The fact is that I have always suffered badly from claustrophobia and although some will still take this with a cellar full of salt, nets felt like prisons to me. I genuinely used to suffer acute anxiety from being in them, and I suppose that is why on many occasions my batting practice would degenerate into a slog. As so often with me, it was a case of covering up a genuine fear with sheer bravado. It goes without saying that I am a show-off – I don’t hide from that and I’m not trying to excuse it. If I hadn’t been, I’m sure I would not have been able to produce some of the great performances I did. But I’m sure it is no coincidence that I felt most fired up when my back was against the wall. That was not simply a Roy of the Rovers mentality: the fact is that when you have nowhere to go, the only way out is to emerge with all guns blazing. Imran Khan, the great Pakistan all-rounder and captain, talked about this when he described how his team had come from the depths of despair to win the 1992 World Cup. After they had been humbled in the initial qualifying matches he told his players ‘Be as a cornered tiger … Come out and fight’, and sometimes that is the only option available.
All through my life I have possessed extraordinary self-belief. Even as a kid, there were no doubts about what I was going to do when I grew up. I was going to be a professional sportsman. When I encountered the careers master at Buckler’s Mead this attitude of mine would often lead to a series of pointless rows as I would be summoned to the library to go through the same ritual time and again.
‘Morning, Ian. What thoughts have you had since we last met?’
‘Nothing new. I still want to play sport.’
‘Fine. Everyone wants to play sport. But what are you really going to do?’
I would end up repeating myself, getting angry and saying that there was no point in my attending these advisory sessions because I knew precisely what I was going to do. There were dozens behind me in the queue who had no idea what they wanted to do, and they were the ones who needed a careers master, not me.
Clearly these aspects of my character have been absolutely vital in enabling me to enjoy my career and live life to the full. All sportsmen who make it to the top have to be ultra-competitive, there simply is no other way to succeed. Without the desire to win and the need to be better than the rest, you won’t last five minutes. However, as the Americans are prone to saying, ‘If you want to talk the talk, you have to walk the walk’. As a kid I simply had to win at everything, and that desire to be No.1 has never left me. I make no apologies for the way I have conducted myself over the years and I have no regrets. Life is too short to be forever wondering whether you did the right thing. But I fully appreciate that there has been a price to pay and that, more often than not, others have had to pay it.
I have always found it difficult to admit to mistakes. I had enough trouble conceding that I might possibly have made an error on the cricket field. My cricketing team-mates will tell you that, according to me, I was never, ever, out. If a bowler was lucky enough to take my wicket, I had a never-ending supply of excuses to run through when I got back to the dressing room. As far as I can recall, I don’t think I ever came up with something totally ludicrous; there was always a hint of plausibility in the argument I put forward. No, I didn’t claim to be distracted by UFOs and there was nothing like ‘I crashed the car, sir, because the tree that wasn’t in my driveway yesterday was there now’. But I have to admit to serving up some real beauties in my time; like being put off by someone turning the page of his newspaper, for instance. Similarly, when I was bowling, if a batsman hit me for four it was not because he had played a good shot or I had bowled a bad ball. Invariably it was all part of a grand plan and it was simply a matter of time before the poor sucker fell for it. If I dropped a catch it was obviously because the ball was coming out of the sun. If there was no sun in the sky at the time, then a passing cloud would get the blame. If no cloud, then the moon. I would come up with anything rather than admit that I had been at fault. It was a case of protecting my pride, making myself feel invulnerable. Perhaps the most comical of all of these incidents took place during the Old Trafford Test of the 1989 summer series against Australia when, with our first innings total on 140 for four, a moment when the state of the match dictated that a modicum of discretion was required, I aimed a wild swing at the spinner Trevor Hohns in an attempt to hit him out of the ground and missed. That must be classed as one of my most embarrassing moments on the cricket field, alongside the time I went out to bat against Western Australia in Perth on the 1986/87 tour with a throbbing hangover and no bat.
‘Sorry about that, lads,’ I said, as I slid back into the dressing-room. ‘My bleedin’ bat got stuck behind my pads.’
‘I didn’t notice they were strapped to your bleedin’ head,’ replied John Emburey.
The bottom line was immaturity. For me, the slightest admission of failure or inadequacy was out of the question, and it was the same whatever I did. When, at the age of fifteen I returned home from a school cruise on the Mediterranean having shot up in height on the trip to over six foot, my behaviour was quite extraordinary. Dale and I used to measure ourselves against the kitchen door and it annoyed me intensely that she had always been taller. This time I insisted that Mum measure me and when I discovered how much I had grown, I ran into the garden to find my sister, shouting ‘Dale! Come here now. I want to measure you!’ You wouldn’t have believed my reaction upon discovering that I had finally outgrown her. FA Cup winners have celebrated less. It was pathetic.
If I drove a sports car I had to drive it faster than anyone else, as the men from Saab found out when I managed to write off two in the space of an afternoon’s sponsored racing at a cost of £24,000. When I decided to try and raise money for leukaemia research the only way to do it was to walk the length and breadth of the country (or over the Alps with some unenthusiastic elephants), and if I was drinking with mates, I had to drink them under the table as a matter of principle. I would do anything or try anything to show how big I was, and that included drugs.
I won’t go into details now because you will read more later, but, yes, of course I have overdone the booze in my time and smoked the odd joint. I may have been depressed, I may have been tempted to do it for kicks – and believe me, on the international cricket circuit during the years I played, there were a multitude of kicks to be had – but the fact is that I did so for no other reason than because they were there. I broke the law. I’m not proud of it and there were occasions when I could have gone seriously off the rails.
But when people ask me what I dislike most about myself, the answers are very simple and straightforward. It has taken me long enough to confront the facts, but I am not afraid to do so now. When it comes to getting myself into hot water, a lot of what you will have heard and read about me is absolute rubbish, but some of it is not. I have been a selfish bastard. At times I have also been aggressive, tyrannical, chauvinistic and hot-tempered.
My only plea in mitigation is that if I hadn’t been, none of what you are about to read would ever have taken place.
I sometimes wonder what would have happened to the career of Ian Botham if Andy Roberts had not smashed my teeth in.
I remember the occasion as though it was yesterday – and who wouldn’t? After all, it is not often that you take a ball in the face from one of the greatest and most fearsome fast bowlers of all time, and live to tell the tale.
I only made the final XI for Somerset’s Benson and Hedges quarter-final against Hampshire in June 1974 because our pace bowler Allan Jones was ruled out with a leg strain, but I had already made my mark on proceedings in peculiar