The captain who was not the captain

The captain’s mark on the Headingley scorecard is against Mike Brearley’s name. Two Tests earlier it had been against Botham’s.

He had made a pair at Lord’s and walked off through a silent pavilion, and by the following week he was not captain and Brearley was back.

The awkward part of a sacking

Botham was still the best cricketer in the side. So he stayed in it.

That is a peculiar arrangement and it does not usually last. A captain removed mid-series is normally dropped, rested or quietly retired, because the alternative is a dressing room containing the man who was in charge last week taking instructions from the man who replaced him.

England did the alternative.

What he did with it

Australia made 401 for nine declared. Botham bowled 39.2 overs and took six for 95, which was more wickets than the other five England bowlers managed between them.

England were bowled out for 174 and followed on. Botham made 50 of them.

Second time round England were 135 for seven, still 92 behind, with the match gone. Botham then made 149 not out from 148 balls with twenty-seven fours and a six, putting on 117 with Graham Dilley for the eighth wicket and 67 with Chris Old for the ninth.

Australia needed 130 and Bob Willis took eight for 43. England won by 18 runs.

Full scorecard: England v Australia, 3rd Test, Headingley, 16–21 July 1981 →

What the card says about the arrangement

Nothing.

The scorecard shows M.J. Brearley (c) at number three, making 10 and 14. It shows I.T. Botham at seven, with the figures above and the match award.

There is no notation for a former captain. No column records that the man producing the best all-round performance in Ashes history had been publicly removed from the job a fortnight earlier, or that the man now doing the job averaged 12 in the match.

The bookmakers

England were quoted at 500 to 1 during their second innings. Two Australians took the bet. Dennis Lillee and Rod Marsh put money on their own side losing, and collected.

They have both discussed it since without much embarrassment. The odds board is the piece of evidence everybody cites for how dead the match was, and the two men who used it were playing in it.

The two explanations

The first is Brearley’s, and he gave it often: that Botham was freed by losing the captaincy, and that a bowler who had been thinking about field placings and press conferences could now think about bowling.

The second is Botham’s, and he has been more equivocal: that he was angry, and that the anger was useful.

Both are plausible. Neither is testable. Botham captained England twelve times, lost four and won none, and averaged 13 with the bat while doing it, and then made 399 runs and took 34 wickets across the six Tests of that summer, most of them after being replaced.

That is a real pattern in a very small sample, which is the most that can honestly be said about it.

Only the second time

The match notes carry one line: Only the second time in Test match history that the side following on has won.

It has happened once more since. Three times in a hundred and forty-nine years, and this is the one everybody can describe.

Barrie Meyer was one of the umpires. He also stood at Tunbridge Wells for Kapil Dev’s 175 two summers later and at Edgbaston for Andy Lloyd’s only Test the summer after that, which is a decent run of afternoons for one man to have had a close view of.

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No. 1 in The Eleven, a series of 5.

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