One of the greatest cricketers that England has ever produced, Sir Ian Botham came up with an interesting anecdote about how his rival Merv Hughes saved his life after he fell into crocodile and shark-infested waters in Australia.
The incident transpired at the Moyle River which is located about 200 kilometers south of Darwin, where Botham and Hughes went for fishing for barramundi. Botham went on a four-day fishing trip with his former rival and that is when things took an ugly turn. In an attempt to move from one boat to another, Botham’s shoes got stuck on a rope and as a result, he landed in an awkward position, resulting in serious bruising and a close encounter with a crocodile.
“I was out of the water quicker than I went in. Quite a few sets of [crocodile] eyes were having a peep at me. Luckily I had no time to think about what was in the water,” Botham said.
‘The guys were brilliant, it was just one of those accidents,’ the former England captain who is regarded as one of the greatest all-rounders of the game, said. “It was all very quick and I’m OK now.”
The likes of Botham and Hughes had played a lot of games against each other in the 1970s and the 1980s.
“It got ugly when Botham made 22 runs from a single over, scoring 2, 2, 4, 6, 4 and 4 off me. I am embarrassed to say it was a record for the most runs off an over in an Ashes Test. I would check the record books, desperately hoping some poor soul had been worse, and while I found there was once 24 scored off an over, it was from an eight-ball over,” Hughes mentioned in his book ‘The Match of My Life: The Ashes’.
