Ian Botham

Somerset to the Test side

Ian Botham came through Somerset county cricket and made his Test debut against Australia at Trent Bridge in 1977, taking 5 wickets in the match. He was 21, quick, aggressive with both bat and ball, and by the end of the decade he had become the player England built its side around, a genuine fast-bowling all-rounder in an era when very few teams had one. His Test career ran to 1992, his last appearance coming against Pakistan at Lord's, by which point he had played 102 Tests.

England had gone without a genuine fast-bowling all-rounder of his class for a generation, and Botham filled the gap almost as soon as he arrived, taking wickets with hostile, attacking bowling in his early matches while also batting with the same freedom he would carry through his career. Within three years of his debut he was captain of England, a rise as fast as any player of his generation experienced.

The all-rounder

Botham's combination of bat and ball across his career, 5,200 runs at 33.55 and 383 wickets at 28.40, made him one of the small number of players to have scored more than 5,000 Test runs and taken more than 300 wickets. His batting, mostly from number six, produced 14 centuries and 22 fifties, his highest score 208 against India at Kennington Oval in 1982; his bowling produced 27 five-wicket innings and 4 ten-wicket matches, his best figures 8 for 34 against Pakistan at Lord's in 1978 and his best match figures 13 for 106 against India at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai in 1980, both matches England won.

A captaincy that did not work

Botham captained England in 12 Tests, winning none and losing 4, a spell widely regarded as the low point of his career and one that ended shortly before his most famous match. He gave up the captaincy after a difficult Lord's Test against Australia in 1981, and Mike Brearley, who had captained England previously, returned to lead the side for the very next Test, at Headingley. Released from the responsibility of leadership, Botham went on to produce the innings that has defined his career ever since.

Headingley, 1981

Australia made 401 for 9 declared batting first, and when England were bowled out for 174 and asked to follow on, 227 behind, a Headingley crowd already resigned to defeat watched them slip further behind still. Botham then made 149 not out in England's second innings of 356, an innings built on repeated attacking strokes rather than caution, with bookmakers reportedly offering odds as long as 500 to 1 against an England win at the depth of the collapse. It left Australia needing only 130 to win.

They never got there. Bob Willis bowled one of the most celebrated spells in Ashes history, 8 for 43, to bowl Australia out for 111, and England won by 18 runs, a Test that had, for three days, looked entirely lost. Botham's innings is the one people remember, but it took Willis's bowling on the final day to turn the position he had created into victory.

Against India

Botham's figures against India stand apart from the rest of his career: an average of 70.65 with the bat from 14 Tests, well above his career figure, and 59 wickets at 26.41, including his best match bowling figures of 13 for 106 at Mumbai in 1980. Across a shorter run of matches than he played against Australia or West Indies, his output against India shows the same player at his most complete, scoring heavily and taking wickets in the same series rather than one discipline carrying the other. His 208 against India at the Oval in 1982 and 142 against the same opponent at Kanpur the same year came within a couple of seasons of that Mumbai match bowling performance, a short stretch of cricket that produced some of the best figures of his career in both disciplines against a single opponent.

Australia and Lord's

Australia were the opponent he faced most often, 36 Tests, and the one against whom he took most wickets, 148 at 27.66, though his batting average against them, 29.35, sat below his career figure, the effort of Headingley aside. West Indies' great pace attack of the era gave him his hardest examination with the bat, an average of 21.41 from 20 Tests against a bowling average that climbed to 35.18, by some distance his most expensive figure against any regular opponent.

By ground, Lord's was where he played most often, 15 Tests for 69 wickets, though his best figures there with the ball, 8 for 34 against Pakistan, came early in his career, in 1978. His most prolific batting ground was the Kennington Oval, where his 208 against India sat inside a stretch of 600 runs at an average of 40 from 11 Tests, and Headingley itself, 10 Tests, brought a batting average of 41.75, the highest of any ground he played more than a handful of times.

The numbers

The bare totals: 102 Tests, 161 batting innings, 6 not outs, 5,200 runs, a highest score of 208, 14 hundreds and 22 fifties, for a batting average of 33.55; 383 wickets at 28.40 with 27 five-wicket innings and 4 ten-wicket matches. He was named player of the match 11 times. His first decade in Test cricket, the 1970s, was in some ways his sharpest with the ball, 118 wickets at 19.27 from 22 Tests as a young bowler at his most dangerous, before his busiest decade by both disciplines, the 1980s, brought 4,051 runs at 33.76 and 258 wickets at a heavier 32.40 from 75 Tests, the stretch that included Headingley and most of his biggest performances. His home figures, a bowling average of 27.55 across 59 Tests in England, were sharper than his away figure of 29.63 across 43 Tests, and his home batting average, 34.93, sat close to his away figure of 31.87, a smaller home advantage than many of his contemporaries showed.

Legacy

Botham retired in 1992 and went on to a long career in cricket broadcasting, remaining one of the most recognisable figures in English cricket for decades afterward. Headingley 1981 stayed the match by which his career is most remembered, not because it was his statistically biggest performance, but because of the position England were in when he produced it. The full scorecards behind every figure above, and Botham's record match by match, are on his CricArcade player page, and the wider England team archive carries the sides he played in and captained. In The Follow-On you can put him at number six with the ball in hand and see whether he can conjure the same turnaround.

Sources

• CricArcade player page: full career record, best innings and spells, and scorecard links
• ESPNcricinfo: Ian Botham player profile and Test career statistics
• Wisden Cricketers' Almanack: Botham profiles and the 1981 Ashes reports
• Wikipedia: Ian Botham