An underrated factor of Botham's record is the rate he took five-wicket hauls and made hundreds at, Until he broke his ribs in Australia in 1986 which finished him off as a bowler, He averaged 35 with the bat and 27 with the ball, but took 27 five-wicket hauls in 151 innings and not the wanker kind of five wicket hauls either, didn't not out farm either. Also made 14 centuries in 140 innings which means around one every ten innings.
He took a five wicket haul every 5.59 innings, among other bowlers, It was even better than Akram, Anderson, Ambrose and even Lillee. Though obviously, Ambrose and likely Akram had higher competition for wicket, but that shows what frequency Botham caused a storm at and it was very often. He was averaging 27 with the ball, with a 2.42 WPI and that frequency of five wicket hauls, which is exceptional in any context.
Hundreds wise, he has more hundreds than Stephen Fleming and Babar Azam, Atherton had 2 more despite playing 72 more innings in this context, Nasser had the same number but in 31 more innings, Stewart has one more despite 95 more innings, Lamb had the same frequency of hundreds too, even David Gower and Graham Gooch have an inferior frequency of hundreds, even Graham Thorpe among middle order batsmen has a worse frequency. Heck, even Joe Root before 2021, hailed as one of the four modern greats, had an inferior route albeit I'll admit he had the habit of making fifties and then getting out.
All that and was an ATG fielder on top, legendary in the slips and extraordinary in the outfield. obviously, with that frequency of high end pertormances, I have to assume the mean was pretty low for him but still, prior directly correlates to match performance and should definitively be given credit for his frequency of high level performances.
