The Botham Report. Ian Botham
was an almost obsessive hunger for success brought to the Australian side by their captain.
It became clear quickly that Border and his coach Bobby Simpson had left nothing to chance in their preparation for this series. They had been on the wrong end of hammerings in 1985 and 1986–87 and they had spent the intervening two years developing a side full of players whose commitment and dedication to the cause was unquestioned. Furthermore, Border himself had undergone a transformation of character and approach.
Border had made himself unpopular with some of his team-mates by insisting that their wives would not be able to join them in the team hotels at any stage on tour, and each player was made fully aware of what was required on and off the field. Border himself set the tone for how he wanted his team to play and it was an inspiration to them.
I was not the only one of the England players who had forged a reasonably close friendship with AB over the years and it was his approach to me that led to my decision to sign up for his state Queensland during the winter of 1988. Throughout the 1985 summer series in England Border had been a frequent and welcome visitor to the England dressing room at the close of play, so often, in fact that his closeness to myself, Gower and Allan Lamb caused some ill-feeling inside the Aussie camp – fraternising with the enemy and all that nonsense.
After the 1986–87 series ended in another England victory Border was again criticised for what the Aussies back home perceived as an over-friendly relationship with the old enemy. The criticism stung this intensely patriotic Australian and this time round he had made a definite decision to become Captain Grumpy of a collection of players prepared to snarl, sledge and play dirty if necessary. His approach was not necessarily one I would have adopted, but the results spoke for themselves.
While Gower was displaying all the politeness and good manners that Dexter had wanted his team to show, Border just got on with the job of stuffing the Poms. Robin Smith, the Hampshire batsman who had come into the side the previous summer against the West Indies, was clearly shocked by Border’s ruthlessness on the field. It was not just the sledging he encouraged from bowlers like Merv Hughes and Geoff Lawson but the fact that Border went out of his way to be positively unpleasant to Smith and all the other batsmen at all times. No one minds a spot of sledging or winding up the opposition, but in my book they went too far and AB took them there.
Smith recounts the tale when, during a particularly hot and tense period of play during one of the Test matches, more out of courtesy than anything else he asked Border if it would be okay for our twelfth man to bring on a glass of water for him. Border’s reply shocked Smith. ‘What do you think this is, a f * * *ing tea party? No, you can’t have a glass of water. You can f* * *ing wait like all the rest of us.’
When Gower quizzed his opposite number over the change in approach, Border told him, ‘David, the last time we came here I was a nice guy who came last. I’ve been through all sorts of downs with my team, but this time I thought we had a bloody good chance to win and I was prepared to be as ruthless as it takes to stuff you. I didn’t mind upsetting anyone, my own team-mates included, as long as we got the right result.’
In the face of such open hostility England needed to be at the top of their game. Planning and preparation and tactics needed to be spot on and the players all needed to be focused and pulling for each other. Above all we needed clear leadership and direction from the top.
What we got, from the first Test at Headingley to the last at The Oval was none of the above and the result was chaos.
At Headingley we were treated to the first example of Dexter’s knack of making eccentric decisions when it really mattered. Quite apart from leaving out off-spinner John Emburey thus sending England into the match with an all-seam attack, Dexter persuaded Gower that if he won the toss he should send Australia in to bat first. The decision to field first was apparently based on Dexter’s belief that an approaching build-up of cloud might allow movement through the air. No cloud came but there was movement through the air all right, generally from the middle of the bat to the boundary.
Furthermore, the decision to bat first came from the fact that while watching the weather forecast on breakfast television on the first morning of the match, Dexter had apparently seen enough to convince him that the match was going to turn out to be a rain-shortened three and a half day contest. In the event, of course, not a drop fell. England won the toss, put Australia in and on a belting batting track watched them score 601 for seven declared on their way to victory by 210 runs.
The tone was set for the series. And by the end of the third day of the second Test at Lord’s the Ashes were as good as in Australia’s hands. At that point, England, with Gooch, Broad and Barnett gone, needed another 184 runs to avoid an innings defeat. At the press conference afterwards Gower snapped when, after a question from former England colleague Phil Edmonds who suggested that Gower had put every single one of his bowlers on from the wrong end, the England captain stood up and hurriedly announced he had a taxi waiting. Gower got a flea in his ear from Ted, followed by the notorious chairman’s vote of confidence, but although he went out and scored a quite brilliant hundred on the Monday it was not enough to save the day. The series was only a third of the way through, but Gower realised the game was more or less up.
By the time I returned to the side after injury for the third Test at Edgbaston I could see there were problems inside the camp. Gower and Stewart were clearly rubbing each other up the wrong way, when, that is, they were bothering to speak to each other at all, Ted seemed to be in a world of his own and too many of the players appeared to have the upcoming announcement of the South African rebel tour on their minds to concentrate on the job in hand. While the Australians were all pulling in one direction, we were pulling ourselves apart.
Speculation had been rife all summer. And throughout that Old Trafford Test the dressing room resembled the headquarters of MI5. Whispered discussions over who had signed up and who hadn’t and sudden silences dropping like a guillotine whenever a player not party to the skullduggery happened to enter the room – looking back on all the goings-on, the situation was absurd. I found it sad that England players did not have enough on their plate concerning themselves with events on the pitch. I’ve never known an atmosphere like it and if anyone needed any proof that some of the England players cared less about playing for their country than their Australian counterparts, this was it.
On the final morning of the fourth Test at Old Trafford the tension lifted when the party of sixteen players who had signed up on the rebel tour to South Africa that winter was finally announced, but I believe all the uncertainty created by the recruiting could easily have been avoided had Dexter and Stewart taken hold of events from the start.
What was inexcusable was that, as well as Gatting, who had already told Micky Stewart he would not be available for the winter tour to West Indies, presumably because he was going to be playing cricket elsewhere, the identities of several of those being targeted by the South Africans had been known to Stewart and Dexter for some time. Gower was convinced that they had an awful lot of information which they did not pass on to him. He could have done with it, if only to decide in his own mind who he was going to persevere with during the summer series. There was little point him playing some of the guys who were not going to be around for much longer and three of the players named in the South African squad were involved in that fourth Test – Tim Robinson, John Emburey and Neil Foster. A fourth, Graham Dilley, had been selected to play but was unfit on the first morning, and five of the others in that sixteen-man party – Gatting, Chris Broad, Paul Jarvis, Phil DeFreitas, and Kim Barnett – had already played in the earlier Tests of 1989. The TCCB had been aware of what was going on and had asked players who were in line for selection for the winter tour to West Indies to indicate whether they would be available or not. Dexter and Stewart had known for some time the names of many of those who had signed up, yet they never uttered a word to the captain or even attempted to keep him in the picture.
Indeed, when Dexter handed Gower a sheet of paper with the names of the rebels on the first morning of the Old Trafford match, the captain was more flabbergasted by the fact that his chairman already knew the names in advance of their release by the South African organisers than at their identities. How long had Dexter known? And why didn’t he let Gower know as soon as he found out?
When