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and that she would have to understand that cricket came first.

      Undeterred, Kath and I kept to our plan. We had originally intended to wait for three or four years before actually taking the plunge but while attending the wedding of a friend a few weeks later, my impatience and impetuosity got the better of me. ‘Let’s get married as soon as possible,’ I suggested. So we promptly set the date for the coming January!

      Having decided to live in the north, Kath found us a tiny two-bedroomed cottage in Mowbray Street, Epworth, opposite the birthplace of the methodist John Wesley, and Jan and Gerry gave us the deposit as a wedding present. Furniture was begged and borrowed and, with the help of another friend, I even managed to install a central heating system.

      My only concern about the whole affair was what Kath was going to wear. I am very much a traditionalist when it comes to this kind of occasion, so you can imagine my reaction when I heard the rumour that my bride-to-be was contemplating walking down the aisle in a white trouser-suit. Suitably unimpressed, I took Jan to one side and pleaded with her to make sure that when they went to choose the wedding dress, she should do all in her power to dissuade Kath from picking anything too unusual. She did try. On one occasion, according to Jan, Kath fell in love with something pretty horrible which she had set her heart on. ‘Of course you can have it,’ said Jan, ‘but you’ll have to pay for it yourself’, and their journey home was endured in stony silence.

      In the event, the only real casualty of our wedding day was ‘Jerusalem’ – the organist murdered it. So there I was, on 31 January 1976, married, housed and established in the Somerset first XI by the age of twenty.

      I realized, however, that the real work now had to begin in earnest. This was the make-or-break point for me, the moment when my career could have gone one of two ways: I would either make real progress, or there was a real chance I would end up looking at an uncertain future. I was determined to succeed and, as Closey had indicated when he warned Kath of the consequences of getting married to me at such a young age, that inevitably was going to lead to difficulties in our relationship.

      To put it simply, my attitude was that if the Ian Botham story was going to go anywhere, my cricket had to come first no matter what the cost. In fact, the Ian Botham story was lucky to last beyond late May, when Brian Close nearly killed me.

      Closey was an appalling driver. I recall one time when he took his car into a garage for crash repairs, collected it on the same day, then returned it for more of the same less than a few minutes later. He had got a lift from Gerry to the garage, signed the papers, said ‘Thanks very much’ and drove away from the forecourt to a roundabout where, only 50 yards away and in full view of the mechanics who had just finished patching it up, he ploughed straight into the back of a lorry. Within minutes he was recircling the roundabout and limping back to the garage to ask them to mend it again.

      Despite his incompetence behind the wheel I normally travelled everywhere with Brian, though one time that I didn’t will forever be etched in my memory. The occasion of my narrow escape took place after the close of play in Somerset’s match against Surrey at Guildford. After stumps had been drawn, I was sitting in the bar having a pint with my team-mate Pete ‘Dasher’ Denning. Brian said he was going back to the team hotel and I told him I would get a lift from one of the other players and would see him later, a fortunate decision on my part as it turned out. On his journey Brian went over some oil on a bend in the road and lost control of the car before smashing into a lamp post. When I saw the wreckage later I realized how lucky I had been, as the area around the passenger seat had totally caved in. Naturally, Closey didn’t have a mark on him!

      At least he was doing his best for me in other respects. Called up to face the West Indies in the 1976 summer Test series, I’m sure he put in a good word for me with the England captain Tony Greig. After I scored my maiden first-class century, 167 not out, to help Somerset beat Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge at the beginning of August, the calls for my elevation to the international side began gathering momentum.

      My delight at being picked for England for the first one-day match against the West Indies at Scarborough on 26 August was understandable. But what I did not appreciate at the time, in fact until years later when it was too late to fully make amends, was the effect my single-mindedness was having on Kath.

      She had been warned in advance, of course, that the life of a cricketer’s wife is seldom easy. Apart from the long separations, during which so much has to be taken on trust, when a player is attempting to establish himself in a highly competitive environment it is all too easy for him to forget, ignore, neglect or simply be blind to the needs of his partner, and that can lead to big problems. This, regrettably, was certainly the case with our relationship during those early years.

      I was so focused on what I was trying to do and so self-centred in that respect that Kath, regretably, often came second on my list of priorities and that affected her deeply. During our initial courtship, I would make a point of looking out for her arrival at the ground and was the first out of the dressing room to see her at the close of play. As I began to establish myself in the Somerset team over the next couple of years, the need to be so attentive seemed to become less and less important. As I mentioned before, Kath often said to me that I was putting the team and the cricket before her. Of course, I reacted as you would expect me to at that stage of my life, by telling her not to be so silly and to cheer up and get on with it.

      I know now how hurtful it was to her, for instance, when the following season she was the last to know that I had been called up for my Test debut against Australia at Trent Bridge. She had in fact been informed by my mother Marie.

      ‘Isn’t it wonderful news about Ian?’ Marie had said.

      ‘What news?’ asked Kath.

      Marie told her that after their celebratory drink at the ground she had been home for some while and had been certain that I would have rung home by now to tell Kath.

      Kath was fuming when I did eventually get round to calling her, particularly as I excused the oversight in typically clumsy fashion.

      ‘Oh, sorry, love. The lads brought me a drink and I got carried away. You know how it is.’

      ‘Perhaps next time you have some good news,’ she said, ‘you might consider letting me in on it. Although I do realize I am only your wife.’

      Looking back on those times, this was not the only example of my thoughtlessness. Kath also got somewhat irritated when I went out with the players and dismissed her by saying, ‘Why don’t you go and have a chat with so-and-so’s wife?’ I was not deliberately trying to exclude her, although later on when it came to dealing with the latest tabloid scandal I certainly was also guilty of that. It was just that the merry-go-round was travelling at full pelt – and I didn’t want to get off.

      I was living for today and letting tomorrow look after itself. I was approaching life like a single man, blissfully unconcerned about marital responsibilities – the original one-eyed jerk. The immediate result was that quite soon after we were married, Kath became very depressed, so much so that she sought medical advice. She went to see our local doctor and told him that she kept bursting into tears. He did not seem to be very helpful, but I was worse. I just couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about and so we rowed … and rowed. We were both strong-willed characters, and Kath gave as good as she got. The situation was not helped, of course, by the fact that I had insisted that we continue to live in Yorkshire while during the summer I would be based in Taunton. During the season, when the opportunity arose of spending some time at home, I then managed to make things considerably worse by disappearing for games of golf. The problem grew and the tension between us rose to such an extent that on occasions when driving the 28 miles from my parents’ house in Yeovil (where Kath would occasionally spend time) to a match at Taunton, the extent of my input into the conversation would be the occasional grunted ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

      I’m happy to say that, against all the odds and most people’s expectations, Kath and I have managed to stick together through thick and thin, but I have no hesitation in saying that she deserves the lion’s share of the credit for that. How she put up with me in those early days, I’ll never know. Although this

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