Will the real Ian Botham please stand up

My best Cricket Eleven of Englishmen who were named “The Next Botham” and weren’t. I think the idea at the English Cricket Board following Botham’s retirement was that if you weren’t a great batsmen or a great bowler, you must be an all-rounder. Most other cricket nations just label you as “can’t bat, can’t bowl” and deduce - crap at cricket, but the ECB could see what nobody else could…. The birth of the next Botham. There were ten bastard children left on door steps before the real next botham stood up.

David Capel (15 matches - Average: Bat 15, Ball 50)
A proper and very first “next Botham”. David Capel was England's great pasty hope when he came into an England side looking for the next Botham in the mid-1980s. After swimming confidently for a time, he soon sank. Quite simply, Capel was not good enough with bat or ball, and averages of 15 and 50 from 15 Tests tell the story. He did however, in a very short test career, have Viv Richards to count as his ‘rabbit’. Yep, dismissed the great man on 3 occasions.

Craig White (30 matches - Average: Bat 24, Ball 38)
White managed to average more than 20. White was capable of bowling reverse swing at 90mph-plus and able to apply himself to long innings, but was eventually undone by injuries. He could have been a contender.

Derek Pringle (30 matches - Average: Bat 15, Ball 36)
Another who could not bat and occasionally could bowl. Enough said - NEXT

Ronnie Irani (3 matches - Average: Bat 17, Ball 37)
3 tests over nearly 4 years told the story of Ronnie. By this stage, the ECB is sick of wannabe Botham’s and are looking for an instant win. Ronnie was more instant soup and for the ECB left that same sour taste in their mouths.

Phil DeFreitas (44 matches - Average: Bat 14, Ball 34)
DeFreitas had arrived in Australia at the start of the 1986-87 Ashes tour as a 20-year-old. He had talent, potential and, when he enjoyed enough early success to be picked for the Test side, a new name: The Next Botham. "It was absolutely crackers. A complete joke," he says now. I was thinking to myself: yeah, yeah, I can be Ian Botham. "I did have some early successes and I felt I played my part in us winning the Ashes. But then I got carried away with the publicity and the fame. I started trying to play like him, walking out to bat thinking I'd better try and smash it all over the place because that is what everyone would expect of Ian. Next please.

Chris Lewis (32 Matches – Averages: Bat 23, Ball 38)
Lewis looked to have everything: pace with the ball, superb athleticism and excellent batting technique. When he wasn't posing for a magazine in his underwear, shaving his head and getting sunstroke, or turning up late for practice because of a "flat tyre", Lewis could touch the heights few in the county game can reach. Unfortunately, one high too many is his current woe, with a recent arrest for cocaine smuggling.

Lewis was in and out of the side continuously, another disease of the ‘next Botham’ club, but naming 3 English players in match fixing to the cricket board did not help his cause of playing much after that.

Dominic Cork (37 Matches – Averages: Bat 18, Ball 30)
The bigger the stage, the better he has performed - provided the stage is in England, the weather was fair, his hair looked good and the cameras captured his good side. Cork possessed useful outswing and did perform on the big stage once or twice, but he was dogged by knee problems and prone to the occasional loss of focus. Usually when the cameras were following more interesting players.

Alex Tudor (10 Matches – Averages: Bat 19, Ball 34)
Tudor could bowl, but not Botham like often enough for the selectors. The light switch would go and off like a cheap disco strobe when he played, this combined with injury cut his career short.

The Hollioake brothers (could not tell them apart, so picked both as one player) (6 matches – Averages Bat 10, Ball 40 odd combined)
The brothers were like a knock-off version of the Waugh twins. They could do everything at times and nothing the rest. Ben died tragically aged 24 in car crash and Adam had a long county career, but the double Botham power twins were not to be either.

Mark Ealham (8 Matches - Average: Bat 21, Ball 29)
With the grace of Quasimodo and the girth of the real Botham, Ealham was not really a Botham. Only played 8 tests, but certain that would have involved 4 recalls to the England team. The holder of some bewildering Botham-like statistics though (outside of test cricket), during a Twenty20 Cup match in 2005 against Durham he scored 45 off 17 balls including 34 runs in a single over. However, his greatest performance as a player came in 2000 when England played Zimbabwe in ODI. Ealham took five wickets for only 15 runs. At the time this was the best bowling performance by an Englishman in a one-day international match ever. Even more remarkable is that all five wickets were LBWs, this is still a record in one-day international cricket. The Zimbabwean umpires’ house has since been rebuilt from the ashes.

Freddie Flintoff (yes the real next Botham) (75 Matches – Averages: Bat 32, Ball 32)
Enough said – He may have taken a while to become the next Botham, but when he did, Botham was forgotten and he became Freddie. Look out the Best Eleven “Next Flintoff’s in 20 years.