Son of Botham comes of age

Liam Botham forges his own sporting reputation out of the shadow of his famous dad, reports BRIAN VINER.

Writing about sport is not, I admit, one of the more dangerous branches of journalism. Infiltrating the Taleban, or exposing the Mr Big behind a Colombian drugs cartel, are, on the whole, projects riskier to life and limb.

And yet to the intrepid reporters who pursue such stories I say this: have you ever asked Ian Botham a question he didn't like?

I did. It was a question about his son Liam. And, although I lived to tell the tale, it was a close-run thing.

Our encounter, on a sunny afternoon at Edgbaston about five years ago, began inauspiciously. As we took our seats in the main stand, the great man, who was clearly not in the best of moods, sat squarely on the flap of my jacket.

And pathetic as it sounds, I felt too intimidated to say: "Excuse me, Ian, could you just shift a second?"

Nor did I reclaim my jacket with a sharp tug, as I might have done had he been a stranger on the bus.

Instead, I conducted the entire interview listing slightly towards him, taking solace in the knowledge that my jacket was getting a thorough pressing. Not for nothing was he known on the subcontinent as Iron Bottom.

Besides, there is no shame in feeling intimidated by Botham. Harder men than I have quailed before him. And I might still have emerged from the encounter feeling moderately pleased with life had I not dropped a terrible clanger.

Liam was then playing cricket for the Hampshire second XI, trying to break into the first team and by all accounts a promising all-rounder. The question seemed logical enough.

"How is Liam shaping as a cricketer compared with you at the same age?"

Botham turned to look at me for the first time, and was plainly surprised to find me at 30 degrees from the vertical with my head practically on his shoulder.

But the surprise melted quickly to contempt, followed by rage.

"How will the kid ever have a chance when pillocks like you keep comparing him with me?" he roared.

Probably wisely, I took the question to be rhetorical. He then continued to thunder at the media in general and me in particular.

If, at that moment, someone had offered to transport me to a Third World war zone, I would have wriggled free of my jacket and set off without a backward glance.

So that was the prelude to my meeting with 23-year-old Liam, no longer a cricketer but a rugby right wing and centre with Newcastle.

He is a good-looking, square-jawed young man, with his father's height, but not his bulk. I tell him my Edgbaston story, in abridged form, and he smiles.

"Yeah, the old man's always been very protective. Especially when I was younger and more vulnerable than I am now.

"He understands the pressure that comes with the name Botham, and of course it started for me when I was little.

"I remember when I was 10 or 11, playing my first representative game of cricket for Yorkshire. About 10 or 15 journalists turned up to see me play, but they only watched me batting for an over and then they went away. They'd just come hoping I would get a duck."

To get to the neat but relatively humble home of Newcastle Falcons, which stands amid fields and housing estates on the city outskirts, you have to drive past the majestic home of Newcastle United Football Club, St James' Park.

Perhaps fancifully, it strikes me that the two clubs offer an analogy for Botham father and son.

Same name, different sports. One a colossus with a mighty history, the other still forging a reputation.

I'm sure Liam realises that his sporting exploits are never likely to eclipse those of his father, yet he remains impressively determined to fulfil his own potential.

"It is my biggest, burning desire to play for England," he said.

"I've played five games for England A, so I've had a taste and I want more. My dream of dreams is to play against Australia at Twickenham. That would be awesome."

It was his maternal grandfather who taught him the rudiments of rugby.

"He was like a father to me because my dad was always away. He was the one who played cricket with me in the back garden.

"I don't remember the old man ever doing that. With the old man I played things such as golf and snooker, and he never let me win. Never.

"He wanted me to learn how to win instead of getting it on a plate, and I'm like that with my kids now [he has three children, James, aged 3, Imani-Jayne, 3 months, and stepson Regan, 7].

"But no, we never played cricket. When he came home it was the last thing he wanted to do."

Nevertheless, young Botham (godfather - Sir Vivian Richards) flourished as a cricketer, and joined Hampshire as a batting all-rounder.

Since 1990 or thereabouts the media had been yearning to label someone "the new Botham." It continues even now.

But one day in 1996 this increasingly daft saga took an irresistible turn. Liam, supposed to be playing for the second team at Southampton, suddenly got a summons to join the first team at Portsmouth. It was his first-class debut and he took five Middlesex wickets with medium-pace swing, then scored 30 rapid runs.

Gadzooks! Sportswriters rushed for their adjectives. Hampshire and England rejoiced. It looked blissfully as if the new Botham just might turn out to be the son of the old Botham.

Yet almost the next thing we read about him, or so it seemed, was that he was quitting cricket in favour of rugby. Was this to do with his father? Were the endless comparisons beginning to wear him down?

"I can't pretend that it wasn't in the back of my mind," he said. "But that wasn't it, really.

"No matter what sport I played I would always have the name Botham.

"It was more that I wondered where I would be in five years' time as a cricketer, and where I might be as a rugby player.

"For one thing, rugby had just turned professional. Also, the England cricket team were losing everything in sight whereas the rugby team were beginning to do really well. That made a difference. If the cricket team had been winning tests like they are now, I might have stuck with cricket.

"It certainly wasn't about money. Some people think money is all that matters in professional sport, but I was on about £15,000 ($51,074) a year at Hampshire and I went to West Hartlepool for £5000."

His father, meanwhile, is his manager, as well as his regular golf, fishing and shooting partner.

"And we're very competitive at everything we do. If it's fishing, it's a drink for the first person who catches a fish, or a bottle of champagne for the biggest fish.

"In golf, his handicap is six and mine is seven, and he's renowned for hitting the ball a long way, but I hit it past him now, which he has started to admit.

"We have a lot of fun. We're actually more like brothers than father and son."

But there must have still been some paternal bollockings over the years?

"Oh yeah. I remember getting caught drinking when I was at school, at Rossall.

"My worry was what my mum would say, not my dad. But he gave me an almighty bollocking. He says now that he wasn't angry with me for drinking ... more for getting caught."

We both laugh. We shake hands. Son of his father? Only to a point.

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