Botham’s the benchmark but Freddie and Ben have breathed fire and desire into the game
Peter Hayter, The Cricket Paper’s esteemed correspondent, looks back over his years of reporting on England Test cricket around the world and identifies the greatest players over this period. This week, the all-rounders come to the fore...
(Tests - 102, Runs - 5200, 100s - 14, Highest Score - 208, Average - 33.55, Wickets - 383, 5 wkt. innings - 27, 10 wkt. matches – 4, Average – 28.40) It is the morning of Friday February 15, 1980, in a room somewhere in the Taj Mahal Hotel, Bombay, and cricket writer Chris Lander is desperately trying to rouse himself after a massive night out with a couple of England cricketers.
The thumping in his head is not eased by the knowledge that he is late for the start of the first day of the Jubilee Test at the Wankhede but, with the forgiving time difference between India and London, he has a few hours before the sports desk to start chasing and he switches on the television to find out what’s happening at the ground.
The first thing he sees – though in view of how much grog was consumed the night before – he can barely believe: the sight of one of his drinking mates running in to bowl at Sunil Gavaskar, in oppressive heat, seemingly fresh as a daisy.
The next thing he notices is the smoke that is rising from the back of the telly.
Prising it open, he soon understands why. Pieces of tandoori chicken, carefully placed inside it, have ignited.
From somewhere behind him, Lander hears an appeal and he looks back at the screen to see the fire-starter celebrating the wicket of the Little Master – caught behind by Bob Taylor, the first of seven catches in the innings for the Derbyshire ‘keeper, and the first of 13 wickets Ian Botham is to take in the match (six for 58 in the first innings and seven for 48 in the second) in which, the only player to pass fifty, he also makes 114 as England win by 10 wickets on the fourth day.
This was Botham at his gigantic best, with captain Mike Brearley expertly pulling his strings, and there was still a year to pass before his brilliant batting and bowling transformed the 1981 Ashes, about which, if any self-respecting cricket lover does not know the full story, they really have not been paying attention.
Picking through the tales to try and separate truth from legend would take a lifetime. Some of the coverage, during the ‘sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll’ tour of New Zealand, or after he copped a ban for admitting to smoking dope then, later, when he allowed himself to be seduced by a lunatic agent into thinking he was going to be Hollywood’s next big thing was pure, tabloid-led fantasy.
But that was inevitable because, in whatever he did, on or off the field, in his extraordinary work for charity, raising millions for Leukaemia research on his marathon walks around the world, receiving a knighthood in 2007 as a result, Botham rendered the expression larger-than-life laughably inadequate.
Inspired by watching John Wayne westerns as a kid he grew up, if that is the correct term, to become the man who lived other men’s dreams, and to hell with the consequences for himself, and sadly also, on occasions for those closest to him – a point he himself recognises.
But just how good a player he was is sometimes forgotten. At his physical peak, when he could bowl genuinely fast, he swung the ball both ways dangerously late (skills taught by the former England bowler Tom Cartwright, which enabled him to extend his career to the 1992 World Cup Final even thought his body was broken) and possessed not only a fearsome bouncer but also the priceless asset of being able to get people out because of who he was and not what he bowled; a force borne of towering self-belief encouraged by his mentor and Somerset captain, Brian Close, who was another raving nutter.
He caught impossible slip catches from a starting position with his hands on his knees.With the bat – though he suffered from a lack of patience – having to fend off the fearsome West Indies pace machine and, occasionally in county cricket, trying too hard to outdo his friend and soul mate Vivian Richards, he had the complete game in defence and attack.
Botham was, quite simply, the best all-round cricketer this country has produced, and one of the best the world has seen. How he would have fared in the modern game, with its emphasis on bench-pressing, compression socks and laptops is anybody’s guess. But cricket in this country was lucky to have him, warts and all.
Andrew Flintoff
(Tests - 79, Runs - 3845, 100s - 5, Highest Score - 167, Average - 31.78, Wickets - 226, 5 wkt. innings - 3, 10 wkt. matches - 0, Average - 32.79) A measure of size of the hole left in the England team by the diminution of Botham’s power after his final international game in 1992, was that it took a decade for a player to emerge capable of exerting anything like the same impact on the field.
Chris Lewis, a supreme athlete capable of fast spells, sumptuous drives and stupendous catches, was, for a variety of reasons, simply too inconsistent to do justice to his talent. Dominic Cork was a more-thanuseful swing bowler and a capable bat to boot. But how desperate England supporters had become for a talisman; a cricketer to drag them out of the doldrums of the 1990s that both, in turn, were tagged the new ‘Botham’ and, frankly, anyone who genuinely believed they warranted comparison must have been living on Button Moon. Since Mike Gatting’s side won in Australia in 1986-87, England had endured series after series of false hope and crushing disappointment. When they lost again in 2002-03, one bookmaker even received an enquiry from a punter asking for a price on Australia retaining the Ashes for another 50 years. And then came ‘Freddie’, who, like Botham, was defined by his performances against the Aussies, good and bad.
