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Yet, although he was named one of Wisden’s Five Cricketers of the Century in 2000, his name is honoured more in the breach than the observance. Wally Hammond and Sir Leonard Hutton, to name two of the other great Hs, may be said to occupy a grander position in English cricket. In Hammond’s case it may have something to do with his contrary personality. Colourful characters usually trump gentle ones when biographers reach for their pens. Hutton, who made 364 against Australia at the Oval in 1938, then a world record innings in Test cricket, feels closer to us.
McKinstry captures the spirit of this thoroughly decent man, and also the spirit of the age he dominated, after the retirement of W. G. Grace and before the rise of Sir Donald Bradman. Grace more or less invented cricket, as we know it. Bradman, who averaged 99.94 an innings in Test matches, towers over everybody. Hobbs emerges as a better man than either, and as their equal on the field. It was a wonderful idea to restore the reputation of this undervalued master, and McKinstry has written a book worthy of his subject. In an unshowy way he is an excellent writer.
The greatest English post-war cricketers have been Denis Compton, Fred Trueman and Sir Ian Botham, who were all cut from a different cloth. Simon Wilde, the Sunday Times cricket correspondent, has written a readable, well-researched biography of Botham, which just fails to do him justice. To write, as Wilde does in his summation of this remarkable man’s career, that Botham ‘was not much suited to leading by example’, invites scepticism, to say the least. If he wasn’t, who on earth was?
Botham was the greatest all-rounder this country has produced since Grace. Along with Trueman, the Yorkshire fast bowler, he was one of the two most important cricketers to have played for England since the war, for social reasons as well as cricketing ones. Almost single-handedly (as single-handedly as is possible in a team game) he beat the Australians in the summer of 1981, when he acquired a sheen that will never rub off. The Leeds Test of that year, when England won by 11 runs, after Botham’s unbeaten 149 turned the game on its head, is the most famous victory in English cricket.
For his fearless batting and bowling, and for a series of magnificent walks, including the celebrated one from John o’Groats to Land’s End, Botham is regarded, rightly, as a modern English hero. He has not always behaved like an angel off the field, but it worth considering the words of the cricket writer Dicky Rutnagur which do not appear in this book. ‘Say what you like about Both’, he said, when the player was in hot water, ‘but he likes people.’ Which is why people, whether they are cricket-lovers or not, still cheer for him. No English sportsman in his lifetime has given so much pleasure to so many.
The best parts of Wilde’s book concern the young Botham, as an unhappy member of the MCC groundstaff at Lord’s, and then a cheeky new bug at Somerset, when he formed a friendship with the Antiguan batsman Vivian Richards, the only cricketer to make him feel inferior. Wilde has spoken to many people who knew the young player before he became ‘Ian Botham’, and their testimony is instructive. It is greatly to Botham’s credit that he remains on friendly terms with those men, even though he is rich and famous. Modesty, as Hobbs showed, is always an attractive quality in the gifted.
There are, however, some holes. Witnesses are quoted anonymously, for no apparent reason, and there are two references to an incident in Botham’s Somerset days that Wilde, inexplicably, does not explore. In that case it has no place in a biography. Nor is it wise to keep going on about Botham’s supposed ‘working-class’ roots as a way of explaining his lack of deference to ‘the establishment’. Botham is middle class. Trueman, from mining stock, was working class.
Wilde should have made more of the bizarre interlude at the height of Botham’s fame, in 1985, when he surrendered the management of his career to the absurd Tim Hudson, who whisked him off to Hollywood for an adventure that ended in embarrassment. And it is barely believable that a book about Botham lacks a single reference to Arlott, who recognised the young man’s incipient greatness, and remained his most loyal champion. Yet, whatever its shortcomings, this is a book that reminds us why Botham matters. Three decades after he played cricket of a daring that nobody who saw it will ever forget, he remains the most famous player in the land.
Younger readers may think of Andrew Flintoff as Botham’s successor, and it is true that in the high summer of his career the Lancastrian performed extraordinary feats, notably against Australia. Flintoff retired last autumn, and is honoured in this year’s Wisden. Unfortunately the entry, contributed by Ed Smith, is unworthy of this famous book, for it is essentially about the writer, not the player. Smith, who played cricket for Kent and Middlesex, is a gifted writer but he hasn’t shaken off the unsettling habit of referring to himself. Steve James, another cricketer turned scribe, also fails this test, and so the book is diminished.
If Scyld Berry, the outgoing editor of Wisden, is guilty of sloppiness here, he has the sense to call on John Woodcock, the prince of cricket writers, to reflect on the life of his good friend, Sir Alec Bedser, another titan of the post-war era. ‘There was a native dignity about Alec’, writes Woodcock, ‘besides a becoming unselfconsciousness and gentle homespun humour, a candour, an incumbent melancholy and a liking for the old ways.’ Bedser served the game, and, in his 85th year, so does Woodcock.
Because you read about book reviews
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