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career. At Test level, he could play his natural game, acting as the bedrock of his side’s innings.

      In addition, his mental strength made it easier to cope with the overcharged tension of Test cricket. The inner steel in his character, forged in the furnace of the hardest schools in English cricket, the Yorkshire leagues and county club, had been further hardened by all the struggles he had experienced in his early life: the austerity of his family life; his poor health and eyesight; the sneers of those who said he would never make it; and, most recently, the continual refrain that he was not nearly as good as John Hampshire. ‘I’ll show them’ became one of the strongest motivating forces of Boycott’s career, ensuring that he would always give his absolute best when playing for his country. For many players, Test cricket has been a means of exposing their inadequacies. For Boycott, it was a vehicle for proving his capabilities.

      It was obvious that, by the end of the 1963 season, Boycott could soon be in the reckoning for a Test place, especially because the selectors were having such problems in finding a reliable opening pair. Since the start of the 1962 season, when Boycott made his first-class debut, a disturbing number of combinations had been tried, including: Geoff Pullar and Colin Cowdrey; Mickey Stewart (Alec’s father) and Cowdrey; Pullar and the Reverend David Sheppard (the future Bishop of Liverpool); Cowdrey and Sheppard; Ray Illingworth and Sheppard; Stewart and John Edrich; Peter Richardson and Stewart; Stewart and Brian Bolus (Boycott’s former Second XI colleague at Yorkshire, now at Nottinghamshire); Bolus and Edrich; M.J.K. Smith and Bolus; Bolus and Jimmy Binks (the Yorkshire wicket-keeper, playing in his only Tests on the MCC tour to India, 1963/64) – a display of such feverish selectorial inconsistency that it makes Trescothick-Strauss look like the Rock of Ages.

      At the beginning of the 1964 season, Boycott made sure that the selectors could not ignore him with two big centuries in May. An innings of 151 against Middlesex at Headingley was followed by his third hundred against Lancashire in consecutive Roses matches. In the Cricketer in May A. A. Thomson wrote of his Test prospects: ‘It is not a dead cert, but it’s the best bet I know in this race.’ Boycott himself was far from certain. Though he had been selected for the MCC team against the Australian tourists at Lord’s and scored 63, he felt that he had still not yet done enough to win a place for the first Test at Trent Bridge, as he told one of his girlfriends, Shirley Western, a glamorous big-band singer whom he had met in August 1963 at the Empire Ballroom, Leicester Square. Though he was still in a relationship with Anne Wyatt in Yorkshire, Boycott was never one to let such a consideration restrict his freedom to pursue other women. By the summer of 1964, Boycott and Shirley Western were quite intimate, though their opportunities to meet in London were severely restricted by their professional careers: Shirley sang almost every night with the Ken Mackintosh band at the Empire Ballroom, while Boycott had to travel throughout the country during the summer. Nevertheless, as a keen cricket enthusiast, she took any chance she could to see him play at Lord’s, the Oval or any other ground in the Home Counties.

      During the MCC game against the Australians, Shirley Western struck up a conversation with Ian Wooldridge of the Daily Mail. When she told him she was friendly with Boycott, he replied: ‘Geoff? Boycott? I didn’t think he had any women at all. Fancy him having someone like you. Well, he’ll be in the Test side on Sunday.’

      ‘He doesn’t think he’s done enough.’

      ‘I bet you a fiver he’s in.’

      ‘Fiver he’s not.’

      Wooldridge was right. Immediately he was on the line to claim his money. On Sunday 31 May Boycott’s name was included in the twelve for the Trent Bridge Test against Australia. Boycott, understandably, confessed to some anxiety as well as pride. ‘Of course I’m on top of the world. A bit worried, too, because there is so much to gain and so much to lose by a place in the first Test against such a team as the Aussies.’ The chorus of congratulations was led by The Times, which described Boycott’s rise to Test cricket as ‘remarkable. This time last year he was hidden away at number six or seven, a little-known name. Now he is in everyone’s team. He looks, at 23, to have a productive career ahead of him.’