The best came in the summer of 2005 when, as Botham had done 24 years earlier, the lanky, somewhat gangly Lancastrian would make the difference between Michael Vaughan’s inexperienced optimists and Ricky Ponting’s world champions.
Others made sizeable contributions, but on one August day at Edgbaston it was Flintoff, roared on by the partisan Edgbaston crowd, who grabbed the second Test and bent it to his will... and with it the series.
Flintoff had already made significant contributions with the bat and ball, his first-innings 68 and three for 52 helping establish a 99-run lead.
But all that hard work was starting to look increasingly irrelevant as Australia hit back, reducing England to 72 for five when Flintoff came to the crease then, apparently catastrophically, 131 for nine.
Worse, in attempting to heave Shane Warne out of the ground, Flintoff had jarred his right shoulder badly and seemed barely able to grip the bat. But coming out after a lunch interval spent
undergoing intensive work from physio Kirk Russell, Freddie got to work, finishing with 73 from 86 balls, with six fours and four sixes, two in one over from Michael Kasprowicz which took him to 50, and the best of all, from a 94mph delivery from Brett Lee, landing on the pavilion roof.
When Australia set off in pursuit of 282 to win the match and, in all probability the Ashes too, he stepped up again, this time to decisive effect.
Justin Langer and Matthew Hayden had cruised along to take Australia to 47-0 when Vaughan threw the ball to Flintoff, neither man certain whether his shoulder could stand the strain. Seven deliveries later (the sixth was a no-ball), swinging the ball both ways at extreme pace and with every one of them on the money, the picture had changed utterly, Langer and Ponting were out and England were back in charge.
Afterwards, Fred batted away all talk of Botham, saying:“I’m just playing cricket with my mates. I don’t want to put myself under pressure trying to be something I’m not.”, but, by the time he stumbled blearily from the open-topped bus in Trafalgar Square, millions of England supporters were chanting:“Super, super Fred... super Freddie Flintoff”.
Leading the side Down Under for the return, those cheers turned to tears, at the end of his run-up in Adelaide, when it became clear he and they were powerless to halt the ferocious Aussie backlash.
Finally, relying on pure courage to get through the pain of knee injuries that had dogged him for the latter part of his career – perhaps exacerbated by a tendency to be over bowled – his last big show cemented his place in Ashes folklore. His five for 92 at Lord’s during the second Test of the 2009 home series set England towards a series victory, which was confirmed at The Oval, when his direct hit ran out Ponting and snuffed out Australia’s last hope.
Flintoff spoke often of how heavily he relied on self-confidence, the presence of which made him feel like a giant – its absence leaving him cowering like the one who gets sand kicked in his face on the beach.
But when it was with him, he was immense, unstoppable… just like Beefy.
On one August day at Edgbaston, it was Flintoff – roared on by the crowd – who grabbed the second Test and bent it to his will, and with it the series
Ben Stokes
(Tests - 27, Runs – 1,557, 100s – 3, Highest Score – 258, Average – 33.13, Wickets – 71, 5 wkt. innings – 2, 10 wkt. matches - 0, Average – 33.32) Already, after fewer than 30 Tests, regarded as the best all-rounder in the world, Stokes has the game to stay at the top for as long as his body allows.
He first came to prominence for being sent home from the Lions tour Down Under in early 2013 following two breaches of discipline, which, if nothing else, would have made Botham’s ears prick up. Some believed this might indicate the danger of great talent going to waste. County skipper Paul Collingwood, however, reasoned:“If they didn’t think he had a future they wouldn’t have bothered kicking him off the tour.”
When Stokes returned to Australia later that same year, it was to challenge for a spot in the Ashes. Given a chance for the second Test in Adelaide, he soon made his presence felt by giving as good as he got from Mitchell Johnson and in the next in Perth his defiant second-innings century was the best thing England produced in the whole sorry 5-0 whitewash.
Red-haired, Kiwi-born and the son of a New Zealand International rugby league player, Stokes appears permanently on the point of exploding, possessing the shortest of fuses, an inability to see the funny side of having the mickey taken out of him and a weakness for punching dressing room furniture, which cost him a place in the 2014 World Twenty20.
After Carlos Brathwaite smashed him for four sixes to snatch victory for West Indies in this year’s World T20 final, he probably wished he had missed that one as well. But he more than merits skipper Alastair Cook’s description of him as England’s X-factor – with the ball using conventional and reverse swing to trouble the best; with the bat, a proper player with a top score of 258 against South Africa in January; and, in the field, diving full length in the slips to catch Adam Voges one handed behind his body at Trent Bridge last summer, pulling off the truly sensational.
If he can live up to his potential he could dominate England cricket for a decade…. just like Beefy.