Ian Botham

Ian Terence Botham, Baron Botham, was born on 24 November 1955. He is an English cricket commentator, a member of the House of Lords, a former cricketer, and has served as chairman of Durham County Cricket Club since 2017. He is also a charity fundraiser. A genuine all-rounder, Botham played for England in both Test and One-Day International cricket, and was part of the English teams that came second in the 1979 and 1992 Cricket World Cups.

The bulk of his first-class cricket was played for Somerset, though he also turned out for Worcestershire, Durham, and Queensland. As a batsman, he was an aggressive right-hander; as a bowler, he was a right-arm fast-medium swing bowler. He usually fielded close to the wicket, often in the slips. In Test cricket, he scored 14 centuries, with a top score of 208. Between 1986 and 1988, he held the world record for the most Test wickets, until Sir Richard Hadlee surpassed him. He took 27 five-wicket hauls and four ten-wicket hauls. In 1980, he became only the second player in Test history to achieve the "match double" of scoring 100 runs and taking 10 wickets in the same game. In 2018, the ECB named him in England’s greatest Test XI.

Botham has raised money for childhood leukaemia research, including over £13 million for Bloodwise, an organisation of which he became president. On 8 August 2009, he was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame. In July 2020, it was announced he would be elevated to the House of Lords as a crossbench peer.

Outside cricket, Botham has many sporting interests. As a schoolboy, he was a talented footballer and had to choose between cricket and football as a career. He made 11 appearances in the Football League for Scunthorpe United, and became the club’s president in 2017. He is an avid golfer, and also enjoys angling and shooting. He has been awarded both a knighthood and a life peerage.

Botham was born in Heswall, Cheshire, to Herbert Leslie ("Les") Botham and Violet Marie, née Collett. His father served in the Fleet Air Arm for twenty years, including during the Second World War; his mother was a nurse. Before Botham turned three, the family moved to Yeovil after his father took a job as a test engineer at Westland Helicopters. Both parents played cricket: his father for Westland Sports Club, and his mother captained a nursing services team in Sherborne. Botham was eager to play cricket before he even started school; he would climb through the fence of Yeovil Boys' Grammar School to watch the pupils play. Around age four, he came home with a cricket ball and asked his mother, "Do you know how to hold a ball when you're going to bowl a daisy-cutter?" He showed her the grip and then went off to practise.

He attended Milford Junior School in Yeovil, where his "love affair" with sport began. At age nine, he played for both the school cricket and football teams, two years earlier than most of his peers. Playing against older boys forced him to learn to hit the ball hard and raise his game. At the same age, he went to matches with his father at Westland Sports Club, and if a team was short, he would try to get a game. His father recalled that although he never got to bowl and rarely batted, his fielding drew praise. He joined the Boys' Brigade for more sporting opportunities. By nine, he was haunting local recreation grounds, kit always ready, looking to play for any team short of players. By twelve, he was playing occasional matches for Yeovil Cricket Club’s second team.

He then attended Bucklers Mead Comprehensive School in Yeovil, where he continued to excel in sport, playing for the school’s cricket and football teams. At thirteen, he became captain of the under-16 cricket team. His school performances caught the eye of Somerset’s youth coach, Bill Andrews. Still thirteen, he scored 80 on debut for Somerset’s under-15s against Wiltshire, but team captain Phil Slocombe did not call on him to bowl, considering him a specialist batsman. Two years later, Botham faced a choice between cricket and football: Crystal Palace manager Bert Head offered him apprentice forms with the First Division club. He already had a contract with Somerset and, after talking it over with his father, decided to stick with cricket, believing he was a better cricketer. When he told his careers teacher he wanted to be a sportsman, the teacher replied, "Fine, everyone wants to play sport, but what are you really going to do?"

In 1972, aged 16, Botham left school determined to play for Somerset, who kept his contract but thought him too young for a full professional deal. So he joined the ground staff at Lord’s. As a ground boy, his tasks included cleaning pavilion windows, pushing the roller on matchdays, selling scorecards, pressing buttons on the scoreboards, and rushing bowling analyses to the dressing room. He received coaching and plenty of net practice, often arriving first and leaving last. Despite this, MCC coach Harry Sharp considered him only a potential "good, average county cricketer." That season, he travelled to play for Somerset under-25s several times but did not excel. His MCC appearances were similar: he rarely scored more than 50 and was used sparingly as a bowler. In one match against "Sco...