Ian Botham's careers teacher asked what he was really going to do
When a teenage Ian Botham said he wanted to be a sportsman, his careers teacher replied that everyone wants to play sport, so what was he really going to do? A coach at Lord's rated him a decent average county player at best. He went on to hold the world record for Test wickets.
Botham was born on 24 November 1955 in Heswall, Cheshire, and grew up in Yeovil, where his father tested helicopters at Westland. Both parents played cricket. At about four he came home with a ball and asked his mother whether she knew how to grip it for a daisy-cutter. By nine he was turning up at local grounds with his kit, hoping a team was a player short, and at thirteen he captained his school's under-16 side.
Football tempted him too. Crystal Palace, then in the First Division, offered apprentice forms, but he judged himself the better cricketer and stayed with Somerset. Too young for a full contract, he joined the Lord's ground staff at 16, cleaning pavilion windows, selling scorecards and pushing the roller, while spending every spare hour in the nets. Tom Cartwright, a former Test player, taught him swing bowling, which he absorbed remarkably fast.
An early glimpse of his temperament came in a 1974 cup quarter-final against Hampshire. Walking in at 113 for 7, he took a bouncer from the fast bowler Andy Roberts in the mouth and eventually lost four teeth, yet refused to go off, struck two sixes and finished unbeaten on 45 to win the match by one wicket. He later conceded he probably should have retired hurt.
What followed made him one of England's great all-rounders: 14 Test hundreds with a top score of 208, 27 five-wicket hauls, and in 1980 only the second match double in Test history, a century plus ten wickets in the same game. From 1986 to 1988 no one had taken more Test wickets, until Richard Hadlee passed him. Away from cricket he played eleven league games for Scunthorpe United, raised more than 13 million pounds for leukaemia research, and in 2020 entered the House of Lords as a crossbench peer.
Source: Ian Botham
