Geoff Boycott: A Cricketing Hero

Recognizing that Geoffrey had genuine ability at the game, Algy suggested that he should receive proper training at the coaching clinic at Rothwell, run by the former Somerset leg-spinner Johnny Lawrence. The combined cost of the cricket lessons and the bus fares to Rothwell came to about 10 shillings, more than Boycott’s parents could afford, so Algy and other relatives assisted. Boycott’s cricket lessons involved not only a considerable sacrifice by his parents but also real dedication on his part, for he had to make two long bus journeys plus a mile’s walk to reach the clinic, often in rain or snow.

Johnny Lawrence’s indoor school, the only one of its kind outside London, was little more than a large shed with a wooden floor. It had no proper heating, which meant near-freezing conditions on a winter morning. Each of the two nets had different surfaces: one was a turning wicket, the other fast. What the school lacked in facilities and warmth was more than balanced by Johnny Lawrence’s talent as a coach. A deeply religious man who refused to play on Sundays, he had a gift for conveying both enthusiasm and technical advice. Jack Birkenshaw, who attended the school with Boycott, says: ‘He was a great coach, one of the best I have ever known. He loved the game, had a passion for it, made you enjoy it, taught you all the subtleties of batting and bowling.’ George Hepworth agrees: ‘Johnny was an absolute genius as a coach, always able to end a session on a positive note. He should have been put in charge at Yorkshire but the establishment derided him because he hadn’t played for England. It was all bunkum. He was something special.’

An impeccably straight technique and confidence against spin were two of the legacies of Boycott’s early years at the Rothwell school. The Yorkshire left-arm spinner Don Wilson, another Lawrence pupil, remembers: ‘When I bowled at Geoffrey, I could never get him out. He had no strokes but an unbelievable defence.’ This is Jack Birkenshaw’s verdict: ‘He was very defensive and I would not have said he would have ever been a Test cricketer then. There were a lot better than Boycs at that age. But he just kept coming along and improving all the time.’ Throughout his playing career, Boycott continued to turn to Lawrence for advice and support. Before an overseas tour, for instance, he would usually have several intensive net sessions at the school.

Boycott was soon able to show his increasing skills in a proper playing arena. When he was twelve, his uncle Algy managed to find him a place in the Ackworth second team. It was not an auspicious start for he made precisely nought but he played well enough in the following game to win his debut for the first team at the end of the season, making nine in a match at Goole. At the start of the next summer, 1954, still aged just 13, he played his first game for the Ackworth senior team at home. George Hepworth, on leave from duty in the RAF, was playing in the match. ‘We were 87 for 7 when he came in and we took our total to 119, making the scores level. Then I was out to the last ball of the over. The very next ball Geoff put his foot across and cracked a terrific cover drive, which rattled the boundary railings.’ Boycott’s winning hit brought his first press notice, a mention in the local Pontefract and Castleford Express, though thanks to the scorer misspelling his name, he appeared as ‘Jeffrey Boycott’.

Boycott’s performance made an even bigger impression on George Hepworth. On his return to RAF Bempton, he told the local postmaster, Reg Gardiner: ‘Watch out for this kid called Geoffrey Boycott. As sure as God made little apples, this kid will go all the way. One day you may well see him play for England.’ For years afterwards, George Hepworth used to tell Boycott of these words to Gardiner. ‘I’m not sure he ever believed me. Then, in 1984, I was at the Scarborough Cricket Festival, standing talking to Geoff. By coincidence, a million-to-one shot, Reg Gardiner came by. He turned to Geoff and said, “This gentleman said to me, thirty years ago, to look out for a kid called Boycott. Tha were an age comin’ through but, by God, he were right.”’

George Hepworth also recalls the time he ran out Boycott in a game against Stanley. Hepworth was trying to win the strike because he fancied taking on Stanley’s off-spinner. ‘I called him for a quick single and, poor little kid, his pads were almost under his chin while I, serving in the RAF, was pretty fit.’ Boycott was run out for 25, but Hepworth went on to reach his 50. ‘When I returned to the dressing room, Geoff was still sitting there in his pads, just peering over them. I fell about laughing and said, “Never mind, old cock, it were my fault, I were trying to pinch bowling.” He called me a cad.’