      John Edrich had been chosen to open with Boycott, but on the morning of the Test he reported unfit, having trodden on a ball in the nets and twisted his ankle. It was too late to send for a replacement so when England won the toss and batted, Boycott went in to bat with a makeshift opener, Middlesex all-rounder Freddie Titmus. On seeing the bespectacled debutant, Bobby Simpson, the Australian captain, yelled across to his fast bowler Graham MacKenzie, ‘Hey, Garth, look at this four-eyed fucker. He can’t fucking bat. Knock those fucking glasses off him right away.’ Having ignored this greeting, Boycott was immediately involved in a run-out incident with Titmus. In one of the opening overs, Boycott pushed a ball from Neil Hawke on to the leg-side and called for a sharp single. As Titmus responded to the call, he collided heavily with Hawke, a powerfully built Australian rules player, who was charging down the pitch to retrieve the ball. Titmus went sprawling across the turf, far out of his ground, while Hawke lobbed the ball to the wicket-keeper Wally Grout. A run-out was a certainty, yet Grout, to the astonishment of his colleagues, refused to break the stumps. Instead, after a pause, he gave the ball back to Hawke. ‘Bloody hell, I thought this was a Test match,’ said Norman O’Neill, standing at cover.

      Grout’s gesture rightly won him universal praise both at the time and afterwards. ‘It is doubtful if such exemplary sportsmanship has ever been exceeded in Test cricket,’ wrote Chris Clark, in his 1986 book The Test Match Career of Geoffrey Boycott. Such a claim ignores the truth that, only eight years later, in another Ashes Test, Boycott himself acted in exactly the same sporting way as Wally Grout. His forgotten act of chivalry took place during the first Test between England and Australia at Old Trafford in 1972. The circumstances were not dissimilar to the Titmus-Hawke incident. Australia were batting and Rodney Marsh, on 10 not out, hit a ball from Tony Greig to mid-on and started to run. But he collided with Greig as Boycott moved in from the leg-side to pick up the ball. Marsh could have easily been run out but Boycott refrained from throwing the ball to wicket-keeper Alan Knott. ‘Thanks, Fiery, you’re a gentleman,’ said Rod Marsh. Yet because of his reputation for selfishness and poor manners, Boycott’s action, unlike Wally Grout’s, is now barely mentioned in the cricket world.

      Despite being reprieved by Grout, Titmus only made 16 before falling with the score on 38. Boycott, however, was still there, 23 not out, at the close of his first rain-truncated day in Test cricket. The next morning he continued for another hour before falling, only two short of his half-century, to a brilliant diving slip catch by Bobby Simpson off Graeme Coding. England then struggled to 216 for 8, when Ted Dexter declared, but, with the third day an even bigger washout than the first, the match drifted to a sodden draw.

      Bad luck seemed to be hovering around England’s openers at Trent Bridge, for Boycott joined Edrich on the injury list when he broke a finger while fielding. The fracture ruled him out, not only of England’s second innings – Dexter opened with Titmus and they put on 90 – but also the Lord’s Test as well. He returned at Headingley, making 38 and four in England’s defeat. In both innings he was caught at slip off Corling, exposing a weakness against away-swing. In true Boycott fashion, he worked thoroughly in the nets on this deficiency, training himself to assess precisely which balls to leave and which to play.

      Australia made the Ashes safe in a gargantuan but tedious run-fest at Old Trafford, what Peter Parfitt called ‘the most boring Test match I have ever played in’. Bobby Simpson hit 311 as Australia built up a mammoth total of 656 for 8 declared. England responded with 611, Barrington and Dexter both making big centuries. On a perfect pitch, Boycott might have been disappointed only to make 58, bowled by a MacKenzie leg-cutter, but at least he seemed to have conquered his problems outside the off-stump and had recorded his first Test half-century.

      Boycott did even better when playing for Yorkshire against the Australian tourists at Bradford, hitting 54 and 122 against them. The latter innings, however, took place in highly controversial circumstances that reinforced Boycott’s growing reputation for single-minded obduracy. On the last day of the match, Bobby Simpson had declared, leaving Yorkshire a target of 323 in 260 minutes. But no attempt was made to go for the runs. Instead, after batting for nearly two hours, Boycott was only

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