The innocence of Botham going back to check the England opener (7)
I believe the answer is:
naivete
'the innocence' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'check the england opener' is the wordplay.
'check' becomes 'naive' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'opener' indicates taking the first letters.
The first letters of 'the england' is 'te'.
'naive'+'te'='NAIVETE'
'of botham going back to' acts as a link.
This may not be correct. Some or all of it may be part of another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for naivete that I've seen before include "Being green" , "Innocence or guillibility" , "natural simplicity" , "Quality of the simple" , "Ingenuosity" .)