SPECTATOR SPORT
Obviously the best
Simon Barnes
BASIL Fawlty said that his wife's special- ist subject on Mastermind should be 'the bleeding obvious'. It is a subject all jour- nalists should study, at least all journalists who write about sport. There are plenty of subtle things to observe and discuss in sport, but if you lose touch with the bleed- ing obvious, then you have lost touch with your subject.
So when the December issue of Wisden Cricket Monthly plopped through the door, and I saw that it contained a readers' poll on who is the best cricketing this, that and the other, I turned to it at once to check on my rating in the Sybil Fawlty Mastermind test. Readers of a cricket magazine, consid- ered en masse, are never likely to take any route but the one Basil suggests.
So who, then, was voted the greatest cricketer of the past? There are probably only two, maybe three cricketers worthy of such an accolade. W.G. Grace managed two votes. Don Bradman did rather better, coming eighth overall, Garry Sobers man- aged fourth. We are not talking about objective assessment here.
It is bleeding obvious that the question behind the question is: what cricketer of the past plays the greatest role in your own personal mythology? Whose performances meant most to you? And the answer can only be Ian Botham — and Botham won by a colossal margin.
How could he not have done? Most peo- ple who buy cricket magazines remember 1981. Indeed, most could tell you where they were on the various great days of that summer. I was on a boat in the middle of the South China sea when I read the news in the morning paper. I never did get round to explaining to my Chinese neighbours why I had to howl and hurl the paper sky- wards and then go searching for the scat- tered pages to read the details.
Sport has the capacity to bring us tales we would blush to present as fiction to an audience of uncritical children, and the story of that summer shamelessly exploits every stock emotion that sport can inspire. It began with Botham's silent, unclapped return to the pavilion on completing a pair at Lord's, and his red-eyed resignation as captain. And then England slid towards defeat in the next match.
Enter Botham Unchained, the mad innings of defiance and the new captain, Mike Brearley, acknowledging Botham's century by pointing imperiously at the mid- dle of the pitch: 'Stay out there!' Then in the next Test, another losing situation and Botham taking five wickets for a single run to turn the match on its head. And he was still not done, winning yet another match with a blistering century that John Wood- cock himself, then Times cricket correspon- dent, called 'of its kind, perhaps the great- est innings ever played'.
Botham's reputation since that magic year has been a more complex business. My old friend Frances Edmonds said of him, 'I was brought up to mistrust anyone whose body weight in kilos is numerically superior to his IQ.' Which brings me to another aspect of the readers' poll. Botham is retired now, though not retiring. He works as a cricket commentator for Sky and pops up whenever he can to promote his solution to the woes of English cricket. It is bleeding obvious: put LT. Botham in charge.
But the readers' poll, by no means slavish in its Botham worship, voted the man a lowly 17th when they voted for the best commenta- tor. The palm was given — obviously — to Richie Benaud. It is interesting to note that mythology can only get you so far.
Brearley called Botham 'the greatest match-winner the game has ever known', and that is fair enough. Botham had the gift of seizing reality and moulding it like clay until it assumed the shape of his own fan- tasies — and not just his. That is why he will win the readers' poll next year, and the year after — obviously; because obviously, we shall not see his like again. Not the 1981 version, anyway.
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