SPECTATOR SPORT
Comparing colossi
FRANK KEATING
England’s cricketers came rudely down to earth in the rose-red sandstone of Lahore, and they remain in the old Punjab for another week as they endeavour to pick up the pieces in the one-day rubber which begins today. Less than three months after the heady Ashes parades they began the Test series as warm favourites, but after their batsmen wantonly surrendered a winning position in the first match at Multan they were seldom in the ball park as a suddenly vibrant young Pakistan team, under the shrewd guidance of English coach Bob Woolmer and serenely avuncular captain Inzamam-ul-Haq, grew into men in front of our very eyes. To be honest, the victory gladdened the spirits as it palpably cheered a country beset by so many recent tribulations, not least the ongoing aftermath of a gruesomely savage earthquake. The home players have given their entire match fees to the relief funds — and England, I fancy, might well be donating a few more batting collapses for the cause in this one-day series, for Pakistan with their tails up have always been terrific performers at the shortened game.
The chastened Englishmen will pick up their various individual and collective awards as sportsmen of the year — and why not? 2005 will forever remain a fabled summer triumph. There were even demands by some this week that the bonny, bounding boy of summer, Andrew Flintoff, was so tired — ‘knackered’ was the word — that he should miss these one-dayers and be given a couple of months off before England’s next Test adventure begins in India in the new year. Which seems extreme, even in an age of mollycoddled pro sportsmen. There are some uncannily spot-on comparisons with Flintoff and another so willing that his captains drastically over-bowled him — England’s previous preux chevalier and indefatigable master of the revels, Ian Botham. I have been burrowing in ye olde primrose bible of more than a quarter of a century ago, when Botham gaudily burst upon the nation, as Flintoff has this year, and played his first barnstorming summer of 1978 sandwiched between his two inaugural tours (to New Zealand and Australia).
Ignoring all one-dayers (including Sundays, Botham played in 12 more of those), in a pre cise 14-month span, 27 years apart, Botham and Flintoff each played exactly 15 Test matches. In his 15, Botham scored 766 runs and bowled 476 overs for 77 wickets, compared to Flintoff’s 15 (last summer and the tours to South Africa and Pakistan), when he hit 778 runs, and bowled 571 overs for 67 wickets. Not much in it.
Then delve deeper. England’s modern ‘central contracts’ regime this summer permitted Flintoff to play only four matches for his county Lancashire; he scored 184 runs, but wasn’t allowed to tire himself by bowling a single over for them. Yet in that primaeval summer of 1978, as well as his six Test matches, Botham played 10 three-day championship matches for Somerset (275 runs and a further 369 overs for 58 wickets). As well, on his two tours, between Tests Botham played in all of 18 — 18! — other first-class matches, in which he scored 758 runs and bowled another 449 overs for 79 wickets. And all before English cricket’s attendant back-up army of medics and physios. When it comes to being heroically ‘knackered’, compare the two 14-month spans in all first-class games: Flintoff — 962 runs and 571 overs for 67 wickets; Botham 1,799 runs and 1,294 overs for 214 wickets, and ask which colossus was more colossal?
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