IAN Botham was in Hong Kong this week. Ian Botham the cricketer or, at least, the former cricketer? No: Ian Botham the entrepreneur.
The enterprising Mr Botham, a self-confessed ''bit of a workaholic'', has no intention of being labelled an ex-cricketer for the rest of his life. In fact, he began making plans for life after cricket years ago and the resulting ventures mean he can now label himself ''an entrepreneur, a businessman''.
So his retirement last year - he left his county club, Durham, in July - posed no readjustment problems: ''Cricket in the past five years has only been a small part of my life,'' he says.
''Since I had my major back operation [in 1988] I felt then was the time I had to start planning for the future because I could not rely on sport for a great length of time.'' In fact, he was lucky to have the time he did in cricket and to have managed a career in which he achieved the double feat of 5,300 Test runs and 383 wickets, he says.
''They diagnosed my back problem in 1977-78, so I was lucky to get where I did on it.'' Mr Botham OBE (he collected his gong in the Queen's Birthday honours in 1992) was in Hong Kong as part of one of his most popular and successful ventures, the stage show The King and I which he presents with his old friend and former West Indian cricketing great, Viv Richards.
When they toured England with the show, staying in a different town for each of 33 nights, it sold out six months in advance, with audiences averaging 700 a night. Since then they have taken it to Australia and now a nine-nation Middle East and Asia tourthat has left Mr Botham so tired he is threatening to take a day off when he gets home to his village just south of Newcastle next week.