Botham’s Century: My 100 great cricketing characters. Ian Botham

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      True, Border was on the end of heaps from the Aussie press after that series, chiefly because they felt he spent more time in our dressing room than in theirs, and it was as much his demeanour on and off the field with the old enemy, and the friendships that he so obviously maintained with guys like me, David Gower and Allan Lamb that antagonized the folks back home as the extent of their defeat. They could handle being beaten by a better side – just. What did not tickle their funny bone at all was seeing the Australian captain seemingly enjoying the company of the Poms who were beating them.

      But while the flak he took in ‘85 undoubtedly fuelled his desire for revenge – ‘I had enough of being a nice guy who came last’, he told me – I believe the mood was born even earlier. Four years earlier, to be precise.

      Talking to Allan over the years, I grew to learn that the one stone he simply could not remove from his shoe was our Ashes victory in 1981. All Englishmen, especially myself and the other players involved in that amazing series, were justifiably proud and elated at what we had achieved that summer. Don’t waste too many tears, here. But just try to imagine what it must have been like to be on the receiving end. There they were, one Test up and seemingly cruising to victory in the third of six at Headingley, when Graham Dilley and I embarked on one of the great alehouse slogs in history, setting in motion a chain of events there, at Old Trafford and at Edgbaston that resulted in the reduction of the previously cocksure Australians to psychological basket-cases.

      Try to imagine how Allan must have felt to see his side appear to cave in tamely as soon as they were the ones on the wrong end of some real pressure. And try to imagine how he would have felt when after another hammering from the West Indies he later saw and heard the Australian captain Kim Hughes break down in tears when trying to explain away the capitulation of his players.

      In drink in later years, and sometimes even sober, Allan would go over the events of that summer with me time and time again; it was as if he felt that by talking about them he would get them out of his system, and they might disappear forever, or, even better, turn out to be nothing more than a bad dream. I wouldn’t say he was obsessive about it. He only brought the subject up three or four times an hour.

      So when another bashing in ‘85 gave him and the Australian board the perfect opportunity to clear the decks and start again, the vigour with which he pursued his aims surprised only those who didn’t know the man.

      There were setbacks. After losing to New Zealand in the winter of 1985–86 Border was so hacked off that he quit the captaincy, only to be talked out of it by the Australian Cricket Board. And while they were still there for the taking when we arrived a year later, the plan to identify a clutch of new players like Steve Waugh, David Boon, Merv Hughes and Ian Healy, and stick with them through thick and thin, finally brought the rewards Border and Australia craved.

      Over the years, Border attracted strong criticism for the way he allowed his team to indulge in verbal assaults on opposing players. True, he was responsible for taking sledging to a new level; using it as a systematic intimidatory weapon with which to undermine an opponent’s confidence. But his attitude was that mental toughness was as much a part of the modern game as the technical skills of batting, bowling and fielding. He reasoned that if a guy couldn’t take it he shouldn’t be out there, and he never moaned if an opponent gave some back to his players.

      In 1989 his new approach shocked those players like David Gower and Allan Lamb, with whom he’d been friendly on previous tours, and when Robin Smith asked for a glass of water in mid-innings and received a mouthful of abuse instead, all Lambie’s stories about what a great guy AB was sounded somewhat hollow.

      On the 1993 trip, when England just laid down and died time after time, he claimed his fielders sometimes sledged because they were just so furious that our players were not putting up more of a fight. Do I believe that? On balance, I think I probably do. It was not for the purists and certainly not for those who liked their cricket nice and creamy, but it worked.