Botham made comments about the ICEC on a podcast – Getty Images/Daniel Pockett
“Is that the last gasp of an old dinosaur?” These were the words uttered by John Nicolson of the Scottish National Party on hearing that Lord Botham, not content with describing last year’s report on discrimination in English cricket as “nonsense”, had claimed to have thrown the document on the floor. It seemed, whether or not you agreed with Botham, an impertinent label to attach to one of England’s greatest-ever players. It also begged the question of why the 68-year-old, these days happier developing his vast southern-hemisphere wine collection, was being dragged into the debate in the first place.
Botham, for his part, says he was never asked to recount his own experiences as part of the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket’s inquiry. This is rejected by Cindy Butts, the commission’s chair, who insists he was invited to give evidence. Their conflicting recollections escalated at a select committee hearing into almost a character assassination of Botham, with Nicolson painting the country’s finest all-rounder as irredeemably out of touch and Butts castigating the England and Wales Cricket Board for lacking the “moral backbone” to call him out as such.
A more grating display of grandstanding you would struggle to find. While Nicolson praised Butts for her “powerful testimony”, he neglected to challenge her on her highly selective quotation of Botham’s remarks. In the same podcast where he hit out at the ICEC’s “nonsense”, Botham had also talked of sharing his Somerset dressing room with Sunil Gavaskar, Hallam Moseley, Joel Garner and Viv Richards, declaring: “I stand here now, and I tell you, ‘Find someone who says I’m a racist’. There isn’t one.” He mentioned being tapped on the shoulder by Nelson Mandela and being told, “You’re my hero”, for the part he had played in England’s boycott of apartheid South Africa.
Sir Viv Richards and Both played together for Somerset – Getty Images/ Gareth Copley
This, then, is the man being denigrated as an “old dinosaur” by the MP for Ochil and South Perthshire. It is an apt moment to explore what, if anything, entitles Nicolson, the SNP’s spokesperson on culture, media and sport since 2020, to cast such aspersions on Botham’s views. Not much in his recent political career, that is for sure. Last March, Nicolson courted controversy when he argued that politicians applying their own make-up for television appearances look “overly brown” and “tandoori themselves”. He later apologised for using racially insensitive language.
You would think, against this backdrop, that he might go easy on the moralising where Botham and cricket are concerned. Instead, Nicolson donned the cloak of parliamentary privilege to excoriate a sporting icon who was not even in the room to defend himself. When Butts solemnly informed him of the ECB’s argument that Botham was entitled to his opinions “in a democracy”, he launched into an irrelevant little lecture about hereditary privilege and the House of Lords, with the cricketer having been made a life peer four years ago.
If this is the calibre of politician seeking to impugn Botham’s reputation, you cannot help but wonder whether there are other motives at play here. Was Nicolson’s intervention based on a deep understanding of the inner workings of English cricket? Or was it simply a case of him amplifying Butts’ message because it corresponded with his own world-view?
It is a feature of so many discussions on this subject that they take place in an echo chamber. Even figures such as Nicolson, who should know better, instinctively gravitate towards those who reinforce their preconceptions. Thus is Butts cast as the voice of reason and Botham as the antediluvian agitator. But can the equation truly be so binary?
While Botham could arguably have been more thoughtful than to say he threw the ICEC’s findings on the floor, his reaction arose from pure exasperation, from a sense that everybody in the game was being tarred with the same brush. It is, inescapably, a problem in the report: the fact that so many testimonies are anonymous, and that dressing rooms are depicted as places of rancid prejudice. If English cricket is ever to emerge from its long night of the soul over racism, there surely needs to be a more nuanced conversation than this. And it can start by resisting a portrayal of Lord Botham, of all people, as a dinosaur.
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