The end was near, the final curtain closing on Ian Botham's spell as England captain. As the second Ashes Test at Lord's approached it was becoming clear that the clock was ticking. Appointed skipper on a match-by-match basis, the situation for Botham and England was far from stable.
"By appointing Botham from Test to Test the England selectors are giving the inescapable impression that they would dearly love to get rid of Botham but cannot find a satisfactory method of completing the dreadful deed," Paul Fitzpatrick wrote in the Guardian. Even for English cricket, the whole environment seemed a joke.
