Shake, rattle and roll again

Head On: The Autobiography by Ian Botham (Ebury Press, 384pp) £18.99

Every few years someone brings out a new Elvis Presley compilation CD and we go off and buy it, even though most of the songs are on the others we already own. It is the same with Ian Botham autobiographies. The stories do not change but, like small children, we are happy to read them over and over again, preferably tucked up in bed with a hot-water bottle. And it is nice to have them repackaged from time to time.

A folk hero means folk tales - to the extent that those that attach to Botham now seem less like the exploits of a real person than something dreamt up by Aesop. This comfort reading is now part of the national heritage, and as with free museum entry, access to it should be the inalienable right of every English citizen.

So I have words of only welcome for Head On, in effect an update on volumes of autobiography that came out in 1995 and 2000, and see no reason why it will not become a No. 1 bestseller like the two others. It might have been different if it had appeared a couple of years ago, when Freddie Flintoff was the new Botham and the afterglow of the 2005 Ashes triumph was still bright, but now that subsequent failures have put those events into some sort of historical context, and Ian has become Sir Ian, it is more important than ever to be reminded why Beefy mattered so much.

Once again it is Elvis who springs to mind. There is Botham's sensational arrival on the scene (seeing off Andy Roberts aged 18), and the force of nature who reshapes the world around him (Headingley '81). There are periodic bouts of mediocrity (the Ashes tour of 1982-83, any series against West Indies). There is the dubious Svengali figure who thinks Hollywood is the way to ultimate fulfilment (the egregious Tim Hudson in the Colonel Parker role). There is the Comeback Special (1986 v New Zealand and the Ashes tour that followed). There are the Vegas years at Worcestershire, Queensland and Durham. There is the drinking, the battles to lose weight, the marital strife, and the celebrity rollercoaster that nobody in those respective fields had experienced to such a degree before.

Mercifully Botham never dropped in on Margaret Thatcher to offer his services as a federal agent at large, as Elvis once did with Richard Nixon; and even more mercifully he did not keel over at 42. But on the 1986-87 tour of Australia, Botham paid for his own suites so that the team had somewhere to party in peace, a set-up that has echoes of the Jungle Room at Graceland and the gang that gathered round the King.

Like Elvis, the Botham that comes across in Head On is one hell of a mixed-up kid - preternaturally gifted but so often his own worst enemy. From the vantage point of contented middle age Botham can see it all clearly now, and he knows how many mistakes he made and what a long time it took him to grow up. Perhaps this had to do with an inherent contradiction in his character: on one hand there is the patriotic conformist and hero of middle England who walks out at a function in Australia when a drag artist insults the Queen. On the other there is the aggrieved class warrior who mistrusts a lot of people in authority. How his charity walks - arguably his greatest achievement - must have simplified issues for him.

With Botham it is less a case of judging him by his friends than judging him by his enemies. And those who believe his heart is essentially in the right place - even if they are glad not to have been caught up in one of his drinking sessions and would deplore some of his behaviour - might have to reassess their views of Peter Roebuck, Peter May, Graham Gooch, Allan Border, Ted Dexter, Alec Bedser and others in the light of what he says about them. New in this volume is some trenchant criticism of the post- 2005 Ashes England team.

How fair and honest has Botham been? Never the most analytical of cricketers - with him it all came down to your "ticker" - he does not duck the issue of his failures, cricketing or otherwise. In the last chapter there is real pain in his confession to a two-year affair that might finally have done for relations with wife Kath, a woman for whom the description "long-suffering" seems hopelessly inadequate. Head On has answered the call for a new Ian Botham autobiography just when we needed it. I am already looking forward to the 2015 update. Wonder if Amazon's taking pre-orders yet.

This article first appeared in the November 2007 edition of The Wisden Cricketer