Botham

Last night, BBC2 showed an hour long documentary on Ian Botham, presumably to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the seminal 1981 Ashes series. While it was great to see a free to air broadcaster acknowledging that cricket exists it was an opportunity wasted, failing to add anything of interest to the story of Sir Ian (as Nasser Hussain insists on calling him) and omitting much of the detail that would have added flesh to the rather over-familiar bones.

All of the usual material was here: his heroic innings against Hampshire in 1974, five wickets on test debut, the close relationship with Mike Brearley, the disastrous captaincy, Headingley, drugs etc. What was missing was any sort of insightful analysis, which was hardly surprising when the main interviewees, John Major, Elton John, Stephen Fry and Mick Jagger, seemed to be indulging in a private competition to reveal which one of them knows the least about cricket.

Take the issue of the captaincy. I would be the first to agree that Botham was a terrible captain, but it is also true that he was a pretty unlucky one. Had David Gower held an awkward catch at midwicket in the first test of the rain ruined 1980 series then England might well have achieved an unlikely series win over the West Indies, much as New Zealand had managed the preceding winter.  The tour of the Caribbean that followed was blighted by the Jackman Affair, which was skated over, and the death of Ken Barrington, which wasn’t mentioned at all. In amongst the discussion of the reception that Botham was given by the MCC members (or Lord’s members if you’re Sir Elton) on completing his pair (or double duck to Sir Elton) in 1981, no mention was made of his part in the shambles of the Saturday of the Centenary Test the year before. Context is all.

Things got worse when they came to 1981, for there was next to no acknowledgement that any other Englishmen, save for Bob Willis and Mike Brearley, were playing. Fair enough, it’s a Botham documentary, but not to mention Graham Dilley’s innings at Headingley at all was crass. Stephen Fry’s assertion that Brearley didn’t give Bob Willis the new ball in the second innings to make him angry was also risible: Brearley says quite clearly in ‘Phoenix from the Ashes’ that he gave Graham Dilley the new ball because he though that he would be confident after his innings. The really significant decision in that innings, to give Willis a go down the hill and for him not to worry about his no ball problem, was completely ignored.

The same was true of Edgbaston. The 5-1 that Botham took was startling, but it is even more remarkable when you consider that he was reluctant to bowl and had been brought on with the instruction of ‘keep it tight for Embers’. Again, there was no mention of this.

The final omission, though, was, in some ways, the most startling. In amongst the discussion of drugs and tabloid scandals there was no mention at all of Tim Hudson and his pernicious influence. The decline and fall of Ian Botham can be attributed to a whole range of factors - his back injury, the retirement of Mike Brearley, his reluctance to practice etc. – but Hudson would have to feature prominently in that list. One wonders at the reasons for his airbrushing from history.

The final segment was, however, heart warming. Ian Botham’s contribution to leukaemia has been extraordinary and to hear about the impact of the money that he has raised from some of those directly affected was probably the best bit of the programme. It’s just a shame that the bit about cricket was so poorly thought through and, ultimately, failed to do justice to a childhood hero.