Botham: My Autobiography - Ian Botham

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glamorous, but I’m proud to say I never went a week without finding something, and ironically I earned more in that six months than I did in my first cricket season with the county.

      I didn’t mind the physical work, whether it was as a petrol-pump attendant, brickies’ labourer or plasterer’s mate, and I wonder how many of those who have since walked along the corridors of Yeovil General Hospital realize they are treading on my handiwork. Perhaps the most important aspect of these odd jobs was that they made me appreciate the cricket season all the more when it came, and made me even more determined that there was going to be more to my life than laying floor tiles.

      When I arrived at Lord’s full-time, I had my first taste of the kind of ritualistic behaviour that is part and parcel of professional sport – the initiation ceremony. The older boys would come into the junior dressing room, grab the newcomer, pin him down and strip him, then coat his privates in whitewash. All very grown up, of course, but the fact is that your standing within the group was dependent on how well you resisted the assault. Although only sixteen, I was a bit of a handful even then. The first time it happened to me, it took about six of the boys to hold me down. So I was ‘in’. There was a lot of larking about, particularly on rainy days, and if any of my playing colleagues or opponents who became victims of my practical jokes later on want to know from where I got the idea of setting fire to newspapers while they were being read, or sticking chunks of fresh (and sometimes not so fresh) fruit or the occasional prawn in their batting gloves just before they went out to bat, they need wonder no more.

      My big mate at the time was Rodney Ontong, who had arrived from East London near Johannesburg, South Africa. In many ways his home town was as much in the sticks as Yeovil had been, and as two country boys we immediately hit it off. We also shared the same confident attitude and approached cricket in an identical fashion – our motto was work hard on the pitch, then play hard afterwards. I would provide scrumpy from Yeovil and Onty would arrive with his suitcase loaded with South African brandy. It was a genuinely gruesome combination, but it did the job and the groundstaff Head Boy, Bill Jones, one of whose jobs, would you believe, was to ensure discipline in the ranks, would often be left to pick up the human debris at the end of the night’s entertainment. I soon learned all about the drinking games that you had to compete in if you wanted to be part of the social scene: the yards of ale, the boat races and the like. I had sampled beer before coming to Lord’s, but it was only when I formed my partnership with Onty that I really started to get the taste.

      The only difference between us was that he managed to toe the line better than me when it came to discipline. He would make sure that he stayed on-side with the coaches, Len Muncer and his assistant Harry Sharp. But I struggled with Len, who was one of the military school of cricketers, with razor-sharp creases in his flannels and immaculate shoes. What annoyed me most was that he had decided very early on that I couldn’t bowl. That was absurd because Somerset had sent me up as an all-rounder, not just a batsman who could bowl a bit. I wanted to be in the game as much as possible and Len’s resistance was a pain in the neck.

      Most of my bowling was done in the nets, not only for practice but also because it was the place to escape from some of the more mundane tasks that were part of the job. By falling out with Len, however, I lost out on one of the perks.

      At weekends when MCC teams were playing up and down the country, they would more often than not find themselves a player or two short. So they would send to Lord’s for a member of the groundstaff who would then not only have his expenses paid but would also enjoy a free lunch and tea. From one match you could end up making as much as the £12 we were paid per week. Len controlled the list of who went where and unfortunately, because of our differences, I was hardly ever selected for one of these trips.

      The bottom line was that Len didn’t have much time for me because he felt I was too brash and over-confident. He may even have been right. I probably didn’t do myself much good in his eyes when on one occasion my desire to prove myself in this fiercely competitive world led to me breaking convention. I was going through a bad patch at the time with my batting and when we came up against a weak side from the City of London school, I failed to follow the normal tradition of giving your wicket away, preferably in a suitably subtle manner, on reaching fifty. I went on to make a hundred instead, and after leaving the field to stony silence I was taken to one side by Len and given a fearful ear-bashing. His attitude antagonised me no end but, to be fair to him, he did tell my parents that he was surprised I was not being called back to play for Somerset seconds during that year.

      Harry Sharp, nicknamed the ‘admiral’ because he had been an able seaman during the war and who became the Middlesex scorer when he packed up coaching, was different and I always made a point of keeping in touch with him. He would stand behind the net when I was batting, with half a fag stuck behind his ear, and deliver his verdict.

      ‘Bloody awful shot, Botham … but if you keep hitting it son, you keep playing it.’

      The £12 weekly wage did not go far after rent and bills. We were paid on Thursday and by Sunday would be broke. So to stay alive, we got up to the usual tricks like jumping the barriers on the tube, and we soon developed a few key dodges to supplement our meagre income. We never got involved in anything seriously criminal, it was more of an initiative test. One of these, the Great Seat Cushion Scam, was our chief money-maker. It worked like this: Step One – arrive at the ground early. Step Two – divert a number of seat cushions, say 50 to 100 from the normal selling positions to the little booths where we worked selling scorecards. Step Three – when handing over a scorecard to spectators arriving at the ground, offer cushions at 5p rather than the normal 10p hire charge. Call me Al Capone.

      The cushiest number was delivering updated scorecards to the offices all around the ground. That meant constant access to the pavilion, and more importantly, to the kitchens where the ‘legendary’ Nancy Doyle would slip us poor starving waifs the odd bacon butty. Rodney and I even found a way to make some spending money while gargling at the same time. Working behind the Tavern Bar during match days offered excellent opportunities for spirits, not to mention pints, of free enterprise. Basically the trick was that whenever a group of businessmen arrived we made sure they received our undivided attention. Slowly but surely they ended up paying a bit more for each round of drinks, and, of course, the more they imbibed the less they cared. Needless to say, offers of ‘and one for yourself’ were never knowingly refused. After a couple of hours of this we would be staggering around the place, parrot-faced, making a complete cock-up of the orders and ringing up totals that bore absolutely no resemblance to the actual cost of the drinks. When this exercise in creative accounting was performed once too often, Rod and I were given a new order – of the boot.

      Another potential opportunity for cash prizes was the job of bowling at MCC members in the nets. The ones we targeted for special treatment were known as the ‘Jazz Hats’. These were the flash harrys who turned up in their sports cars with all the latest gear that always looked fresh out of the wrapper. The call would come through, Bill Jones would ask the name of the member and if he decided the man in question was not a big enough tipper for him to bother with, he would delegate accordingly.

      The method for finding out what kind of tip you might pick up was tried and trusted. After bowling for five minutes or so and supplying a comfortable number of half-volleys, it would be time to adjust your aim towards the thigh pocket. If you heard the tell-tale jingle of change, there was not much point in continuing the drudgery for too long and it was the signal to start bringing the session to a close with a few quicker deliveries. If you heard no sound at all, there were two possibilities. You were either breaking your back for a tight bastard who carried nothing, or a gent who carried only notes. As you didn’t want to risk missing out on the latter, a lot of players who barely knew which end of a bat to pick up suddenly found themselves middling the ball like world-beaters, hearing exclamations of wonder at their superb strokeplay and astonishment that they were not representing their county at the very least. If the fellow in question turned out to have short arms and deep pockets, however, the next time he turned up it would be open warfare.

      The groundstaff team was known as the Nippers, and whenever we played away we would make sure to feed well during the tea interval. It was comical to watch the lads stuffing chicken legs, vol-au-vents, sandwiches, pork pies

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