As well as playing league cricket for Ackworth, Boycott became involved in local, knock-out competitions. One of the teams he played for was an eleven organized by Bernard Conway, a professional rugby-league player with Hull. Conway has vivid memories of the young teenage Boycott: ‘He was not endowed with a brilliant natural talent but he was so single-minded and purposeful. He thought of every game as a battle with the sole aim of staying in.’ In the summers of 1954 and 1955, Conway entered his team in the Ackworth knock-out, winning in the second year in the final against the Plough Inn. These matches only lasted 20 overs and batsmen had to retire after scoring 25 runs. Conway recalls that Boycott seemed a little concerned that he would not be able to score quickly enough in the competition. ‘At the age of thirteen and fourteen he did not have any power in his strokes. He came to me and said, “What am I to do?” I told him not to worry. “Just get your twenty-five and leave the rest to us.” And he usually did, despite some barracking from the crowd. I remember I had a bet with one of the Fitzwilliam locals just before the final. He said to me: “Boycott will lose you this match. He scores so slowly.” I replied, “With him in the side, we’ve already got twenty-five runs on the board. And I’ll tell you something else. That lad might play for Yorkshire.” “They’ll not even let him into the stripping room,” was the reply.’

Boycott was to carry on playing for Ackworth until he was sixteen, though he still continued to practise at the ground, even when he was a Test player. As might be expected, the club is proud of its association with the great cricketer and has given him life membership. The Ackworth CC Chairman, Barrie Wathen, told me: ‘Geoff is always welcome here. We are honoured to have the connection with him. I know he’s a complex character, but personally, I have had a good relationship with him. George Hepworth says that when he was secretary at Ackworth, ‘nothing was too much trouble’ for Boycott. ‘If we were short of money, he would organize a Yorkshire side to come to the ground for a fund-raising game. He would also help to get us sponsors.’

As always with Boycott, however, the picture is complex. Today, other, more critical, voices are raised against him in the club. There are complaints that he has used people for his own ends, and that he has been selfish and rude. In particular, it is argued that he did little to assist when the club embarked on a major fund-raising drive to buy its own ground and thereby remove the threat that the land might be used for building. Fifty thousand pounds was needed to purchase the ground from its then owner, the Moorfield Development Company, and some members believed that Boycott should have stumped up the whole sum from his own pocket. But Boycott told the Yorkshire Post in November 1990: ‘It would be nice for the club to own their own ground and I have a great emotional attachment to Ackworth. I will certainly do all I can to help the fund-raising, but the club actually belongs to the community and they will have to make the biggest contribution.’

The fund-raising campaign was ultimately successful, the ground was bought, and is now superbly appointed. But the feeling among some senior figures is that Boycott never lived up to his promise. Indeed, it is a symbol of the ill-feeling in certain quarters that when the gates at the entrance to the ground, erected in his honour in 1971, were recently taken down, it was decided not to have his name on their replacements. Keith Stevenson, uncle of former Yorkshire player Graham Stevenson, told me: ‘He just used us all the time. He’s so selfish, forgets where he came from. People says he’s never bought them a drink. Well, I wouldn’t want him to.’ He told me of two incidents that strengthened his negative opinion of Boycott: ‘We used to run testimonial matches here for him in 1984, when money were short because of the miners’ strike. At one match, we had a beautiful spread in the clubhouse for tea, all home-made stuff. I was umpiring and as we came off the field at the end of one innings, Boycott says to me, “Is there some tea on, Keith?” I replied, “Ay, we’ll have twenty minutes.” Then Boycott says, “We’re having no break. We’re going straight out again.” So I told him, “If tha’s goin’ out, tha’s goin’ on tha own, because we’re havin’ tea with the rest of the teams.” And, you know, he stayed in the pavilion, never came down to the clubhouse, though we had laid on all this food for his testimonial. That were Mr Boycott.’ The second incident occurred when Keith Stevenson and his father gave Boycott a lift to a match at Middlesbrough: ‘Never offered me petrol money, of course, and then he says to my dad when we arrived, “Will thee go down shop and bring me lump of red cheese.” Me dad were only a miner but he got him this block of cheese – I know it sounds stupid but Boycott loved red cheese – yet Mr Boycott never paid and never thanked me for the lift. And then, at the end of play, we sat in the car park waiting for him, only to find that he had buggered off with a young lass.’

