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With England’s 1000th Test being played at Edgbaston this week, it has been a joy for a cricket nerd like me to wallow in the numerous articles taking a look back at the best matches and players that have been part of 141 years of history. Naturally, I am drawn to the decade of my childhood, and I started to recall the highs and lows of English Test cricket in the 1980s. Sadly, there were far too few of the former and rather too many of the latter. Read more »

After losing to India and New Zealand during the summer of 1986, hopes were not high for England's Ashes tour to Australia. But inspired by the brilliance of Ian Botham, an unexpected win at the Gabba laid the foundations for a wonderful winter. Even by his standards, Ian Botham had crammed a lot into the twelve months before the start of the 1986/87 Ashes tour. A charity walk from John O'Groats to Land's End ; an eventful and harrowing trip to the Caribbean; a two month ban in the English summer after he had admitted smoking cannabis; and his resignation from Somerset, after he felt betrayed at the treatment of his close friends Viv Richards and Joel Garner, who had been sacked by the county. Read more »

I've recently started the process of converting a number of my classic videos to DVD. So this week I'm taking a look back at some of my favourite sports videos of the 1980s. If you have any other suggestions, then please feel free to add them to the comments section. Read more »

If the 1981 Ashes series was seriously good, and the 1989 version distinctly bad from an English perspective, then I would argue that the 1985 series was far from the ugly relative in comparison. Above all it was the series that made me fall in love with the game, during a summer when I didn't have a care in the world, and I found new heroes in Botham, Ellison and Robinson. So I hope you enjoy some of my favourite memories of the 1985 Ashes, starting with the day cricket found me.   Read more »