He may be one of the greatest — if not the greatest — all-rounders to have played the game, but Ian Botham’s post-playing career as a pundit, commentator and rent-a-quote is not quite as glittering.
Just over a year ago, he was in the UAE for England’s series against Pakistan. He could not understand, pre-series, why Pakistan were favourites to win the series. He was further emboldened after England nearly pulled off an incredible last-evening heist in the first Test in Abu Dhabi.
That was a strange old Test, meandering along to no clear purpose until tea on the final day on a surface so unhelpful it should have faced censure. So aimless was it Alastair Cook, the England captain, had even considered bowling himself at one point.
But then Adil Rashid whisked out Pakistan’s middle and lower order in a trice and England, unexpectedly, had only 99 to chase to win. Bad light ultimately deprived them, leaving them 25 runs short of a famous win.
That result prompted Botham to write in a column ahead of the next Test, as bullishly as some of his finest performances: “Pakistan are there for the taking. The blows and scars that England landed on them in the first Test will take their toll in the second and I think it will be incredibly hard for them to come back.”
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Pakistan won the Dubai Test by 178 runs, bossing it much of the way and sealed the series in Sharjah with a 127-run win. So much for the scars and blows and to the same bin was consigned any talk of momentum and psychological edges.
To be fair, there was never any suggestion from the England team that the Abu Dhabi draw was anything other than a draw, simply one result in a series. They knew Yasir Shah was returning and that Dubai and Sharjah would be different surfaces.
They find themselves in a similar situation in India right now. Having drawn the first Test, against the expectations of quite a few, it might seem as if they could be on to something here.
Zafar Ansari even said it. “India were billed as favourites. Just to seemingly quash that, at least for a bit, is positive,” he said ahead of the second Test which starts in Visakhapatnam on Thursday.
“We believe we can win and it wouldn’t be a massive surprise.”
It is hardly in the league of Botham-isms and it probably betrays, more than anything, a natural, youthful buoyancy; Ansari is young and inexperienced and the Bangladesh defeat aside, not yet scarred by England’s Asian experiences.
England were very good in Rajkot, and as in Abu Dhabi they nearly conjured a win out of nothing. But this is a long series and there is plenty of time for things to go downhill.
Of most concern will be little games that have begun about the surfaces. Immediately after the Rajkot Test, Virat Kohli, the Indian captain, expressed a degree of dissatisfaction with the amount of grass on the surface.
Neither did it crumble as the home side is used to having it crumble. India’s spinners, thus, made no telling impact. Earlier this week the BCCI’s curator, overseeing preparations at Visakhapatnam, said he expected the surface to turn from lunch on the second day — an unusually precise prediction.
The local association curator, however, has promised the surface will be a “neutral” one. He insisted the Indian team management had made no such request and also that had any such request been made, it would not have been entertained.
These are the games curators and home sides play. Sometimes nobody needs to be told anything for a surface to be prepared in the way a home side wants it. However the surface turns up in the second Test, it seems inconceivable that England will not come across the kind of surfaces South Africa and New Zealand have encountered over the last two years at some point; surfaces that turn big, turn early and deteriorate sharply, surfaces of the kind England played on in Bangladesh.
Only then will we be able to develop a clearer picture of the true value of their performance in Rajkot.
[ osamiuddin@thenational.ae ]
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