Champagne sport

Amelia Kerr’s sparkling effort can’t top Botham’s unquenchable spirit.

Was White Fern Amelia Kerr’s staggering all-round display against Ireland in Dublin this month really the greatest performance in cricket history, as some have suggested?

The 17-year-old, whose grandfather Bruce “Bags” Murray opened the batting for New Zealand in 13 tests and whose parents both represented Wellington, has a compelling case: her 232 not out off 145 balls was the third highest individual score in a one-day international and the highest by a woman, breaking a 21-year-old record. She’s the youngest double centurion in international cricket history. After a 10-minute nap, she backed up that effort by taking five wickets for 17 runs with her leg spinners.

However, she’s up against stern competition. In a one-off test against India in Mumbai in 1980, England all-rounder Ian Botham made 114 in his only innings and took 13 wickets for 106. To put it in perspective: no other batsman in the match reached 50 and the next most successful bowler claimed five wickets.

And although Ireland is a cricketing minnow, that was a decent Indian team containing two genuine greats – opening batsman Sunil Gavaskar and allrounder Kapil Dev – plus world-class batsmen in Dilip Vengsarkar and Gundappa Viswanath.

Where Botham almost certainly has the edge is that he also pushed the envelope off the field. He blazed his way to a century despite, or perhaps because of, staying up until the wee small hours drinking brandy. And, the night before the final day’s play, he challenged legendary journalist Chris “Crash” Lander and teammate Derek Underwood to stand on a table drinking brandy and eating tandoori chicken while reading from the Bible. After they’d failed miserably, he showed them how it was done. The next morning, he took a wicket in his first over.