Ian Botham – Swing it Away
Early at career, Ian Botham was considered primarily as a batsman who could bowl a bit. He joined the ground staff team at Lord’s where he performed many tasks such as “cleaning the pavilion windows, pushing the roller on match days, selling scorecards, pressing electronic buttons on the scoreboards, and rushing bowling analyses to the dressing-room”. He also used to practice at Lord’s. Harry Sharp was the coach at MCC, and he was the first to discover the bowling talent in Botham. Bill Jones was the head boy and he helped Botham to understand swing bowling.
Embed from Getty ImagesIan Botham’s father was a cricket fan too. He played cricket for Westland Sports Club and worked for Westland Helicopters as a test engineer. He used to visit Beefy’s games frequently. After a game, he appreciated Beefy for the wonderful display of swing bowling and asked the secret behind it. Beefy had no clue. He said to his father that maybe it’s due to the weather condition. Les Botham wanted to find out the mechanism behind the swing and he asked Beefy to provide a couple of cricket balls which he planned to put in the wind tunnels at Westland to determine the science behind the swing. However, he couldn’t determine the root cause. Later, Botham learned the basics of swing bowling from the former England Test cricketer Tom Cartwright.
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Featured Image Credit: Archives New Zealand – CC BY 2.0 (resized as per the need)