Geoff Boycott: A Cricketing Hero - Leo McKinstry

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Boycott’s most successful Test opening partners, recalls that the Kent seam bowler David Halfyard bowled a short ball to Boycott who pulled it straight over square leg for six. ‘At the end of the over, Colin Cowdrey, being the lovely man he is, went up to Boycs, whom he had obviously never met before, and said, “Good shot, Geoffrey.” To which Boycs replied, in his broadest accent, “Ay, and if he pitches there again next over, I’ll bloody hit him there again.”’

      For all such bravado, by the end of the 1962 season, his average stood at just 21.42 from 150 runs scored in nine innings, while his performances in the colts showed a worrying decline. Many doubted, at this stage, that Boycott was cut out for top-level cricket. With typical candour, he admitted, in a later BBC interview, that most of his first appearances for the county had been inadequate. ‘I don’t think it took me long to realize all the weaknesses I had. They just rolled my wicket over and said it was like shelling peas.’

      A host of young players, of course, go through similar experiences. But Boycott’s early problems at Yorkshire might have been exacerbated by the unique pressures of the club, stemming from both its pre-eminent position in English cricket – they won the County Championship yet again in 1962 – and the huge expectations of the Yorkshire public, which has long possessed the most knowledgeable and unforgiving spectators in the world. On the positive side, these twin forces helped to create a ruthless professional outlook. Chris Balderstone, now a top umpire, who played with Boycott for ten years at Yorkshire, says: ‘Most of us young lads would have given our right arms to play for Yorkshire. It was every man for himself. You had to be mentally tough to cope, getting your head down and really grafting the whole time.’ But, more negatively, this mood also resulted in a profound spirit of caution. With so many players to choose from in the Yorkshire leagues and such high demands from the crowd, youngsters rarely enjoyed any permanence in the team. A couple of failures and they could be out, replaced by yet another bright prospect. So everything was done to eliminate risks rather than exhibit strokes. Brian Bolus was a classic case of what could go wrong. Hovering on the fringes of the Yorkshire team for six years from 1956, Bolus left in 1962, moved to Nottinghamshire and, freed from his Yorkshire shackles, quickly displayed such a spirit of adventure that within a couple of months he was opening for England.

      Perhaps even more importantly, many newcomers to the Yorkshire team found the atmosphere intimidating. Yorkshire in the fifties has been described as ‘a hard, vicious school’, and a legacy of this mood still lingered in the early sixties. Former Yorkshire leg-spinner Peter Kippax recalls: ‘I played in Boycott’s first game for Yorkshire in 1962. It was a tough side, then; they were real pros. Let’s be honest, they were not a welcoming bunch. They were all looking after their places and they did not want any upstarts getting a lead in. I thought the atmosphere was awful. Once, when I was playing one of my first games, I arrived early, put my things on a peg and the next thing I knew, they were right across the table. I had used the spot of someone who had changed there for ten years.’

      For some outsiders, Boycott’s obstreperous and egocentric nature only reflected this negative Yorkshire mentality. The Warwickshire fast bowler David Brown thinks that Boycott’s attitude was typical of the county: ‘The Yorkshiremen have always rucked among themselves. When I first played, they were constantly moaning at each other. You could listen to their dressing room and it was a guinea a minute. Boycott might have thought too much about himself but in many respects he was just like the rest of them.’

