Ian Botham - Simon Wilde

THE DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY OF ONE OF ENGLAND’S GREATEST EVER SPORTS HEROES

lan Botham arrived on the international cricket scene just in time to ride the sport’s first big financial wave and exploit the Thatcherite mantra of go-out-and-get-what-you-want.

Botham brought an irresistible cocktail of talent, energy and swagger to the game. With the stench of economic failure still in the air, he made the country feel good about itself again. He showed that Britain could still produce champions and that the working class still deserved to be valued. For this he won himself a fund of public goodwill, a fund he sometimes threatened to drain but uncannily managed to replenish.

Before Botham many saw cricket as a staid and boring game. He played it though with an irreverent dash that stuck up two fingers at the cricket Establishment. He wore striped blazers and strange hats, sported long hair and droopy moustaches. He got into trouble over punch-ups, drugs and girls. All this would have meant little had he not been able to keep on achieving remarkable things on the field – as he did with impeccable timing and implausible frequency. He had an insatiable appetite, and an uncanny knack for creating tales of heroism.

In The Power and the Glory, featuring exclusive new interviews with over 100 figures in the sport including David Gower, Viv Richards, Graham Gooch, Mike Brearley, Tony Greig and Peter Roebuck, award-winning writer Simon Wilde tells the story of a great piece of British sporting history, one of the greatest: of a man for whom the glamour and the grit came together.