I wouldn’t mind two of those,’ I said. To me, genuinely funny innuendo is born of innocence.
When we are working, we will normally get a nudge from our crew to warn us that they are about to pan around the crowd. But when you are abroad, and therefore taking another company’s pictures, you haven’t a clue what is around the corner. Such was the case in the Durban Test of 2009–10 as SABC went into a random surf of the stands. The camera focused on a young lady, who at that very second produced an enormous sausage from a picnic tray concealed between her legs. Instead of panning away to something else, they kept on this 12-inch pork truncheon. What on earth does a bloke say when confronted by that image? You’re in a no-win situation. ‘Well, sorry, I have lost my train of thought,’ I declared, as this thing wobbled this way and that. Sometimes you get into giddy schoolboy mode and this was one such occasion. The double entendre continued later when, sat alongside Michael Atherton, they zoomed in on a couple of blokes who had carved out a watermelon and plonked the outer casings on their heads as hats. ‘Look at these melons here,’ I said, playfully. Well, the director could not have timed his cut from one image to another any better if he had been trying to stitch me up. Exactly as I said it, the camera panned around to a woman with an enormous pair of norks …
The only venue at which I tend to pre-plan a routine is at Old Trafford. I will say to Mark Lynch, the director: ‘Get us an aeroplane coming in.’ On cue, I will then announce: ‘Here they are. They’re coming to sunny Manchester on their holidays. Hundreds of ’em. Holiday season has begun, folks. In they flood from Barbados, Mauritius and Goa. They love the wet lands of Wigan, the spa town of Salford, they come here for the waters, you know. There are the two canals of Manchester as well, of course – the near canal and the far canal.’
Sir Ian Botham – ‘I’ll make you famous’
Our very own knight of the realm had an on-field presence that demanded royal respect. Within our environment, however, his title is less regal and he is regularly referred to as His Buffiness, His Buffikins or His Holy Buffness. Our ribbing of him is perhaps evidence of us mere mortals being able to drag him back to the real world. For on a cricket pitch, alongside his English counterparts, he was the first among unequals; capable of extraordinary feats at will. I was a witness to one such incident during my three-season stint as a first-class umpire.
It was a televised Sunday League match at Taunton between Somerset and Middlesex. With three balls to go, and 12 runs required to win, Mr I.T. Botham was facing West Indies paceman Wayne Daniel, and I was standing at the business end. ‘Diamond’ Daniel was halfway through his approach to the crease when Both halted him in his tracks and, prodding the pitch, looked up to me and asked: ‘Who you backing in this one?’ I told him in short that a dozen required off three was a good contest, but the Songs of Praise theme tune was about to hit its first bar, so, if he didn’t mind awfully, could we get on with it?
The first of the three balls to come down, a full-toss angled in from wide of the crease, was dispatched into the car park. Now, with the requirement reduced to six from two balls, had he asked me again who I was backing, I would have been starting to favour the batting side’s chances. Only a man of the most supreme ability would have dared to do what Beefy did next – he went and blocked one on purpose, just to enhance the sense of theatre. Middlesex’s senior players gathered around their fearsome fast bowler, waiting at the end of his run-up, to discuss where to bowl and where to position the field. The latter part of their deliberations turned out to be irrelevant, however, as another full bunger sailed out of the ground. The crowd went berserk, even the opposition must have appreciated his bombast, and, as I dismantled the stumps at the bowler’s end, I felt the full force of his willow across my backside. ‘You stick with me, pal, I’ll make you famous!’ he declared.
What a player he was. Absolutely brilliant. Without question the best cricketer our country has ever produced. This was a bloke who could turn games on their head with bat, ball or slip catching. He dealt in moments of inspiration. He played on instinct. He didn’t think too much about it, just got on and did it. And how he did it!
Shane Warne is from the same mould, and when playing cricket followed exactly the same rules. For Beefy and Warney the coach is what you use for travelling to the ground. There would be no interest for them in being told what to do or even being offered some well-meaning advice. Whereas others need a figure to point them in the right direction, these cricket geniuses had all the answers already. Their actions were always louder than any words. Botham’s ability has no doubt shaped his thinking on how players should deal with their own losses of form. His answer would always be to carry on your own merry way: to get out of a rut he would recommend a couple of glasses of wine, a day out fishing or a game of golf, not extra practice. You might lose form, he would argue, but what was lost could easily be recovered. For him there was not a great deal of thought required.
Because that was what worked for him – he could come back to the nets, give it a thrash and he’d be off on form again. Others might see a more technical necessity, but he kept things very simple indeed. Of course, his fantastic ability made it that much easier for him to have that attitude, but it was a great way to be – an enviable way. Start talking about trigger movements and he would shoot you down in laughter. Let’s face it, we are always on the look-out for a new Botham, just as Australia will search fruitlessly for a new Warne. In all the time that they played, and since their departures, the search for a replica has been on. But you don’t unearth genius very often. For a long time now Australia have been seeking someone to bowl leg-spin for them, but no one will ever be able to match Warne.
Beefy is one of life’s true alpha males, a real man’s man. So you can imagine the expression on his face when, in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks in the winter of 2008–9, we were forced to deal with heightened security on our return, which included intimate personal searches. Everything was so much tighter when we went back, and while Botham’s Daily Mirror colleague Oliver Holt, the newspaper’s chief sports writer, somehow managed to evade the stringent identification checks with a flash of his 2008 FA Cup final accreditation, Beefy was being handled in quite a different way. Let’s just say the new multi-frisking was leaving nothing to chance. In fact, anything that could pass for a weapon was being given the once over before entry to the ground was permitted. So you can imagine the ire etched on English cricket’s greatest-ever player’s clock when this particular cupping incident took place on the opening day of the Chandigarh Test match. They carried it out with far too much enthusiasm, rather like the school nurse when she put you through that dreaded cough test in your medicals.
At times he was like a human whirlwind on the field
