The Sunday Times November 14, 2021 17Cricket
DAVID
WA LS HChief sports writer‘If you want to be
the best in anything,
you have to make
sacrifices and that
means the word
“selfish” comes into
it. Most successful
people, in sport or in
business, will have
that tunnel vision’
bone detached from the joint causing
friction. “Related pain,” they told
him. As soon as was possible, he was
back in theatre where they gave him a
new right hip. “See you sometime,” he
said to the nurses as his wife, Kath,
wheeled him out of the hospital.
“Haven’t you seen the x-ray of your
other hip?” they laughed. “You’ll be
back in no time.” As soon as the new
hip felt at home, Botham returned for
a second replacement. Between the
back surgery and his two new hips, he
spent the guts of two years on crutches
and at times in terrifying pain.
“Kath said she’d never seen me as
bad, because normally I do pain
pretty well,” he says. “I virtually lost
my voice, which can happen when
you’re in extreme pain. I don’t tell
many people this because it goes
against my mentality but I had to
teach myself how to walk again when I
came off the crutches. But they rebuilt
me and now I can walk again and exer-
cise. I can play golf and go fishing,
which is really all that matters.”
What kept him going? “Our grand-
kids. We have eight grandkids and six
of them were with us. Having them
around was great. During lockdown
we were very lucky to be in the situa-
tion we were, having space around
our home, the grandkids being able to
swim in the lake. I think of friends and
so many people living in apartments
in cities during that time. Very lucky,
we were.”
Is he one of the many men who do
better as a grandad than as a dad? “My
family have always said that,” he
replies. “If Kath was sat here now,
she’d say, ‘Pretty average father, never
there, always away and when he did
see the kids all he did was spoil them
and make it harder for me.’ If you
want to be the best in anything, you
have to make sacrifices and that
means the word ‘selfish’ comes into it.
“Tunnel vision, you block things
out and I think most successful peo-
ple, whether in sport or in business,
will have had that same focus. With
the grandchildren it’s different. I
travel all over to watch Jimbo [Wales
rugby player, James] play, last week-
end I watched [his daughter] Becky’s
boys, Kieran and Dominic, play a
rugby tournament in Darlington.”
What comes from advancing years,
if not more understanding? Thirty-
one years previously, on Valentine’s
night, Kath told her husband she
wasn’t sure she could continue with
him. Five years before that, they’d
had the same conversation but this
time it felt more real to him, more
dangerous, because the last thing he
wanted was separation from her. He
remembers that night as the moment
he started to listen and to better
appreciate the difficulties of being
Mrs Ian Botham.
They survived and here we are
Continued on page 18→‘Teaching
myself to
walk again
was hard
but they
have now
rebuilt me’
Ian Botham on Ashes,
Azeem Rafiq, the pain
from surgery that left
him speechless and
why he’s a far better
grandad than father
PHILIP BROWN / GETTY IMAGESA
little after midday Ian
Botham walks briskly into
the Imperial Express res-
taurant in Darlington, not
far from his home in North
Yorkshire. He is 65 now and
perhaps the most unlikely
pensioner north of the
Equator. The next morning he will
leave home for Australia and a
five-month trip that will be consumed
by the Ashes, the furthering of his
wine business and his new role, as
Lord Botham of Ravensworth, as a UK
trade envoy for Australia.
He has history with the Ashes,
although given that the defining
moment of a great career happened
40 years ago, there are more immedi-
ate questions. His body, how is it? “OK
for the last six months,” he says. Before
that? “The two years before that were
difficult,” he says, matter-of-factly, as if
it were nothing. The devil is in the
detail and, here, we’re talking Satan.
The injury story began during an
early-season County Championship
match for Worcestershire in 1988. He
was 32 then, still the supreme all-rounder. Listening to his body, he
could hear the tick-tocking of a time
bomb. He knew what was coming.
That day he dived for a catch in the
slips, fell awkwardly, thought nothing
of it and soon there was a rain delay.
As the rain stopped, he did some
stretching on the changing-room
floor. Then the call came to return to
the field. He tried to stand but
couldn’t. That evening they took him
home in a helicopter.
Five days later the surgeon, John
Davies, entered via his lower back, cut
bone from his hip and fused it into his
spine. The operation took two hours
longer than expected, such was the
size and strength of the muscles in
Botham’s back. That was down to
thousands of miles walked to raise
millions of pounds for leukaemia
charities. The operation came with
the caveat that one day, he would
need another.
That day came towards the end of- Twenty years after the first, they
slit open his lower back and did what
they needed to do to stabilise his
spine. Recovery took months but the
pain refused to go away. Botham has
always been a singular man. “I don’t
do painkillers,” he says. “I don’t like
the side-effects and I don’t want to
mask what is causing the pain.”
After spinal surgery, the pain in his
left knee was excruciating. X-rays
showed the knee was OK. They looked
at his hips. They were in bits, literally
in the case of his right hip, pieces ofBotham, main image, says that his
wife, Kath, below right, and
grandchildren, including James,
the Wales rugby player, are the
driving forces in his life