Botham’s Century: My 100 great cricketing characters. Ian Botham
with his accident, but after the outbreak of world war in 1939 a chronic shortage of experienced pilots, his desire to get back in the air and his persistence in trying to persuade the RAF that he could still do a job earned him another chance to fly. He told me to forget the war films in which the fighter pilots stayed in the air for hours with endless supplies of ammunition. The actual firing time available in the spitfire was about three and half seconds. If you weren’t on the ball and your aim was off, you would run out of ammo before you had time to blink. The fuel gauges weren’t always that accurate either, and pilots would end up having to bale out over the sea or find a field somewhere near home. It also surprised me when he told me he was not fighting an anonymous enemy; on many occasions he could almost see the eyes of German pilots that were trying to shoot him down.
Douglas Bader must have been an inspiration to the RAF Young Guns, as much as he was to the next generation in Britain when his story was told. Douglas was a guy who was determined to succeed in whatever he did. He was so enthusiastic and wholehearted and did not know any other way. But he also had a very practical view of life. That was evident even when he was awarded his knighthood. Buckingham Palace called to make sure that, with his tin legs, he would be able to kneel on the cushion when the Queen touched his shoulders with the sword. Douglas replied that he wasn’t sure but would go away and have a go. ‘No good,’ he told the Palace, ‘I’ve had two goes at it and fallen on my arse both times!’
I enjoyed my evening and it convinced me this was someone who would have been a lot of fun to be with, especially in his younger days. Those who think I’m not a fan of old ways and the older generation are way off the mark. It’s the person who impresses or distresses me. Age has nothing to do with it.
I’m not sure today’s youngsters appreciate the sacrifices made by Douglas’ generation. I did, not only because of the films. My parents had been through the War. It’s 60 years ago now and I suppose those days have passed from the memory into history. Not that Douglas was one for living in the past. I was rather saddened a few years ago when the television programme, Secret Lives, tried to slur his reputation. His widow Lady Joan Bader said at the time, ‘People either say he was a super guy or an absolute bastard.’ I’m firmly in the ‘super guy’ camp. I’m sure there was more of a touch of arrogance in his younger days, but so what? He lived life to the full. There are always people ready to try and bring down those who have made the most of their time and refuse to compromise or be beaten.
My evening with Douglas Bader was an experience I will always cherish.
Kenny Barrington and I shared a birthday, 24 November, and a whole lot more besides.
People often ask me who was my favourite cricketer when I was first getting interested in the game. Bearing in mind the way I played, most assumed that I took my lead from somebody like Sir Gary Sobers, the greatest all-rounder I ever saw, or a swashbuckling cavalier like Ted Dexter.
But when I told them Kenny Barrington was my favourite, almost all were nonplussed. Kenny could play. Make no mistake about that.
He scored 20 Test hundreds and nearly 7,000 runs in all, and if you look at the list of those batsmen with the highest Test averages of all time you’ll find K. F. Barrington at number six, with an average of 58.67. To put that in its proper context, of the all-time greats he made his runs at an average higher than Wally Hammond, Sobers, Jack Hobbs, Len Hutton and Denis Compton, and of the modern giants, higher than Sachin Tendulkar, Steve Waugh, Brian Lara and Viv Richards. He could play all right.
The problem for those who assume that someone like me takes their lead from a similar player is the way Kenny generally batted. If you wanted to be kind, you’d call him obdurate. Others, less kind, said that on occasion, watching Kenny grind out the runs was like watching your fingernails grow.
But what I loved about The Colonel, as he was known and revered, was neither the number of runs he made nor the way he made them. It was simply the look of him. Had they made a film of his life, Jack Hawkins would have been perfect for the part. Kenny brushed his teeth like he was going to war. When he marched out to bat, he looked ready to take on an army single-handed. With his great, jutting jaw and hook nose almost touching in front of gritted teeth, the expression on his face said, ‘You’ll never take me alive,’ and it made an impression on the young Botham that deepened as I grew to know him personally in his roles as England selector and later coach.
Before I met Kenny I was actually quite apprehensive about the kind of bloke he might turn out to be. Bearing in mind what he looked like in action, scary was the word that crossed my mind. But it didn’t take me long to realize that although he was ice-cold on the outside, the guy had the warmest heart in cricket. What is more, he was held in exactly the same high regard wherever he went. There wasn’t a dressing room in the world where Kenny wasn’t welcome.
One of the reasons was the humour that went with him; some of it was even intentional. The rest, down to the fact that for years he waged a losing battle with a tongue that simply refused to say what he wanted. ‘Carry on like that,’ he told me once, ‘and you’ll be caught in two-man’s land.’ ‘Bowl to him there,’ he urged, ‘and you’ll have him between the devil and the deep blue, err … sky.’
But he was far more than a figure of fun. In fact, I would go so far as to say that had untimely death not cut short his second career, I believe Kenny would have become a truly great coach. Confidant, technician, helper and motivator; these were his responsibilities as he saw them. And he was excellent at all of them.
The last thing a player wants to hear from a coach is the sentence that begins with the dreaded words: ‘In my day.’ I never once heard him utter them. He was happy enough to talk about the past and his career as a player – and I for one never tired of hearing him recount hitting the mighty Charlie Griffith back over his head for the six with which he reached a century against the West Indies in Trinidad on the 1967–68 tour, his last in Test cricket – but the crucial thing was that he only did so when asked.
The key to Kenny’s success as a coach was that he never spoke down to his players. In later years it became the norm for the coach to adopt a much more authoritarian approach and believe they should ‘run’ the team. Kenny never told anyone to ‘do this’ or ‘do that’; instead, he posed the question: ‘What if you did this?’ or ‘How would you feel about doing that?’, and we responded because we all felt our opinions were being considered.
As a technical coach he was brilliant at spotting little problems and addressing them before they took hold. On my second tour of Australia in 1979–80 he corrected something in my batting that altered the way I played for the rest of my career. I used to take guard on middle-and-leg stumps, then just before the bowler reached the moment of delivery I would move back and across to get right in line. Early in the tour I found I was getting out lbw on a regular basis and couldn’t understand why. The incident that brought things to a head happened in Adelaide, when a South Australian quickie by the name of Wayne Prior won an lbw decision against me with a ball I was convinced was drifting down the leg side.
Kenny saw I was cross when I got back to the dressing room, but when I watched the replay on the television link-up I was amazed to see that I was in fact plumb. Kenny waited until I’d calmed down then quietly took me to one side and suggested we have ten minutes with the bowling machine in the nets. That was all it took. He spotted that I was moving too far across my stumps before the bowler let go, so that balls I thought were going to miss the leg stump were actually hitting about middle and leg.
‘Try taking leg stump guard,’ he said, and for the rest of my career, apart from when specific situations demanded otherwise, I did.
He became a massive influence on me personally. Which is why his sudden death during the Barbados Test on the 1980–81 tour of the West Indies hit so hard. When I took the phone call from A. C. Smith, our manager, I just didn’t want to believe