Another member of the club, Doug Lloyd, who played with Boycott in the Ackworth team as a teenager, is equally scathing: ‘You won’t get me knocking him as a cricketer but as a man I detest him. He is what you call a self-centred bastard. And he’s always had a short temper. I remember when he were a lad, fourteen or fifteen, if he got out he would cry and sulk and sit on his own.’ Doug Lloyd has a personal reason for his feelings towards Boycott. His son, Neil, was an outstanding young cricketer, playing for England Schools and the national youth side. Many observers, including Fred Trueman, felt that he was certain to play for England. Yet, within a week of playing a junior test match against the West Indies in September 1982, he died suddenly at the age of just 17. The shock of this tragic blow reverberated throughout Yorkshire cricket. ‘All the Yorkshire players and the entire committee came to Neil’s funeral, except that bastard Boycott. I’ve played in his benefit matches, taken time off work for him, and then he never showed up at my son’s funeral. That were it for me that day.’ Boycott was taken aback by the vehemence of Lloyd’s reaction, especially because he had written a letter of sympathy to the family the moment he had heard the tragic news about Neil. He said, ‘I don’t like funerals. I never go to them. The only funerals I have ever been to are my dad’s in 1967 and my mum’s in 1978. Doug and his wife were sad – understandably sad – and they took it out on me.’

Even today Doug Lloyd is unrepentant. ‘It still touches something in me. When I talk about Boycott, I just upset myself.’

3 ‘Dedicated Absolutely to Cricket’ (#ulink_d41479b3-fff8-5c0a-993b-e06e7f24604b)

From Fitzwilliam Junior School, Boycott, having failed his 11-plus, went to the local Kingsley Secondary Modern School. The teaching there was poor, the cricket facilities almost non-existent. The only positive result of this move was the development of his soccer skills, which he had already revealed playing in defence for Fitzwilliam youth club. As on the cricket field, he always wanted to win on the soccer pitch. He is remembered as a tough, physical player, with enough talent to attract the attention of Leeds United scouts in his mid-teenage years. He even played a few games for the famous club’s Under-18 team alongside Billy Bremner.

But cricket remained his first passion. Fortunately for Boycott, after just a year at Kingsley he passed the late-entry examination for grammar school and thereby won a place at nearby Hemsworth, which had both an excellent cricket ground and a cricket-loving headmaster in Russell Hamilton. With this kind of support, Hemsworth Grammar was to be almost as important for Boycott’s game as the Lawrence coaching clinic and Ackworth Cricket Club.

Hemsworth was a traditional institution, with a mixed intake of about 800 pupils, high academic and sporting standards, and strong leadership from Hamilton. ‘It was a smashing school. If you got there, you had a real sense of achievement,’ says one of Boycott’s fellow pupils, Terry Newitt. ‘Russell Hamilton was both strict and inspiring, the sort of gentleman you looked up to. When he walked down the corridor in his black flowing gown, we’d all jump out of the way.’ During his years at the school, Boycott proved himself to be not only an excellent cricketer but also a fine rugby player, a sound academic pupil and a mature, likeable young man. Ken Sale, who taught him biology and rugby, remembers him as ‘bright, diligent, anxious to please. In the classroom he was keen and alert. He was as careful in his approach to his studies as he was to his batsmanship. I also remember he was fastidious about his dress, always looking immaculate both on and off the field. As with most school sporting heroes, he was the idol of quite a few of the girls, had a little following of them, though I don’t think he was ever involved with any. He was a product of his background, very determined to get on and make the most of his talent at cricket. His personality could be described as intense; he didn’t seem to mix much but, underneath, I sensed he was a gentle, vulnerable pupil who tried to hide that vulnerability.’

Boycott was soon established in the Hemsworth First XI and at 15 he was made captain. Sale recalls that he had ‘a certain streak of arrogance about his game, which came from being so much better than the other boys’. In one match against the staff, Boycott was dominating as usual. Sale continues: ‘So our fast bowler, George Pacey, came on with the threat: “Right, I’m going to bowl as fast as I can straight at his legs.” I was fielding down at fine leg and soon Boycott was regularly clipping the ball straight past me. To make such a cool response to an adult fast bowler at only fifteen showed Boycott’s talent and character. He had an excellent defence off both front and back foot. He absolutely loathed to give up his wicket and hated any false strokes.’

The cricket coach at Hemsworth, Dudley Taylor, who was also a science teacher, has equally fond memories of Boycott. ‘Because he was a late-entry pupil, he was a year older than most in his class, so he seemed more mature. He was well-mannered and hardworking, though he could enjoy a laugh in the classroom.’ Taylor says that Boycott was good at all games, even basketball, and remembers him as a ‘brave and determined full back in rugby’. As with his soccer, his rugby skills aroused an interest beyond school – Boycott played in one Under 18 trial match for South Yorkshire District against Wakefield. Once more, however, it was his cricket that most impressed Taylor. ‘I knew even at thirteen that he would go on to play for Yorkshire. He was a more expansive player then but that is probably because he was in a different class to the other boys. I will never forget the way he played the pull. It was so effortless and the ball sped to the boundary, whereas the rest of us were liable to hit the ball in the air when we attempted that shot. In fact, he was so confident about technique that he actually used to coach the staff team in the nets.’

