because that is the time he really comes into his own. He has an unbelievable thirst. In truth, he should carry a health warning, because it’s not good to spend any length of time around him. Since his playing days there have been three distinct tactics among us fellow broadcasters: you have a general policy of avoidance, you make a pre-planned exit or you take your turn – ‘You’re with Beefy tonight, good luck.’ People have become adept at applying these over a decade and it seems to work a treat. Needless to say, avoidance has been my primary tactic, but I have also developed a hip shuffle towards the exit that those dancing queens Darren Gough and Mark Ramprakash would be proud of.
It’s only when you have taken your turn that you realise there’s only one bloke who can live the way he does. Now I like a beer, but I can’t drink much. He doesn’t, but he can. He is massively into wine, and he drinks flagons of the stuff. I can have an odd glass but it has never done much for me. He is really into his vineyards and reading labels on the bottles, whereas I simply want a good old-fashioned pint in my hand, something I have never seen him armed with. I have seen him with copious amounts of wine, but he doesn’t go into pubs. He will search out wineries and I will seek pubs. We are pretty much chalk and cheese.
Whatever your chosen tipple, you have got to be able to get up for work in the morning, and so you have to get your drinking with Beefy (long game or short) down to a fine art. Have a glass with him and then clear off sharpish is the safest bet. His mates always look thirsty too, so one must keep alert. Others among the Sky crew are also into nice wines, particularly Lord Gower, but although he would probably spend more time with Beefy than anybody, he knows when to dodge in and out. He’s got Beefy avoidance down to a tee.
God help you if you spend an entire evening in Botham’s company – it can do horrendous things to your insides. For a long time I wondered how on earth he could get larrupped and still turn up for work the next morning as though he had been on carrot juice and cucumber slices. I discovered that his recuperative powers are catalysed by an uncomplicated concoction. There is nothing that Beefy can neck that four cans of Red Bull, three black coffees, two enormous belches and a huge fart won’t fix the next morning. Once that combination has been taken in and let out, he’s back to normal. It’s rather like kick-starting an old motor engine. In fact, he reminds me of the 1950s-style cars that you had to crank at the front to start. Once attended to, the engine is running again and he’s ready to rock.
We are all very different characters within our commentary team and that means we have some very different views. For example, the last time we were in South Africa Beefy went off for a couple of days on safari and came back with some evidence of his trip. It was when he flashed around pictures of his grandsons, standing on an impala that was best described as very dead, that I took umbrage. The photograph showed them in possession of a gun – they had shot this poor thing. I just can’t do that.
‘So here he is, Mr Impala, out for the day with his family, stretching their legs in the sun when …’ I began.
‘No, you don’t understand,’ Beefy told me. ‘There’s too many of ’em. Far too many. They have to be culled.’
I pointed out that there are a lot of Chinese people on this planet and some would argue too many. But, despite the size of their population, nobody goes around shooting them.
‘You don’t get it, do you?’ he said.
The way I saw it was that this impala family was out having some breakfast one morning when their dad was shot and subsequently stood on. In one way Beefy was right, I suppose. I didn’t get that at all.
Off screen Both and I do not have much in common, I guess, but one thing we do share is a love of fishing. On another occasion during my three years in the white coat, I turned up at New Road to officiate in a Benson & Hedges Cup match. Beefy, now with Worcestershire, popped into the umpires’ room before play for a chat, during the course of which he invited me for a day out on a prime stretch of water on the River Wye. He also left me with a catalogue, telling me to pick out what I wanted and he would get any clobber sent on to me. As it happened, his friendly offer could not have been better timed, as I needed a new rod and reel.
Later in the day, he came on to bowl at my end, and announced himself with a loosener which plopped down the leg-side. My response, given the guidelines for one-day cricket, was to call and signal a wide.
‘It’s a what?’ Botham inquired incredulously, hands on hips.
‘It’s a wide,’ I replied. ‘You couldn’t have reached that with a clothes prop.’
‘Clothes prop, eh?’ he chuntered as he bristled past me. ‘You had better get one of those for your fishing because you’ll not be getting any tackle from me.’
Later that evening, as players and officials congregated outside that beautiful old bar they used to have at Worcester, I wandered over to offer him a drink. ‘Let me get you one in. What are you after, Both?’
‘I’ll have a bottle of pink champagne,’ he said. ‘They know what I have at the bar, just tell them it’s for me.’
‘A bottle of pink champagne?’
‘Wha’s up wi’ you, you tight git? I’ll get you one after.’
Now what would I want with a bottle of pink champagne? Heavens above.
Michael Atherton – Captain Shabby
I have worked with Athers for large parts of his professional life, so talking cricket with him comes pretty naturally. Our chats used to take place in the privacy of a dressing-room, or team meeting-room, but now we have them in other people’s living-rooms, and we are paid handsomely for the privilege. Knowing him as I have, it was no surprise to me whatsoever that he waltzed into the commentary box after retiring from the game and took up the microphone with such obvious ease. He is a bloke who does everything he sets out to accomplish with a minimum of fuss, whose professional standards are extremely high, and whose talents I believe will take him beyond commentating and cricket. He has strong opinions on the game and very good judgement, but also a capacity to expand his career into other areas. He is one of the cleverest blokes I have ever come across and is, as everyone would have to acknowledge, a brilliant writer, a factor which leads me to believe he will branch into other subjects, should he so wish, later in life.
Our working relationship goes back a long way and Athers was instrumental in my instalment as England coach, something which really did come out of the blue for me. In fact, it was not something that had seriously crossed my mind when on a January morning in 1996, as I picked him up from Manchester Airport following an underwhelming England tour of South Africa, he told me I had to get involved with the national senior side’s coaching set-up. At the time I was juggling my work as first-team coach at Lancashire with various other coaching posts across England’s age-group teams, occasional appearances on Test Match Special and a smattering of after-dinner speaking engagements. He was clearly batting for my promotion but, at the time, the job he was lining me up for did not even technically exist. In those days Raymond Illingworth acted as both chairman of selectors and England manager.
But Athers, much more progressive in his thinking as England captain than his public persona let on, was an advocate of modernisation. He no longer saw the benefit of that dual role and urged me to make myself available for a coaching position. Within a couple of months, following a disastrous World Cup, English cricket was the subject of an internal investigation. During the inquest into what exactly had been going wrong, Raymond relinquished the hands-on side of the job. The new position advertised by the Test and County Cricket Board, as it was then, was specifically on-field, bypassing the political side of things I did not care for, and therefore suited me down to the ground. In April that
