The Don Bradman of bowling unpenetratively in ODIs

Jeff Thomson: coloured clothing did not suit him
© Getty Images



Welcome to part two of the Confectionery Stall Good-In-One-Format-But-Rubbish-In-Another XIs. Last time, the Test-Stars-But-One-Day-Flops XI top five was announced as: Slater, Vaughan, Kim Hughes, Viswanath and Samaraweera. This has understandably left some of Test cricket’s leading practitioners ‒ amongst them, Border, Gower and Laxman ‒ weeping salt tears of devastation that they had been overlooked. They have only themselves to blame, for not having been quite ordinary enough, consistently enough, in the shorter form of the international game.

Joining the aforementioned five batsman are:

6. Ian Botham (England): 102 Tests, batting average 33.5, bowling average 28.4; 116 ODIs, batting average 23.2, bowling average 28.5.

Botham is selected for his performances in the ODI arena when he was at his peak, destroyed bowling attacks and batting line-ups in Test matches as if brought to life from the pages of a comic book, whilst being just about adequate in ODIs.

Botham’s Test averages (particularly his bowling average) took a gradual pounding as the effects of injury and age diminished him over the course of his cricketing career. They had also taken a pounding for a year when, in the midst of his Himalayan Test peak, he failed to respond to a captain with whom he clearly did not gel harmoniously – himself.

In considerable mitigation, Botham made the schoolboy error of being offered the chance to become the youngest England captain since the 1880s, with little if any captaincy experience, ahead of back-to-back series against a useful West Indies outfit which vigorously eschewed the temptations of the medium-paced dibbly-dobbler. West Indies arrived in 1980 with a four-pronged bowling attack comprising Roberts, Garner, Holding and Marshall (and Croft returned in the series in the West Indies early in 1981), and a batting line-up containing Greenidge, Haynes, Richards, Lloyd and Kallicharran. Mike Brearley, who had led England for the previous three years, shrewdly consulted the fixture list, the opposition’s team sheet, and his own 38-year-old birth certificate, coughed nervously, and stepped aside.

Botham’s England performed creditably enough in the circumstances, losing 1-0 at home and 2-0 away, with a total of six mostly rain-aided draws – the next three series against West Indies would bring England a considerably less impressive haul of draws (one in 15 Tests, to place proudly on the mantelpiece next to the zero wins) ‒ but Botham’s individual form nose-dived like Pinocchio in the penalty area in an Italian football match. The captaincy removed, he instantly recovered his previous form and blasted himself into English sporting immortality.

It is the peak-era non-captain Botham who walks triumphantly into this team. He was a marvel of statistics and personality in Tests, a leviathan who routinely shaped and decided matches through his extraordinary range of skills and an aura that has seldom been matched in the history of the game. At the same time, in ODIs he was a useful bit-part player who chipped in every now and again with a handy wicket or two.

At the end of the 1981 Ashes, excluding his unhappy stint as captain, Botham had a Test batting average of 42, with eight centuries in 29 matches, and a bowling average of 18, with 17 five-wicket hauls and four ten-wicket matches (plus 46 catches). He had played 27 ODIs in the ranks, averaging just under 17 with the bat, and a decent if not world-shattering 25 with the ball, but with best innings figures of just 3 for 16 (and only seven catches).

Thereafter Botham declined in the Test arena, whilst remaining capable of sporadic acts of wonder at least until 1987, but he remained bizarrely irrelevant in ODIs – between January 1983 and December 1986, he did not take more than two wickets in an ODI innings, and scored more than 30 only once. Overall, he never took an ODI five-for (and took four wickets only three times in 115 innings), and made just nine half-centuries, with a highest score of 79.

What makes it all so puzzling is that Botham clearly had the range of talents to be one of the greatest ODI players of any era. He had skill and power with the bat, craft and explosive swing with the ball. His performances in the ODI arena are one of cricket’s more curious failures.


7 & wicketkeeper. Matt Prior (England): 58 Tests, average 42.6; 68 ODIs, average 24.1.

For the last four years, Prior has been one of the highest-value cricketers in the Test game, scoring important runs regularly, and with considerable style, his reliability with the gloves increasing seemingly in direct correlation with the shininess of his pate.

His batting in Tests is a pyrotechnic cocktail of classical strokeplay and 21st-century innovation, all delivered with mellifluously classy timing, and often at its best in pressurised match situations. It is a blend that ought to have transferred seamlessly to ODIs. Instead, it has transferred to ODIs as seamlessly as Inzamam transferred to the Atkins diet.

In ODIs, Prior has failed in various incarnations over several years, and in multiple places in the batting order, leading to allegations that the Sussex Swashbuckler has a secret twin who takes the field in ODIs whilst the real Matt Prior attempts to execute a Houdini-style escape from a cricket bag to alert the confused ECB.

Prior’s Test strike rate of 64 runs per 100 balls is the seventh best of the 67 players who have scored at least 1000 Test runs since his 2007 debut. His ODI strike rate of 76 is the 74th best of the 130 batsmen who have scored more than 1000 ODI runs since Prior first donned the sacred blue of England eight years ago.

Of wicketkeeper-batsmen in Tests since May 2007, Prior has the best average, challenged closely only by Dhoni. In ODIs in the same period, even discounting Prior’s early ODI struggles before his Test career began, he is tucked in towards the back of the pack, in between Mushfiqur Rahim and Carlton Baugh. Aged almost 31, Prior still has time to rectify this, but the clock is ticking increasingly loudly.