The tension that characterized many of his relationships in later life appears to have been largely absent during his time at Hemsworth, possibly because Boycott felt relaxed in his pre-eminence. Roland Howcroft, a schoolmate of the time, says: ‘He was always quite confident; there was no sense of insecurity about him. He was just a normal lad, liked normal things. On the buses to away games, for instance, he would join in singing with the rest of us. He was always outstanding at cricket, of course. Even in those days he was deadly serious about the game, was never a slogger or tried to hit over the top.’

Another of his Hemsworth contemporaries, Peter Jordan, now a journalist, says: ‘He was mature, sensible, never involved in any pranks and because he was serious and dedicated he seemed much older than the rest of us. Yet you could not have described him as a loner. He joined in everything at school and could take part as well as anyone in school debates. But there was never any bullshit with him. He never just talked for the sake of it but if he had something to say, he’d say it.’ Jordan was sure that Boycott would play for Yorkshire because of his determination. ‘He wanted to practise all the time. It was almost as if he was on a crusade. When he was out, he often didn’t come back into the pavilion but would sit on his own, holding an inquest on his dismissal. He was friendly and polite to the girls but nothing was going to stand in the way of his cricket, he was that dedicated. If he’d gone into medicine, he would be a top surgeon by now.’

One of Boycott’s closest friends at Hemsworth was the school wicket-keeper, Terry McCroakham, who therefore had some direct experience of Boycott the young bowler. ‘At this level, he was fast medium, very accurate, with a good inswinger. Because of his control, he was more reliable than many others.’ Against Castleford in 1956, Boycott had the remarkable figures of 7 for 4, though he finished up on the losing side. Like others from Hemsworth in the mid-fifties, McCroakham enjoyed Boycott’s company. ‘I never found him big-headed at all. There was no side to him, he was just part of the team. Yes, he could hog the strike but then he was a much better batsman than any of the rest of us. I don’t think he was a natural; you got the impression that he lived to practise. He was very ambitious, knew where he wanted to go.’ McCroakham has stayed in contact with Boycott and remains an admirer. ‘Just before the Leeds Test in 1964, he had damaged a hand and was having a net to see if he would be fit to play. I was standing nearby. Though he hadn’t seen me for seven years and was now an international player, he came straight over for a chat. To me, he has always been like that, unlike some other of these so-called England stars.’

Sadly, all the school records and scorebooks from this period were destroyed in a fire. However, Terry McCroakham has retained a press cutting from this period, which recorded Boycott’s largest innings for the school, when he made ‘a fine 105 not out’ from a Hemsworth total of 143 for 4 against Normanton Grammar School, ‘including two sixes and 14 fours’. Unfortunately rain brought the match to a premature end. Eddie Hambleton, another schoolfriend, remembers that day: ‘It started to rain quite heavily and the masters had a consultation. They then said that there were not often centuries in schools cricket so they would play a few more overs to give Geoff a chance to reach his hundred. When we came in about three overs later, Geoff had made 105. Back at school on Monday morning, we consulted the old scorebooks and found that the school record was 106. So Geoff just missed out there.’

The summer of 1958 was Boycott’s last at Hemsworth. He passed seven O levels and could have easily stayed on to do A levels, perhaps going on to further education. Ken Sale says that he was certainly competent enough to have gained a good degree at a red-brick university. Dudley Taylor goes even further: ‘With his brains and cricketing ability, he might well have got to Cambridge if he had been to public school.’

But two factors made him leave school at 17. First, he felt he had been a burden on his parents for too long. In an interview with the BBC in 1965 his headmaster, the late Russell Hamilton, who had been keen for him to stay on for his A levels, said: ‘Always at the back of his mind was the fact that financially he had been a big enough strain on his parents and that he really ought to get himself a job.’ The second, perhaps lesser, consideration was Boycott’s iron determination to make cricket his career, for which a university degree must have seemed an irrelevance. Everyone who knew him in the mid-fifties was struck by his single-minded ambition to become a Yorkshire cricketer. ‘Cricket was always going to be his trade,’ says Terry McCroakham. Indeed, the choice of Boycott’s occupation appears to have been dictated by his playing ambition, for the post he took up in the Ministry of Pensions in Barnsley, though mundane, offered a great deal of flexibility in his working hours. What Boycott did was to work every shift he could in the winter thereby building up extra leave that could be taken during the summer.