      But for those within the Yorkshire set-up, Boycott’s attitude was a particular cause of friction within the club. His fellow colt Peter Kippax says: ‘He never got close to anyone; he was definitely not a team man. He made no contribution to the dressing room other than to draw practical jokes towards himself. He was there in the corner and you either left him alone or you took the mickey out of him.’ One of the central difficulties was his continued poor running between the wickets. The great Australian all-rounder Keith Miller once said of Boycott: ‘He’s got every other aspect of his game so organized that I cannot understand why he does not master the elementary rules of running.’ Two incidents in the 1962 season added to this sorry reputation. In Boycott’s debut championship game in Northants, he managed to run out Phil Sharpe by declining a perfectly safe run. In the game against Derbyshire, he and Ken Taylor had put on 67 in their opening partnership when Taylor hit the ball to the leg-side, started to run, then Boycott sent him back and he was out by a considerable distance. As a result of these two disasters, Boycott received a severe lecture from his captain Vic Wilson. Boycott, with characteristic impenitence, refused to give ground or apologize, thereby worsening his standing in the team. As Don Wilson later wrote: ‘These incidents were guaranteed to rub colleagues up the wrong way but his conduct afterwards was something less than remorseful. We thought at the time he was just a boy who didn’t know any better, but he even makes light of it now. It was never because he was an inveterate bad runner or caller; it was because he was inherently selfish.’

      The accusation of selfishness was applied not just to his running but to his whole approach to cricket. There were mutterings that he would not bat in the interest of the side, that his slow rate of scoring reflected his obsession with his average. His sense of isolation was compounded by his anguish at failure, which meant that he retreated further into himself at any early dismissal. As he was later to admit: ‘I became very tense and taut and for a long time I used to find it very difficult to discuss getting out with anybody. I used to go very quiet, into my shell. Basically, it was because I felt shame at getting out.’

      The strength of Boycott’s ambition further reinforced his distance from his team-mates, since he placed professional success above popularity. ‘He was determination personified. He practised harder than anyone else, went to bed earlier, did not socialize with the rest of us. He did not have great natural ability, but overcame that problem through sheer grit, for which you have got to admire the man,’ says Peter Kippax.

      Animosity over Boycott’s reluctance to mix socially with his colleagues focused on his dislike of going out drinking. Alcohol has always been an essential part of the cricket scene, with the teetotaller as rare as a long hop from Glenn McGrath. The acceptance of that first pint from the gnarled old pro is almost a rite of passage for a young player, and most newcomers feel that they have to prove they can hold their drink as well as their catches. ‘I was a very rare bird in cricket when I started,’ Boycott said later. ‘A young man who didn’t smoke and didn’t drink, who was shy and introverted and found it difficult to talk to people, who was mad keen on physical fitness.’ The problem was worsened by the fact that Yorkshire in the sixties, for all their internal squabbles, were a very social side. Don Wilson explained to me: ‘Wherever we went on the county circuit, we entertained; I was the singer and Phil Sharpe played the piano. Now this did not suit Geoffrey in any way whatsoever. But I never said there was anything wrong with him just because he didn’t drink. Everyone seems to think because I enjoyed a drink -Trueman, Jimmy Binks, Doug Padgett and Nic, all of us enjoyed pints in the evening – and Geoff didn’t, there was a problem. It wasn’t that. If he’d have come along out with us and just had a glass of orange, then no one would have minded.’

      This claim is open to doubt. In fact there are two recorded incidents of Boycott being humiliated for his early teetotalism. When he had just won his Second XI cap Brian Sellers, the autocratic Yorkshire cricket chairman, having offered to buy a round in a local pub, exploded when Boycott requested an orange juice. ‘You can buy your own bloody orange juice,’ said Sellers. The other happened at the Balmoral in Scarborough when, amidst a round awash with alcohol, Boycott asked for an orange squash. The landlord brought over a glass ostentatiously decorated with fruit on cocktail sticks. It was a gesture, Boycott felt, purposely designed to make him ashamed. ‘The lads thought I wasn’t a man because I drank only orange squash,’ he said. No wonder he had little time for hanging around bars after that. He believed he had made an effort to socialize, and the response had been crushing.

      Given both his modest performances on the field in 1962 and his awkwardness with his team-mates, it is not surprising that his captain Vic Wilson felt that he should not be retained by Yorkshire at the end of the season. Wilson wrote to this effect to the committee, arguing that Boycott was neither a good enough player with whom to persevere nor the sort of person that Yorkshire should have in their squad. The chances of an uncapped Boycott surviving

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