Physical Address

304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124

You should not be surprised Ian Botham was rescued from crocodiles by an Australian

In his playing pomp England’s great all-rounder was Ashes kryptonite for Merv Hughes and compatriots but they love him for his ebullience

On seeing the news about Ian Botham and a river full of deadly Australian predators, one felt like echoing the words of another England cricketer: “Beefy, who writes your scripts?”
The whole story, with its crocodiles and sharks, was quintessential Botham. The man is a Boy’s Own comic in human form. And the fact that he was rescued by Merv Hughes – the Australian fast bowler whose moustache has been likened to a baby koala – provided the perfect twist.
We should not be surprised that Botham was rescued by an Australian. He remains as popular Down Under as he is here, even though he has done more than any man alive to frustrate their sporting ambitions.
Hard-bitten Aussie cricketers often regard their English equivalents as bloodless and lily-livered: a posse of bank clerks who missed their calling. But not Botham. Instinctive, irreverent and insubordinate, he had all the qualities they most admired.
Perhaps this explains why they found it so difficult to play against him. This made sense in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when Botham was a sporting genius: a fast bowler who swung it away late, and a six-hitting batsman in an age when the forward defensive still ruled.
What was more surprising was Botham’s late-period dominance, which endured into the days when his back had gone, and his figure was more Porky than Beefy. Facing Australia at the 1992 World Cup, he took four wickets bowling so slowly that Alec Stewart had to stand up to the stumps. It was like watching Dr Who outwitting a legion of Daleks, armed only with a sonic screwdriver.
As it happens, Hughes was on the wrong end of one of Botham’s most brilliant and influential innings: the extraordinary hundred which got England’s 1986-87 Ashes campaign off to a flier.
In the build up to that first Test, England had played such shambolic cricket that one correspondent wrote: “There are only three things wrong with the English team – they can’t bat, they can’t bowl, and they can’t field.” But the whole tour’s mood changed when Botham got up and addressed his team-mates at a dinner on the eve of the Test, saying: “Forget everything else, that was practice.”
Playing just his second Test, Hughes was unprepared for the ferocity of Botham’s attack. In desperation, he resorted to bowling shorter and shorter, targeting that extravagantly mulleted head. It did not work. As Hughes’s team-mate David Boon told Telegraph Sport: “I was at mid-off and Merv said to me, ‘Where am I going to bowl to him?’ I said ‘Mate, you could try pitching it up.’ Merv bounced him and it disappeared for another six.”
When Australia came to England 2½ years later, Hughes would take some small measure of revenge, clean-bowling Botham during the Edgbaston Test. But the outcome, in those days, was only part of the point.
Players mixed freely in the bar after the match, and any harsh words were forgotten. Hughes himself was responsible for many of the best sledges, mixing X-rated profanities with cheesy wisecracks: “If you turn the bat over you’ll find the instructions on the other side.” Even so, his enduring friendships with Botham and other former opponents – not to mention his resemblance to a silent-movie villain – suggest it was all something of a pantomime act.
The ethos of the 1980s Ashes was neatly summed up by another Australian – Martin Kent – in a recent interview marking the 40th anniversary of Botham’s Ashes. “Whenever Ian comes out to Australia, I try to catch up with him in Brisbane, and so do a couple of the other fellas,” said Kent, who was the key scalp in Botham’s match-winning spell of five wickets for one run in the 1981 Edgbaston thriller.
“The beauty of it is that there seems to be a wonderful camaraderie, whether you were an opponent or not. You never like to be a loser, but I wouldn’t change the experience for the world.”

en_USEnglish