Yet, despite the advantages of this job for his cricket, Boycott’s early departure from school left him, in the longer term, with feelings of resentment towards the more privileged. The lack of a university education rankled, and was regularly used as a stick with which to beat his opponents in the supposed ‘cricket establishment’, with Boycott posing as the champion of the ordinary working public against the public-school, Oxbridge ‘gin and tonic brigade’. When Mike Brearley was awarded an OBE, Boycott said, ‘If I’d been to Cambridge, I’d have a knighthood by now.’ Similarly, this chip on his shoulder has also been reflected in his often boorish antics at official gatherings – ‘he could be so disrespectful. You’d be at a reception, chatting to some dignitary, perhaps an Oxford-educated bloke, then Boycs comes barging in, doing the guy down, “all the bloody same, you lot,” and so on. You would just feel so embarrassed,’ says one ex-England player who toured with Boycott. Mike Atherton, Cambridge graduate and England’s longest-serving Test captain, told me, ‘I have never had much of a problem with Geoff but I always felt he had a slight beef about people who went to Cambridge University. There is definitely a chippiness there, though in my case it may have been mitigated by the fact that I was a fellow northerner.’

Boycott worked as a clerical officer at the Ministry of Pensions from 1958 until 1963. His duties were hardly taxing for a man of his intelligence, but because of his cricket ambitions he never applied for promotion. Even in this job, Boycott demonstrated those patterns of behaviour that became so well known to his cricket colleagues. One fellow employee, who gave Boycott a fortnight’s training when he started in his post, told me: ‘I liked him and never had any problems with him, perhaps because I had shown him the ropes. But he could be very rude to others, never hesitating to tell someone to get stuffed. There was also a degree of resentment over the time he took off for cricket in the summer. He was something of an eccentric – 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.

4 A Late Developer (#ulink_d5417ff2-b4ef-5d62-abce-b1a790d5052f)

There has long been a fascinating debate as to whether Geoffrey Boycott was a natural cricketer who sacrificed strokeplay for run accumulation, or a self-made professional who exploited every ounce of his limited ability through monumental dedication. Some fine judges of the game, like Ted Dexter, incline to the former view. ‘Geoff Boycott and Kenny Barrington would not have been far apart,’ Dexter told me. ‘People often suggest that they didn’t have a lot of talent but they made the best of what they’d got. Well, that’s rubbish. I mean, Kenny had more talent in his little finger than most people. And Geoff, in Australia 1970/71, provided some of the best batting I have ever seen.’ David Brown, the Warwickshire fast bowler, says: ‘You don’t get to his position as a purely fabricated player without natural talent.’

Boycott’s last opening partner at Yorkshire, Martyn Moxon, agrees: ‘People say he was a manufactured player, but that’s ridiculous. He was very good indeed, though he was a grafter who was more likely to win you a game on a bad wicket. But he had the ability to take an attack apart when he felt it necessary.’

Support for this argument comes not only from his great one-day performances in the Gillette Cup in 1965 and in Australia in 1979/80 but also from the regularity with which he took centuries off the finest bowling attacks all over the world. Anyone who could score a hundred in the West Indies against Michael Holding, Andy Roberts, Colin Croft and Joel Garner – as Boycott did in Antigua in 1981 at the age of 40 plus – cannot be short of genuine class.

Yet the evidence for the other side is more conclusive. For if Boycott had enjoyed great natural flair, it would have shone through from his earliest days. After all, this is what has happened with most of the top Test batsmen. Colin Cowdrey and Peter May were both talked of as England players while still at school. Len Hutton was said to be good enough for first-class cricket at the age of 14. In truth, Boycott is almost unique in the lateness of his rise to top-level cricket and in the limitations of talent. Yes, he might have had sufficient capability to make a living as a professional cricketer. Yes, he might have been a skilled enough sportsman to have had trials with Leeds and played rugby for his school. But, apart from George Hepworth, no one who saw him as a young man had any inkling that he might become an England cricketer. ‘I never thought he would be more than an average county cricketer, certainly not a player who would put his name in the record books,’ says Dickie Bird, of their days together at Barnsley. Don Wilson is even more emphatic: ‘When he first arrived at Yorkshire, he could hardly hit the ball off the square. I would never have said he’d be a Test cricketer, not at any price.’

