Botham’s Century: My 100 great cricketing characters. Ian Botham

      Quite often, his minor field adjustments would be part of a cunning plan. Sometimes, on the other hand, he would stick someone in an unusual position not because he believed it would work, but because he thought the batsman might think it would. It was kidology pure and simple, and Brears was brilliant at it.

      My first experience of the phenomenon came during my debut Test series, the 1977 Ashes. The victim was Richie Robinson, the Australian wicket-keeper batsman. Brears was struggling to find a way to get inside Robinson’s head, and just for something different, stuck a man in short on the offside. For some reason, that was like a red rag to a bull for Richie, who promptly tried to remove the fieldsman with a wild yahoo only to be caught in the slips. From then on, Brears employed a similar tactic whenever Robinson arrived at the crease, and with the same result.

      My only real criticism of Brears was that, in terms of his ideas on selection, I felt he was biased towards his own Middlesex men, but I suppose you could hardly blame him for favouring players he knew inside out. That apart, for me he was the complete captain, more than worth a place in the side for that alone.

      Naturally, the most often-quoted example of Brearley’s abilities as a tactician, leader and motivator is the transformation in our fortunes during the 1981 Ashes series, when he replaced me as skipper. Brears recommended me for the job when he decided to quit at the beginning of the previous summer, and once the chairman of selectors Alec Bedser had put me in an impossible position by announcing I was to be judged on a match-by-match basis, I was only too happy to repay the compliment.

      Would Headingley have happened had I still been in charge, or Old Trafford, or Edgbaston? How important was it that I was allowed to concentrate on expressing myself with bat and ball, and that the detail of captaincy was put in the hands of Brearley? Fortunately, and for the sake of cricketing folklore, not even Brears would be able to answer that one. All I do know is that Mike himself never claimed the credit for what took place. Indeed, it’s interesting to me that the most famous visual image of Brearley during the Headingley mayhem has always been utterly misconstrued.

      At the moment I reached my hundred in the second innings, on the way to the 149 not out that would give us just enough runs to put crucial pressure on the Aussies, television pictures showed Brearley pointing vigorously and calling out to the middle. As the pictures did not show who he was pointing to or what message he was passing on, so various interpretations were put on the incident. Some observers will tell you with utter certainty that Brears was gesturing to me to stay out there and keep going. Others know for sure that he was telling my partner Chris Old to remind me to concentrate. What Brears was actually doing was trying to tell me to get into Chris’s ear; to keep him focused on what we were doing. As far as I was concerned, he just wanted me to keep slogging!

      But there was no ambiguity in the words with which he sent us out to attack the Aussies in their second innings. With the opposition still needing only 130 to win the match and probably the Ashes, Brears insisted, ‘More aggression, more liveliness, and more encouragement for the bowlers. They are the ones who are nervous now.’

      Some critics of Brears claim he was over-lenient with me, that too often he allowed me my head, whatever the consequences. He once admitted to me that on one occasion he had done exactly that, to the detriment of the team. In one of my early Tests, against Australia in Perth, I lost my rag when trying to prove that their batsman Peter Toohey could not hook. As I bowled faster and shorter, Toohey kept slapping me to the boundary and I finished the innings with match figures of 0 for 100. Brears’ insistence that I should get the matter out of my system angered my team-mates, with Bob Willis particularly indignant that he had allowed me to carry on bowling.

      But the key to the success of our relationship was that Mike reckoned more often than not that with me the gamble was worth taking. He never told me how to play, he just let me go. If I got out trying to smack someone out of the ground, or whatever, that was fine by him. And I responded. Yes, I was headstrong, and inevitably, from time to time, I would let my natural cricketing arrogance get the better of me. But he worked out that if he was going to get the best out of me he would have to take me warts and all. He showed that understanding in a crucial discussion we had prior to the Headingley Test of 1981.

      ‘Are you all right, mentally?’ he asked me. ‘Are you sure you’re okay to play?’

      ‘I’m fine,’ I told him.

      ‘Good, ‘he replied,’ because I think you’re going to score a hundred and take ten wickets.’

      Brearley’s success at beating Australia earned him huge respect here. But it turned him into a hate-figure Down Under. With the long beard he grew during the 1979–80 tour there and his occasionally less than helpful response to banal questions from reporters, he gained the nickname ‘The Ayatollah’. That never bothered him in the slightest and he actually loved the fun and games with hostile Australian crowds. His favourite story of Aussie antagonism concerns the use of the skull cap he pioneered in advance of batting helmets. One day in Sydney he was struggling to keep the cap in place and a couple of times it actually fell off.

      ‘Hey Brearley!’ came a shout from the Hill. ‘I’ve got just the f***in’ thing for that f***in’ helmet … A six-inch f***in’ nail!’ The comedian almost certainly has no idea of this, but Brears kept himself amused recounting that story for the rest of the tour.

      Brears never allowed himself a backward glance after he walked away from cricket, preferring instead to concentrate on putting his powers of analysis to use in the field of psychiatry. On occasion, his club, Middlesex, would ask for his help when players were experiencing problems in their private lives, and I know Phil Tufnell is grateful to him for the help he gave him when The Cat was in the pit. There are those who suggest I could have done with something similar when I was going through my mid-80s crisis, and they may have a point.

      Finding a way he could contribute to English cricket would not have been easy. But for sure it would have been worth the effort.