14 Captivating facts about Sir Ian Botham - The Best English All-Rounder

14 Captivating facts about Sir Ian Botham – The Best English All-Rounder: Sir Ian Botham, the former England captain, is perhaps one of the greatest all-rounders to have ever played the game. He played 102 Test matches, taking 383 wickets and amassing 5200 runs with 14 centuries. The ODI career was not as great as one would have anticipated; he played 116 matches and scalped 145 wickets and batted with an average close to just 23. But this not brings down the image of one of the greatest all-rounders. Here are some of the most staggering facts from the life of a living legend.

1. Childhood:

Botham was born in Heswall, to Herbert Leslie Botham and Violet Marie. His parents were both cricketers. At the age of 15, he had made up his mind of playing cricket for the Somerset County Cricket Club, although he also had the offer to play football as well for Crystal Palace F.C. As a young kid, Botham used to scribble something on pieces of papers, recollects his mother Marie, and when he was asked about what he was doing; he would proudly say, “Well, people are going to be asking me for my autograph one day, so I am practicing it.”

2. Nicknames:

The world of cricket remembers Botham as “Beefy” largely due to his physique. He also earned another name of ‘Guy the Gorilla’. As a young kid, he was known as ‘Bungalow’ as many believed that he had nothing ‘upstairs’.

3. Knighthood to his name:

Knighthood is a part of the British Honors System. Sir Ian Botham was definitely the best all-rounder that England had ever produced; very few would argue to that. But he was not awarded the Knighthood for his exploits on the field. He was rather awarded the Knighthood for the charity work that he did. Botham was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in the 2007 New Years Honours List and on 8 August 2009 was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame.Botham has organized and participated in long-distance walks to raise money for his organization leukemia research.In 1985, he had his first charity walk — a 900-mile trek. He has helped raise over £10 million for the purpose.

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4. Domestic career:

Ian Botham amassed 19,399 runs at 33.97, took 1,172 wickets at 27.22 and held 354 catches in his first-class cricket career. He represented Durham, Somerset, and Worcestershire in England. He also played for the Queensland team in the Australian domestic tournament. In a first-class match against Hampshire, Botham (playing for Somerset) faced a bouncer from Andy Roberts in 1974 after which his mouth bled heavily. But the beefy continued to bat on.

5. All for the friend:

Sir Ian Botham had a very close friendship with the West Indian great Sir Vivian Richards. In 1986, he resigned from Somerset, in protest against the sacking of his friends Viv and Joel Garner, and joined Worcestershire. As the trivia goes, when the duo of Richards and Botham made their debut together for Somerset, Richards fell for a golden duck and Botham scored a debut hundred. However, Richards was among the wickets and ended with the figures of five for 25 while Botham went wicketless. Botham told his friend: “Listen, Viv, from now on, you take the wickets and I’ll score the runs.”

6. International career:

Sir Ian Botham made his Test debut for England on 28 July 1977 in the 3rd Test against Australia, where he took 5/74 in the first innings. He captained the England side in 12 Test Matches between 1980 and 1981 but could not taste victory as a captain. England lost 8 matches and drew 4 under his leadership.

7. Botham’s Ashes:

Many people have had an impact on the Ashes tours, but none had the impact like Sir Ian Botham. He helped England win the Ashes 3-1 over rivals Australia. His phenomenal performances with the bat and ball earned him the Man of the Series award. He scored 399 runs and took 34 wickets. His dominance in the series was such that the series is still remembered as Botham’s Ashes.

8. Not just cricket:

Just like many other teammates Dennis Compton and Arnold Sidebottom, Botham also played football. He made 11 appearances in the Football League. He was an occasional professional football player who often turned up to play football in order to get fit. He joined the football club Scunthorpe United and played as center half. He also played for the Yeovil town and made appearances in the Northern Football League.

9. Off-field controversy:

In 1986, Sir Ian Botham was suspended for two months for smoking Cannabis. 8 years later, another controversy drove into Botham when former Pakistan player Imran Khan accused him and Allan Lamb of ball tampering. He also had an altercation with Ian Chappell during the 2010-11 Ashes tour. His personal life has also been under the scanner. Rumors of his extramarital affair were in the air which resulted in him apologizing to his wife Kathy in public. In 2014, his twitter display picture was placed with a phallus which created a lot of scurry among the media. Botham claimed that his account was hacked and had no clue about what had happened.

10. Great honors:

Botham has been honored with great awards time and again. In 1978 he was picked as one of Wisden’s Five Cricketers of the Year and BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 1981. He has received Honorary Doctor of Laws by the University of Bath, Honorary Doctorate in Sports Science by Leeds Metropolitan University and Honorary Doctor of Science the by University of Lincoln.

11. Leading wicket taker:

Until 17 April 2015, Sir Ian Botham held the record for the highest number of wickets taken by an England bowler, he was recently surpassed by James Anderson, the current spearhead of English bowling lineup.

12. The big hitter:

In the Botham’s Ashes of 1981, he set a record of six sixes in a single Ashes Test match at Old Trafford. The record remained unbroken until 2005 when Andrew Flintoff hit five sixes in the first innings and four in the second innings in the second Test match at Edgbaston, and again the record was surpassed by Kevin Pietersen when he hit seven sixes in the second innings of the last Test at the Oval in the same year.

13. All round record:

Sir Ian Botham was the fastest to achieve the Test doubles record of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets, 2,000 runs and 200 wickets, and 3,000 runs and 300 wickets.

14. The best all-rounder?

While many all-rounders have had the distinction of scoring a century and taking 5 wickets in an innings of a Test match on one or two occasions (three other players have achieved this feat more than once: Sir Gary Sobers, Mushtaq Mohammad, and Jacques Kallis, who have each done it twice) Botham has done the same a record 5 times. He is the only man to have made a century and picked 8 wickets in an innings in the same Test match, 108 and 8/34 against Pakistan at Lord’s in 1978.