Botham’s Century: My 100 great cricketing characters. Ian Botham
in that amazing series, were justifiably proud and elated at what we had achieved that summer. Don’t waste too many tears, here. But just try to imagine what it must have been like to be on the receiving end. There they were, one Test up and seemingly cruising to victory in the third of six at Headingley, when Graham Dilley and I embarked on one of the great alehouse slogs in history, setting in motion a chain of events there, at Old Trafford and at Edgbaston that resulted in the reduction of the previously cocksure Australians to psychological basket-cases.
Try to imagine how Allan must have felt to see his side appear to cave in tamely as soon as they were the ones on the wrong end of some real pressure. And try to imagine how he would have felt when after another hammering from the West Indies he later saw and heard the Australian captain Kim Hughes break down in tears when trying to explain away the capitulation of his players.
In drink in later years, and sometimes even sober, Allan would go over the events of that summer with me time and time again; it was as if he felt that by talking about them he would get them out of his system, and they might disappear forever, or, even better, turn out to be nothing more than a bad dream. I wouldn’t say he was obsessive about it. He only brought the subject up three or four times an hour.
So when another bashing in ‘85 gave him and the Australian board the perfect opportunity to clear the decks and start again, the vigour with which he pursued his aims surprised only those who didn’t know the man.
There were setbacks. After losing to New Zealand in the winter of 1985–86 Border was so hacked off that he quit the captaincy, only to be talked out of it by the Australian Cricket Board. And while they were still there for the taking when we arrived a year later, the plan to identify a clutch of new players like Steve Waugh, David Boon, Merv Hughes and Ian Healy, and stick with them through thick and thin, finally brought the rewards Border and Australia craved.
Over the years, Border attracted strong criticism for the way he allowed his team to indulge in verbal assaults on opposing players. True, he was responsible for taking sledging to a new level; using it as a systematic intimidatory weapon with which to undermine an opponent’s confidence. But his attitude was that mental toughness was as much a part of the modern game as the technical skills of batting, bowling and fielding. He reasoned that if a guy couldn’t take it he shouldn’t be out there, and he never moaned if an opponent gave some back to his players.
In 1989 his new approach shocked those players like David Gower and Allan Lamb, with whom he’d been friendly on previous tours, and when Robin Smith asked for a glass of water in mid-innings and received a mouthful of abuse instead, all Lambie’s stories about what a great guy AB was sounded somewhat hollow.
On the 1993 trip, when England just laid down and died time after time, he claimed his fielders sometimes sledged because they were just so furious that our players were not putting up more of a fight. Do I believe that? On balance, I think I probably do. It was not for the purists and certainly not for those who liked their cricket nice and creamy, but it worked.
Border’s famed ruthlessness extended to his own players. They feared him, but because they knew he wouldn’t demand of them any more than he would give himself, they not only grew to respect him, eventually they were prepared to run through minefields for him.
Dean Jones, later my team-mate at Durham, once told me the full story of what took place between him and Border on the field during their partnership in the first Test at Madras on Australia’s 1986–87 tour to India, in which Deano compiled the double-hundred that put him in hospital. Suffering from a combination of the heat, humidity and the other debilitating ailment this part of the world is notorious for inflicting on foreigners, Dean first reached his maiden Test hundred, then, fighting through cramps, nausea and loss of bodily fluids from all imaginable areas, doubled that and finished with 210 from 330 balls during eight hours and 23 minutes at the crease.
To keep Deano going in the moments when he felt he just couldn’t stand up, let alone carry on batting, Border used three tactics: he bullied him, he taunted him, and he scolded him.
Whenever Dean complained about the state he was in, Border would come back at him with: ‘I never realized you were a quitter’, or ‘Okay mate. You go off. I’ll get someone out here who cares.’
The night after the innings was over Dean spent several hours on a saline drip. He cursed Border for the way he treated him, but later grew to understand that his captain was merely demonstrating that this was the level of commitment they all required if they wanted to be the best. Furthermore this was not simply ‘do as I say’. Students of the ‘81 Ashes summer will recall that, amid all the excitement and carnage, Allan ended the series with a hundred at The Oval made with a fractured bone in his hand, which I subsequently hit twice more during the innings.
And players knew he wouldn’t stand for any nonsense, as Craig McDermott, the quickie nicknamed ‘Billy’ as in ‘Billy the Kid’, found when he protested that the captain was using him at the wrong end in a county game against Somerset at Taunton on the ‘93 tour. ‘Do that again and you’re on the next plane home… What was that? You test me and you’ll see.’ Billy got the message.
Border’s attitude was non-negotiable. But players knew that if they gave him and the ‘baggy green’ everything they had and were prepared to make the necessary sacrifices, the least they could expect in return was unshakeable loyalty. When the Australian Board decided to drop vice-captain Geoff Marsh for the final Test of the 1991–92 series against India, AB was so furious his right-hand man had been axed without his prior knowledge that only Marsh’s intervention persuaded him from quitting the captaincy.
The bitter taste of defeat was what fuelled AB’s desire to win. And when he retired he passed on the message to his other great mate David Boon. He told Boon, ‘Now it’s up to you to never ever let these younger blokes know what it’s like to get their backsides kicked.’
Max Boyce may be the royal rugby bard of Wales, but I will always regard him as one of my poorer subjects from my panto days as the King in Jack and the Beanstalk. Whether it’s on the cricket field, golf course or on stage, Max has always made me laugh. He’s also played a big part in my rugby education. Max came to national prominence during the glory days of Welsh rugby in the 1970s, appearing on the TV show Poems and Pints and gaining a string of gold records, starting with Live at Treorchy. His catchphrase was ‘I was there.’ Even the sad decline of Welsh rugby has not dampened Max’s bubbling enthusiasm. When Wales kicked off the 1999 World Cup in the spanking new Millennium Stadium, Max was there belting out his beloved Hymns and Arias.
I first came across Max long before the panto days – in a benefit match for my Somerset colleague, Graham Burgess, at Monmouth School. Max was billed as the demon fast-bowler for the Welsh Invitation XI, and came in off an enormous run that even Michael Holding would have been proud of, something in the region of 80 yards. Unfortunately, by the time Max got to the wicket he was knackered! That experiment was abandoned after an over that took a quarter of an hour. Off a less strenuous run, Max did capture the wicket of I. V. A. Richards with a catch in the deep. Very deep indeed, because the fielder had been shrewdly placed in the field next to the ground. Max celebrated in style, then announced that as he’d done his bit by getting the best batsman in the world out, he was retiring from bowling. This common sense continued when it was his turn to bat and he saw the bowler he was about to face was Joel Garner. We were wondering where Max had got to when he suddenly appeared in a motorcycle crash helmet.
Max obviously had a sense of humour, so I suggested that we cement our friendship with a night out before the next Somerset game in Swansea. This we did in some style, although it can’t have been that bad because I got a century before lunch the next day. I kept looking for Max in the St Helen’s crowd because he’d assured me that he would be there for the first ball. Instead, when I answered a phone call at lunch-time this pathetic voice croaked: