Botham may leave game and U.K. 'for sake of family’

Press, 30 July 1986, Page 37

Botham may leave game and U.K. 'for sake of family’

NZPA-AP London The cricket superstar, lan Botham, may quit the game and leave Britain for Australia to protect his family from adverse publicity, he said in an interview published yesterday. “I don’t mind what they do to me, I can handle the pressure,” he said. "But when it starts getting to the kids, that’s when I get angry.”

Botham, who this week ends his two-mohth ban from first-class cricket after admitting he had smoked marijuana, said in the “Woman’s Own” magazine that he expects to retire early.

“I think I’ll retire in a couple of years time,” he said.

“I can’t see myself going on beyond that. Even though I love the game it’ll get to the stage of ‘Why bother, whatever I do I’ll be knocked so

there’ll be no point in going on’.” The way the controversies surrounding him — including allegations of womanising, drinking and brawling — affect his children lies behind his thoughts of quitting cricket and England, he emphasised.

“Already they’ve been quizzed about me, and as they become older it will become worse. So for the first time in my life, I can see myself being forced to leave Britain and go to live in Australia.

“I love England. There’s no airport I feel happier arriving at than Heathrow, but I will do everything I can to protect my children, I will not have them affected by the publicity. “So leaving England in the next couple of years is a real possibility,” said Botham.

Two months away from cricket has given him plenty of time to spend with his wife, Kathy, and their three children — Liam, who is aged nearly nine, Sarah, seven, and the baby, Becky. Now he says cricket comes “a very poor tenth” in his life.

Long winter tours away put “a heck of a lot of strain and stress on a relationship,” he said.

If he were selected for the Australian tour this year, he would fly the family over for three weeks at Christmas, he said. “Apart from putting an end to all the chatter about other women, I don't know that I could go that long without seeing my family,”- he explained. “It’s one of the things that makes me really angry about the cricket authorities — it’s disgusting the way they treat families.

“The profits they make from a tour are incredible, they could easily afford to fly the wives out “In fact, they resent us having them there.”