The first time Ian Botham came to Durham, he arrived on Good Friday. For the press, the comparison was irresistible. “Durham’s own Messiah”, as the Guardian called him, arrived just in time, two days before their very first competitive fixture as a first-class county. The rest of the squad had been together for a while already, doing their winter training in a warehouse, playing warm-ups against Essex and Oxford University. The weather had been “bloody freezing”, and the club’s chief executive, Mike Gear, was hoping that “the cold would win a few matches for us, once we have managed to get used to it ourselves”. Botham, though, had missed all this because he had spent his pre-season on holiday in South Africa, a reward for a winter spent in a pantomime at Bournemouth and opening the batting for England in the 1992 World Cup.
Durham’s first fixture was at The Racecourse, in the Sunday League. No one was able to practise much, because the outdoor nets were not yet in a fit state. Unconcerned, Botham posed for a team photo and spent the rest of the day drinking with his new team-mates in the Dun Cow.
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