Why, 20 years on, the Botham Report has proved to be ahead of its time
For those who loved bad news about England cricket, the ten-year cycle whose start was marked by the Ashes victory of Mike Gatting’s team on the 1986-87 tour Down Under was the gift that kept on giving.
It began badly with successive Test series defeats against Pakistan home and away, the second made notorious by the skipper’s finger-wagging spat with home umpire Shakoor Rana in Faisalabad.
It got spectacularly worse a year later when, in 1988, England were not only subjected to the routine thrashing by West Indies, but also, in the aftermath of the indiscretion that cost the Middlesex man his job, managed to use up an impressive four captains in a five-Test series.
There was an all-too-brief respite from 1990 to ’92 when skipper Graham Gooch and coach Micky Stewart combined to produce fitter, bettertrained and better-prepared cricketers, though, understanding the state most players were in when they started the process, even they would admit that wasn’t difficult.
That apart, England carried on collapsing for almost all of the rest of those ten years in which four successive Ashes defeats produced a combined match score of Australia 14 England 2, they “enjoyed” a five-season run in which they pulled off just two series wins from 13, one each against New Zealand and India and both 1-0, and, in all, achieved the sum total of one Test series win overseas out of 11.
On the tenth anniversary of the moment Gatting’s side clinched their last Ashes win, Saturday December 28, 1996, a week on from the moment coach David Lloyd told the world “we’ve hammered them” after their first Test against Zimbabwe ended in a draw, an England team led by Mike Atherton was bowled out at the Harare Sports Club for 156 by a nation that only started playing Test cricket four years earlier.
Then, when the home side went on to complete their 3-0 ODI whitewash by winning the final match by 131 runs, one of Gatting’s heroes, who had been suffering not so silently since he quit the game soon after also playing his part in England reaching the 1992 World Cup final, could contain himself no longer.
Thus, in 1997, The Botham Report was born, a 288-page exercise in losing one’s shin pads, described by The
Cricketer magazine as “a real tour de force”. In it, England’s greatest all-rounder first trained his sights on the administrators he deemed chiefly responsible for the whole sorry mess, aiming his heaviest barrage at those county chairmen hellbent on preserving a domestic system he felt hampered rather than helped England to find, produce and preserve world class cricketers, then offered up his ten-point plan for turning things round.
Twenty years on, a review of the proposals in his book makes interesting reading.
1. A two-division championship with promotion and relegation.
Botham’s idea was to “raise the level of competition and toughness required among county players for too long stuck in the mire of mediocrity”. Such a system was introduced in 2000 and the jury is out on whether it has achieved that aim as regards preparing young players for the intensity of Test cricket, as, in the main England players are identified before they enter Championship cricket and can stay in the national stream until they are finished.
2. Contract an elite squad of international players to the central board.
Also introduced in 2000, very few argue that central contracts have been anything but beneficial in the preparation, fitness and longevity of England players in general and pace bowlers in particular. Unlike precontract days when bowlers like Angus Fraser dragged themselves around the country fuelled mainly by painkillers, bowling day-in dayout for country and club, James Anderson and Stuart Broad have remained largely fit for England duty throughout their England careers. It is not a coincidence. Within five years, a run of six successive Test series wins against all-comers culminated in England finally regaining the Ashes at the ninth time of asking. Neither was that.
3. Scrap one one-day domestic competition; standardise at 50 overs one League and one Cup contest; jazz up the 50-over League to attract casual and young supporters.
As Botham pointed out: “It is absurd that clubs currently play three different types of one-day domestic cricket – the 40-over Sunday League, the 50-over Benson & Hedges and the 60-over NatWest, when all international one-day cricket is now played over 50 overs.” Jazz up the 50-over League? Did Botham even foresee T20?
4. Trim playing staffs to maximum 20 full-time professionals; reorganise 2nd XI cricket to be youth-oriented.
A quick scan of county rosters shows 20 seems to be the magic number; 2nd XI cricket is no longer “populated by failed first-teamers who will never make the grade”.
5. Replace the benefit system with pension funds; give the PCA (Professional Cricketers’ Association) funds to develop after-cricket training programmes.
The benefit system survives, despite the best efforts of former Chancellor George Osborne, who wanted to scrap their tax-free status. After negotiations with the PCA, HMRC agreed that the first £100,000 raised should be exempt and, in conjunction with the ECB they have introduced pension schemes as well. Insurance schemes and PCA development programmes, part-funded by ECB, have transformed the prospects of those retiring or forced to quit the game.
6. Introduce quality control in the hiring of overseas players.
Botham, who grew up playing county cricket with Vivian Richards and Joel Garner at Somerset and against world-class opponents in every other team, envisaged recruiting the world’s best to help maintain the standard of Championship cricket and bring on the next generation of England players.
No one told him about Kolpak, or indeed the global march of T20 franchise cricket.
7. Establish a National Cricket Academy; appoint a National Director of Coaching.
Her Majesty The Queen officially opened the ECB’s National Academy at Loughborough University in November 2003. In 2007 the name was changed to the National Cricket Performance Centre.
Botham said: “There are those who consider that 19 centres of excellence would be better than one. If they could all boast the same kind of high-tech facilities and top-quality coaches, fair enough.” In 2014 after leaving the England coach’s post in the wake of their 5-0 thrashing in Australia, Andy Flower was appointed the ECB’s technical director of elite coaching. The same, but different?
8. Create a level school playing field.
Botham’s idea, directed primarily at the state school system from which he and many of his contemporaries emerged, was to “establish a national development plan for schools cricket and, with the help of the government, seek to offer cricket as part of a national sporting curriculum”. Good luck with that.
9. Revamp the marketing of the game.
Botham cited Warwickshire’s success in staging the first competitive one-day match, under floodlights, against Somerset at Edgbaston. A crowd of 15,000 attended, earning the club a profit of £70,000. “Let the marketing men loose” on one-day cricket, he demanded. Come in T20 in 2020.
10. Appoint a chief executive with full and unfettered power to make all the above happen.
The venerable E.W. “Jim” Swanton of the
Daily Telegraph thought Botham meant himself. Can you imagine? By skillfully manoeuvring their way past opposition from county clubs over their new vision for the future of the game, have ECB chairman Colin Graves, Chief Executive Tom Harrison and Director of England cricket Andrew Strauss become the three-in-one Botham was looking for?
Soon after the book was published Botham was approached by influential figures within the ECB hierarchy with whom his 10-point plan had struck many chords.
They asked him if he would be prepared to present it to the county chairmen.
Botham knew precisely what the response would be; a backlash that might ensure any such changes would be buried for another 20 years.
Instead, since he first aired them, many of his proposals have come to pass and, in comparison to what had gone before, the subsequent upturn in England’s fortunes suggests at least some were sound enough.