Geoff Boycott: A Cricketing Hero

If Boycott had gone to Northamptonshire, the modern history of English cricket might have been very different. Yorkshire would have been spared the grotesque chaos into which the club was plunged by rows over his character, contract and captaincy. Freed from Yorkshire’s hothouse atmosphere, where his every utterance was subjected to frenzied scrutiny by press and public, Boycott might have become a more mellow, less intense figure. The better wicket at Northampton might have turned him into a more aggressive batsman, while, spared the pressures to bring success to Yorkshire as a captain, he might never have gone into Test exile in the mid-seventies. Alternatively, he would not have been so attuned to handling the mental stresses of Test cricket without the competitive spirit instilled in him by Brian Close’s Yorkshire. Nor would he have achieved the vast public following in the north that made him a unique figure in British sport. His defensive technique, honed on the damp wickets of Sheffield, Middlesbrough and Bradford Park Avenue, might not have been so polished or his footwork so sure. And would he have lost something of that instantly recognizable accent, which has been such a factor in his broadcasting career?

In the absence of any interest from Northamptonshire, Boycott had to concentrate on Yorkshire. In July 1959, while he was still at Barnsley, Boycott played his first game for the Yorkshire seconds, scoring five and 15. He played one more game that season, making just three runs and thus finishing that summer with an average of only 7.66 in the seconds. The 1960 season, with Boycott now nineteen, went even more badly. After a bright start for Barnsley, he was actually selected as twelfth man for Yorkshire against Sussex at Middlesbrough. But then he pulled his hamstring playing in a match for Barnsley and was out for the rest of the summer.

At the end of the 1960 season, ever more frustrated by his failure to advance, Boycott made another important move, switching from Barnsley to Leeds. With Headingley as its home ground, Leeds was more fashionable, more prestigious and, Boycott felt, more likely to bring him to the attention of the Yorkshire committee. Furthermore, there were two key players at Leeds who already knew him. The first was Johnny Lawrence, Boycott’s wily old leg-spinner coach. The second was Billy Sutcliffe, captain of Leeds, the son of the great Yorkshire and England batsman Herbert Sutcliffe and himself a former Yorkshire captain. Boycott later recalled that Sutcliffe offered to give him all the help he could in the development of his cricket, particularly by turning him into an opening batsman. ‘Until then, I had never opened the innings and I was somewhat nervous about it. But I thought, If he thinks I am good enough, there must be a chance. So I moved from Barnsley to Leeds and I never regretted it,’ Boycott said.

In a 1965 radio interview, Billy Sutcliffe recalled Boycott’s arrival at the club: ‘When Geoff Boycott joined me at Leeds in 1961 I rated him a good ordinary player of which there are hundreds in Yorkshire. I was soon to realize that this was no ordinary player. A more dedicated man I don’t think I have ever met. It used to be said that the great pre-war Yorkshire sides would eat cricket, drink cricket and sleep cricket. I think that sums up Geoff Boycott.’ Sutcliffe explained that in the run-up to the season, Boycott attended nets with Yorkshire in the afternoons and Leeds in the evenings, with the result that he regularly practised from one o’clock until nine at night. But Sutcliffe also perceived that there was a darker side to Boycott’s approach: ‘He hated getting out, in any cricket and at any score. On one occasion I think he hated me. I had been telling him how to hit the ball over the top of the bowler. In one match, he had scored about 80 when he tried this shot, only to be caught brilliantly at mid-on. I never saw that shot again from him.’

Boycott’s switch to Leeds soon began to pay dividends. He played well for the club – he topped the season’s averages – and also became a regular in the Yorkshire Second XI, finishing with 688 runs at 38.22, including 156 not out against Cumberland. The Second XI captain at the time, Ted Lester – later to become one of Boycott’s most loyal supporters in Yorkshire – wrote a far-sighted analysis of Boycott in his official report at the end of the 1961 summer: ‘This comparative newcomer to the side has shown considerable promise and his determined batting has been a great asset to the side. He is particularly strong off his back foot but I have the feeling that his very open stance is restricting his off-side play off the front foot. I shall be pleased if the coaches will give this matter careful consideration during the winter practices. When he has the confidence to play more attacking shots, I expect to see further improvement from him. Possesses a very good temperament, and has established himself as the best opening batsman in the side.’

