LITMIR.BIZ

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when he brought in his lunch it often consisted of half a dozen cakes, no meat or bread. The social side of office life, like parties or outings, never interested him. He was very much a loner.’

      By the time Boycott entered the civil service, he had already made rapid progress up the ladder of Yorkshire cricket. As well as producing a string of outstanding performances for Hemsworth Grammar, he had also appeared successfully for both the South Elmsall district team – averaging around 70 per game as well as captaining the side – and Yorkshire schoolboys. In the summer of 1958 he was vice-captain for the Yorkshire Federation’s Under 18s tour of the Midlands. Boycott had little chance to shine, however, as the tour was ruined by poor weather.

      Just as importantly, he was also playing club cricket for Barnsley, in one of the toughest environments in the world, the Yorkshire and Bradford League. Boycott had moved from Ackworth to Barnsley when he was 16, on the advice of his uncle Algy who felt that ‘we ought to get him into a higher class of cricket’. Furthermore, Barnsley also had a very good batting track. So Algy had taken Boycott to the winter nets one night at Barnsley’s ground at Shaw Lane, where his batting was watched by Clifford Hesketh, chairman of Barnsley and a leading member of the Yorkshire committee. According to Algy, Hesketh took a brief look at Boycott, then said, ‘Oh, yes, we’ll have him.’

      Given the strength of Barnsley, Boycott could not immediately break into the First XI, but he did well for the seconds, enjoying an average of 66. Then, towards the end of the season, he played two games for the senior side, making 43 not out in the second match in a victory against Castleford. In the following two summers, 1958 and 1959, he was a regular member of the Barnsley First XI, performing creditably but with few heroics. One of the leading members of the Barnsley club, Gordon Walker, was later to recall Boycott as a moody loner, with an inclination towards foul language and slow scoring: ‘I’d say we had several players who looked better at the time. It’s been sheer determination that’s made him one of t’ best we ever had in county.’

      Through a remarkable twist of history, the modest south Yorkshire club at this time included a trio of cricketers who were subsequently to be amongst the biggest stars of modern Britain: Boycott, Dickie Bird and Michael Parkinson. It is perhaps no coincidence that all three had the same background, the sons of coal miners who learnt early in their lives the value of hard work and strength of character. But even Dickie and Parky were struck by the intensity of Boycott’s ambitions. In a radio interview in the seventies, Parkinson explained: ‘He always had this extraordinary, obsessive dedication. I have never met an obsession like it in any athlete. I remember the first game I really clocked his talent was when we were playing Scarborough and they had a bowler called Bill Foord, good enough to play for Yorkshire on a few occasions. And Geoffrey came in at number five. It was a soggy, wet day, and the outfield was damp, with a lot of sawdust on the run-ups. Bill Foord bowled his first ball to Geoff who went on the back foot and hit it like a shell past him. It went right through the pile of sawdust behind the bowler and hit the sightscreen. Foord turned to me and said, “Christ almighty, what’s this lad’s name?”

      ‘“Boycott.”

      ‘“I’ll remember that.”’

      What Dickie Bird remembers most about Boycott at Barnsley was ‘his application, concentration and his absolute belief in himself. He had one great gift, mental strength. You can have all the coaching in the world but the most important thing is to be mentally strong.’ At Barnsley, Dickie Bird and Michael Parkinson generally opened, and Boycott came down the order, ‘though he handled the quick bowlers pretty well. He was a fine player off his back foot, which is always the hallmark of class, whatever the level. His punch through the offside was his bread and butter shot, with a lot of bottom hand in it. Then he would also pick up his ones and twos off his legs. That is all he did. He played to his limitations. His one weakness was that he played with very low hands going forward but that is the way we were coached in Yorkshire to cope with spin and movement on difficult pitches. The problem with that technique is that, though it might cover deviation it can also leave your hands vulnerable to the one that suddenly rises.’ Dickie Bird is also interesting on Boycott’s personality: ‘He always kept himself to himself, even in those early days. He was very private, didn’t mix much with the people. Parky, Boycott and I were all from the same background but we did not go out together in the evenings. All he seemed interested in was playing and practising as much cricket as he could. Yet he was also very confident and I think some of the older players resented that, meeting this young man who had so much belief in himself.’

      Achievement with Boycott has usually been accompanied by setbacks, and his teenage years were no exception. Just as he had to cope in childhood with his father’s disability and the loss of his spleen, so, when he was about 17, he was faced with a serious threat to his sporting ambitions, that of poor eyesight. When Boycott was told that he would have to wear glasses, he feared it was an end to his hopes of becoming a professional cricketer. In a BBC interview he explained: ‘I suddenly found when I was doing my schooling in the classroom that I could not see the blackboard very well. My friends kept pulling my leg about this and said that I needed glasses. It had never struck me at first because I was playing cricket fairly well at school but in the end it got under my skin so much that I had to go and see an optician.’ Unfortunately the other boys were right. Boycott was told he would have to wear glasses. He was plunged into the blackest despair.

      Uncle Algy takes up the story: ‘Geoff would just not accept it. He said that if he had to wear glasses, his future was finished. For three or four days he cried, he were that upset.’ At the request of Boycott’s mother, Algy went to see his nephew and gave him a stern lecture. ‘I told him that other people with glasses had made names for themselves in cricket, like Roy Marshall of Hampshire and M.J.K. Smith of Warwickshire. I said to him, “If you say you’re finished, you’re finished. But if you fight, you can go on.”’

      Invigorated by his uncle’s talk, Boycott wrote to M.J.K. Smith. The future England captain, who was to be Boycott’s first skipper on an MCC tour, still recalls the schoolboy contacting him. ‘Fellows used to write to me quite a lot because I was one of those wearing spectacles. I had a standard letter saying that it was not a problem at all. I always used to suggest that they had their eyes tested every year so they knew their eyesight was 100 per cent, which was probably better than some blokes who didn’t wear glasses.’ Smith further explained that he wore rimless spectacles with shatter-proof plastic lenses, so glass would not go into the eye if they were hit.

      Boycott was later to claim that glasses had made him more introverted, more of a loner. After he exchanged his spectacles for contact lenses in 1969, he told a reporter from the Sun: ‘I started wearing glasses when I was seventeen and my personality changed dramatically. From a carefree youngster, I turned into a withdrawn character who just couldn’t go out and meet people. I cut myself off and everyone began to think I was hostile.’ This, to say the least, is something of an exaggeration. Not even the most excitable observer would have ever called the young Boycott ‘carefree’. Few teenagers can have been more consumed with such a ruthless sense of purpose. His close friend George Hepworth remembers him as ‘very intense, almost an introvert’ in his early days at Ackworth, long before he found he needed glasses.

      Still, having acquired a pair, Boycott was more optimistic about the future. There was now no reason why he should not return to the playing arena with renewed confidence. But not everyone was so sure. His schoolfriend Eddie Hambleton, who played in the Hemsworth School First XI and also drove Boycott to Barnsley games on the back of his Triumph motorcycle – ‘two bags in his hands and no crash helmet’ – remembers the first time Boycott wore glasses in a match: ‘We were playing at the village of Wath. I was sitting about to watch the cricket as Geoff went out to open. The groundsman, Mr Mansfield, whom I knew well, turned to me and said, “Is Boycott wearing glasses?”

      ‘“Ay, I think he is.”

      ‘“Well, that’s the end of his career, then, isn’t it?”’

      Mr Mansfield, like many others before and since, was to be proved hopelessly wrong.

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