What brought Boycott to the Test arena was the depth not of his talent but of his will-power. ‘He drove himself to the top with old-fashioned discipline. He was not a natural but he dedicated himself totally to the game,’ argues Colin Cowdrey. All the other greats of the game, apart from Boycott, have sent out a signal of their genius almost as soon as they stepped on to a cricket field. Boycott was still languishing in the Yorkshire seconds at 21, an age at which others, like Gary Sobers, Denis Compton, Waqar Younis and Sachin Tendulkar, had already enjoyed great success at Test level. Of his own Test contemporaries, Peter Willey, Dennis Amiss and Keith Fletcher all played for their counties in their teens, while David Gower, Bob Willis, Derek Underwood and Alan Knott were younger when they first played for England than Boycott was when he made his debut for Yorkshire.

‘He certainly wasn’t an outstanding player – he’ll admit that himself. There were lots of players around who were more prolific than Geoff. But he was totally locked into what he wanted to do,’ says Rodney Cass, a fellow pupil of the Johnny Lawrence school. The very fact that Boycott had to work so hard to reach Test standard is further proof of his restricted natural ability. It was partly because he had this monumental dedication to cricket that he developed his character traits of self-absorption and unsociability, which later caused such friction in his career. There is one further point. For all his great achievements, Boycott remained chronically insecure about his batting. According to Ray Illingworth, he would always be asking, ‘Do you think I’m a good player?’ Other England captains have testified to his need for constant reassurance. Such enquiries would hardly have come from someone who had confidence in their innate talent.

Between 1958 and 1962, Boycott did not make the progress he might have hoped. At times he thought he was destined for the scrapheap, another player of youthful promise who was unable to step up to a higher grade. In a BBC interview in 1971 he confessed of his teenage years: ‘Every schoolboy who loves cricket envisages that one day he would like to play for Yorkshire and England. I was just the same. But then you find out that there are lots of other boys who are as good as you and many of them much better. It is then that you really begin to despair that you will ever make it.’ It was because of this inability to break into first-class cricket during this period that a surprising move for Boycott was mooted. Frustrated by his stagnation in Yorkshire, he was willing to try his luck with Northamptonshire. ‘He was fighting for a place in the Yorkshire side but they were such a powerful team and the competition was fierce,’ recalls his old Fitzwilliam schoolfriend, Malcolm Tate. ‘People like Jack Hampshire and Mike Smedley seemed to be ahead of him. I said to Geoff, “I know everyone wants to play for Yorkshire but there isn’t only Yorkshire in cricket.”’ So, on the advice of Des Barrick, he went down to see if Northants would be interested.’

Des Barrick, a fine county professional, was, like Boycott, a native of Fitzwilliam and a graduate of the Johnny Lawrence school. After failing to win a place in the Yorkshire side, he had joined Northants in 1949. Now it seemed that there was a chance Boycott might do the same. Des Barrick explained to me: ‘Geoff wanted to play first-class cricket as soon as possible but he couldn’t get into the Yorkshire first team. Now, I thought this young fellow might really be an asset to Northants. I went to the committee, told them about him and said that Yorkshire seemed to be messing him around. So it was arranged that, next time Geoff was playing for Yorkshire seconds at Northampton, he should see the secretary Ken Turner and have a discussion with him. My memory is that Geoff seemed keen on the idea. And he was certainly good enough to be first class.’ The day arrived when the Yorkshire Second XI were playing at Northants, so Barrick went to the office of the Northants secretary, Ken Turner, to tell him of Geoff’s arrival. ‘As we were half-way down the stairs, Ken saw Geoff standing by the dressing room. He took one look at him, turned to me and said, “It’s no use talking to him. He’s wearing glasses. He’ll be blind in two years. He’s no good to us.” With that he turned round and went back up to his office. He never even spoke to Geoff. I’ll not forget Ken’s words as long as I live. Years later I used to tease Ken, telling him “how many bloody runs Boycott would have got you if he hadn’t been wearing glasses that day”. And whenever Ken wrote to me asking if Yorkshire had any good young players, I would just send him a single line back: “Dear Ken, Boycott, signed Des.” Of course, I could not tell Geoff what Ken had said. I let him down as lightly as possible, just saying that I’d had a word with Ken and he might be in touch. If I had given him the truth, it would have broken his heart.’