29 June 2023 , 12:01
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Ashes rivals Ian Botham and Ian Chappell have been embroiled in a heated feud dating back to 1977 and the pair recently sat down together to revisit their rivalry - and it did not take long for the insults to start flying.
The feud stems from an incident at the bar in Melbourne's Hilton Hotel, with Chappell claiming Botham threatened to cut him "from ear to ear". He told News Corp : "When he put the beer glass to my face and said, 'I'll cut you from ear to ear,' we were actually playing against each other the next day, because I was playing for North Melbourne in club cricket.
"I said to him: 'Mate, if you cut me with a beer glass it will confirm what I already think of you, that you are a coward, but if you cut me with a cricket ball tomorrow that would mean something. But the ball had better bounce first because if you do it with a full toss, if I am capable, I am coming down your end and I will hit you over the head with the bat.''
Botham, meanwhile, says the accusation is "bulls***" and what actually happened was he "flattened" Chappell after taking issue with comments he made about English cricket. "I gave him three official warnings, all of which he ignored, so the next time he started, I just flattened him," Botham wrote in his 2008 autobiography 'Head On'.
"He went flying over a table and crash-landed on a group of Aussie Rules footballers, spilling their drinks in the process." The feud was revisited in a new documentary from Australian broadcaster Channel 9, titled 'The Longest Feud', which saw Botham and Chappell interviewed while in the same room together.
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And in a particularly heated moment in the documentary, Chappell accuses Botham of being "gutless" and a "coward" while Botham brands him "sad and lonely". When asked if there was anything positive they could say about each other, Botham shrugged and replied: "He was a good player and I would think he would've been a good captain, but then I'm running out."
Chappell, however, refused to even credit Botham's skills as a player, stating: "Well apart from being the worst long-time commentator of all... coward, gutless and they're all the good things I can say."
Botham, unsurprisingly, took issue with Chappell's comments and when asked why he had called him a coward, the ex- Australia captain said: "Well, you stick an empty beer glass in a guy's face, that's a cowardly act."
"Why on earth would I need a glass?" asked Botham, to which Chappell replied: "'Cause you're a coward." A fired-up Botham responded: "I'll tell you what, in a minute I'll show you what I can do if you keep on. A coward? I am many things but I'm not a coward."
The pair were then asked if they had three words to describe the other and Botham branded Chappell: "Sad and lonely." And when asked if either of them would be willing to apologise and their decades old feud, Botham insisted: "I've got nothing to apologise for."
The pair were also involved in a confrontation during the 2010-11 Ashes series while working as commentators, with Botham's Sky Sports colleague David Lloyd revealing a floor manager had to step in after the pair exchanged obscenities and that Botham needed two days to calm down after the incident.