After tea Botham decided he had nothing to lose
It was a more innocent age in the early 1980s, when a cricketer could lay a quiet bet without arousing suspicion. The betting slip that we present as our next object was placed by a couple of Australian cricketers at Leeds in July 1981. They won the bet but lost the match. They lost not because of any skulduggery on their part but because Ian Botham strode to the wicket and scored one of the most astonishing centuries in Test-match cricket.
That 1981 series has gone down in history as ‘Botham’s Ashes’, and it’s hard to think of another Test-match series that has been influenced by one player the way that remarkable rubber was influenced by Botham. There were other outstanding performances, of course, notably the bowling of Bob Willis and the captaincy of Mike Brearley, but Botham stood head and shoulders above his teammates.
Botham had started the series as captain, but a pair in the second Test at Lord’s (which ended in a draw following Australia’s victory at Trent Bridge) led him to resign from the role. Brearley stepped in and, putting an avuncular arm round Botham’s broad shoulders, reassured him everything would come right in the third Test at Headingley. ‘I think you’ll get 150 runs and take ten wickets,’ he predicted to Botham.
Botham began the match as if he meant to live up to Brearley’s prediction. Australia compiled an impressive 401, but the man they called ‘Beefy’ took six of their wickets in his best spell of bowling for ages. As for the runs forecast by Brearley, Botham managed 50 as England laboured to 174 all out in their first innings. Australia enforced the follow-on, and Graham Gooch fell to Dennis Lillee without scoring to leave England 6 for one at stumps on day three.
Day four began badly for England. Brearley, Gower, Gatting, all gone cheaply, and though Geoff Boycott and Peter Willey offered some resistance, when the latter fell for 33 England were 105 for five and facing defeat by an innings. Botham joined Boycott, and the pair took their side, slowly, to 133. Then Boycott and wicketkeeper Bob Taylor fell in quick succession. England were 135 for seven, still 92 runs short of making the Australians bat again. ‘The ground was nearer empty than full and the bookmakers left no one in any doubt as to the way they saw things,’ wrote Botham. ‘Ladbrokes made England 500–1 and they had very few takers. Those odds, however, were definitely too seductive for Dennis Lillee to ignore.’
The odds offered by Ladbrokes were made on the advice of former England wicketkeeper Godfrey Evans, who worked for the bookmakers as a cricket adviser. ‘He said England had no chance and we marked up the 500–1,’ recalled bookmaker Ron Pollard, Evans’ partner at Headingley, years later. ‘Quite truthfully, not a lot of people backed it because it was an obvious no-chance.’
After tea Botham decided he had nothing to lose
But Lillee did, along with teammate Rod Marsh, having been alerted to the odds at tea by their coach driver.
After tea Botham decided he had nothing to lose. He might as well give it a blast, or, as Brearley described it, indulge in ‘pure village green stuff’. Aided by Graham Dilley, Botham laid into the Australian attack, ‘playing by pure instinct’ and producing shots that defied belief. As England’s score mounted the realisation dawned on Botham that he was putting his side into a position from where they could have a crack at winning the match. As it did on the Australians. As their frustration mounted, so Botham dispatched the ball even farther, reaching 100 and going way beyond. Eventually he ran out of partners, leaving him stranded on 149 and England all out for 356. It was a lead of 129, not much of a lead, but a lead all the same.
Brearley gave the new ball to Botham and Dilley, leaving Bob Willis to seethe on the boundary. When England’s fastest bowler was brought into the attack he was just about ready to bite off the Australians’ heads. He confined himself to producing one of the greatest displays of hostile bowling ever witnessed in Test cricket. Australian never knew what hit them. As Botham recalled: ‘Talk about rabbits caught in the headlights!’ Australia were all out for 111 and Willis finished with figures of eight for 34.
That was the high point of the series for Willis, but Botham had only just begun. In the fourth Test at Edgbaston he won the match for England, taking five Australian second-innings wickets for just 1 run. In the fifth Test at Old Trafford he took five wickets in the match and scored a majestic 118, leading John Woodcock to ask in The Times: ‘Was this the greatest Test innings ever?’ Certainly Botham rated it better than his 149 at Headingley, which he called ‘a slog’. Of his Old Trafford innings, he said it was one he would ‘want to tell my grandchildren about’.
Lillee and Marsh at least had the consolation of returning home £7500 richer
Victory at Old Trafford wrapped up the series for England and established Botham as a household name. It was a fitting series with which to celebrate the biggest wedding of the century – that of Prince Charles to Lady Diana Spencer.
As for Lillee and Marsh, they at least had the consolation of returning home £7,500 richer than when they had left Australia, thanks to their £15 bet at teatime at Headingley. And Peter the coach driver didn’t do badly either; the two Australians bought him a set of golf clubs and a return ticket to Australia.