Former cricketer and coach David ‘Bumble’ Lloyd has lifted the lid on an eventful golfing trip with Sir Ian Botham – which he revealed left the England legend with hurt ribs and a cut arm.
Bumble, 78, told the story on a Stick to Cricket podcast alongside fellow former England stars Phil Tufnell, Michael Vaughan and Sir Alastair Cook this week.
Tufnell brought up a famous incident at Brisbane in the 1986-87 Ashes series, when fans set loose a pig with ‘Botham’ and ‘Eddie’ written on it, referring to the England captain and team-mate Eddie Hemmings.
And it led Bumble into a more recent anecdote, detailing his trip to Spain with 69-year-old Botham and other former England cricketers.
‘Talking about Beefy, I’ve just been to Valderrama with him and Andy Lloyd, Billy Foster the caddie and Paul Allott. Three days,’ said Bumble on The Overlap and Betfair’s Stick to Cricket show. ‘One day one, Beefy turns his buggy over while he’s in it. He rolls the buggy on a hill, with him and Tim Bostock, the chief executive up at Durham.
‘Bostock climbs out, but there’s no way Beefy is climbing out so we lift the buggy back up with Beefy in it, he’s bust two ribs, lacerated his arm, and is bleeding profusely from his hand.’
And things got even more painful for the England legend later in the trip, according to Bumble.
‘Next night, we go to this classy restaurant and he gets on the wine. He stood up and promptly fell over straight onto his nose! He’s bust his nose, blood everywhere in this restaurant. They got him back up and then he slipped on the blood and went down again!
‘They got him in the car and got him to bed and his last words before he went to sleep were “don’t tell Kath!” He was absolutely black and blue.’
Vaughan then pointed out that Don’t Tell Kath was the title of Botham’s 2000 autobiography.
Botham has been known for getting himself into some high-profile accidents and has been through the wars with his injuries.
Last year, he survived a fall into crocodile-infested waters on a fishing trip in northern Australia with his old Ashes opponent Merv Hughes.
Botham came away from that one with severe bruising but was luckily out of the water quick enough, thanks to the help of Hughes, to evade the snapping teeth of ‘quite a few’ crocs.
There were plenty of knocks on the field, too. In 1977 he broke a toe after stepping on a ball during a match at Headingley, getting himself admitted to hospital. It was there that he stumbled across a ward dealing with kids suffering from leukaemia, inspiring his future efforts to raise money for research on it.
A severe back injury in 1988 also hampered him. He had dived for a catch in the slips, fallen awkwardly, and ended up needing surgery. Thirty years later, he needed surgery again on his spine as a result. But Botham was always a lionhearted sort and had marched on with his cricketing.
David ‘Bumble’ Lloyd was speaking on The Overlap and Betfair’s Stick to Cricket show.