Other problems were apparent, however. Boycott’s reputation as a poor runner between the wickets was already well advanced by now, thanks to some poor misjudgements in club cricket. Coupled with his ingrained moodiness, his unwillingness to take risks and his stance as loner, this ensured that he was not universally popular in the Second XI: ‘Even in those days,’ says Lester, ‘I had one of the second teamers come up to me and say, “We don’t want Boycott in our side. He just upsets people.” I replied, “Look, you needn’t worry because if I have any trouble from him, he’s out.” And I never did have any trouble. He was as good as gold. The one thing I will say, though, is that you had to know when to leave him alone. If he’d just got out, and you tried to talk to him, anything could happen. He was that upset.’ On his difficulties with running, Lester has this insight: ‘One of the reasons he ran people out was because he knew, if he were going to improve, he had to stay in the middle. So he made sure he didn’t allow himself to be run out. The other problem, probably his biggest fault, was that he liked to call at both ends. Some of the other players complained to me about his running and I said to them, “Well, it’s up to you. If he runs you out, you run him out next time.” But they never did; he was too cute for that.’

One of the Second XI players at the time was the future Nottinghamshire captain Mike Smedley, regarded by many as a better prospect than Boycott. As he explained to me, he experienced his share of difficulties in running with Boycott: ‘Often, when we were batting together, Geoff would be taking a short single off the fifth or sixth ball of the over and keeping the bowling. Sometimes they would be close calls, though I don’t think Geoff was the one in danger. When Brian Bolus came down from the First XI into the seconds, he was assigned to open with Boycott to try and sort him out, while I was dropped down the order. I don’t think Brian had much effect. It started to be a running joke in the Second XI.’

Like everyone else who encountered him, Smedley was struck far more by Boycott’s ambition than his ability. ‘He was not something particularly special but had to work hard at his technique. Initially, you got the impression he didn’t have many shots and would just work the ball around, though once he had gone to Leeds he became more confident. Yet there remained a streak of insecurity. Then, if he was out, he would sulk with a towel on his head. I just put it down to disappointment because he was so keen to do well but I think he should have grown out of it by then.’ Smedley recalls that Boycott was quiet, serious and intent on becoming a Yorkshire professional. ‘When we were staying in hotels during matches, he and I would wander around the town at night. But all he ever chatted about was cricket. He seemed to have no interest in girls or cars or anything like that.’

Rodney Cass, who first met Boycott at the Johnny Lawrence school, also played with him in the Yorkshire Second XI in the early sixties. ‘Technically, he was not a classical batsman then. He played very low, with low hands, mainly because Yorkshire wickets didn’t bounce much. We were taught to get our heads right over the ball when we played defensively.’ Peter Kippax, the Leeds and Yorkshire leg-spinner, recalls that in his Second XI days, Boycott could be a mixture of bombast at the crease and anguish at failure. In one match against Lancashire seconds, Boycott was due to open against the extreme pace of Colin Hilton. ‘I said to him: “Look, Geoff, Hilton is going to be a hell of a lot quicker than anything you’ve had before.”

‘ “Won’t be any trouble to me, won’t be any trouble. I can handle it. Don’t worry about me.”

‘So he’s facing Hilton in the first over. Second ball goes just past his nose. Third one tweaks his cap. Fourth ball, the stumps go flying in all directions. Geoff came back into the dressing room, put a towel on his head, sobbed his heart out. He could be very emotional, wore his heart on his sleeve.’

Throughout his time with Barnsley, Leeds and the seconds, Boycott continued to attend the Yorkshire nets, still organized by those stalwarts, Arthur ‘Ticker’ Mitchell and Maurice Leyland. Leyland and Mitchell had a soft-cop, hard-cop way of dealing with the colts under their command. Leyland, one of England’s great batsmen of the thirties, was the genial encourager of youth, while Mitchell was the barking taskmaster. ‘Well played, son,’ was Leyland’s line. ‘What sort of bloody shot do you call that?’ was the frequent barb to be heard from Mitchell. Little wonder, then, that so many youngsters tried to avoid the nets run by Ticker Mitchell. Yet his growling approach had a purpose: he was looking for character under fire. In fact, he reserved his most fearsome invective for those he most admired, precisely because he wanted to see if they were ready for the tough challenge of playing for Yorkshire. Jack Birkenshaw says of Mitchell: ‘He was seriously tough. He would rollick you most weeks. But you learned to respect why he was doing that – if you got through him and kept playing, you’d be a hardened Yorkshire cricketer.’

The promising Boycott, inevitably, received the full Mitchell treatment, his technique and temperament having excited the respect of the old drill sergeant. Fred Trueman later recalled the incident when Mitchell instructed him to give the bespectacled youngster a thorough test against genuine pace. ‘He told me: “Let him have it because I want to see what he’s really like.” Geoff came into the nets when I was warmed up and I started letting it go at him. I could see him getting into line, getting behind it. This went on for about twenty minutes until Arthur Mitchell came along and asked what I thought. I said: “Well, he’s a marvellous defence but no shots.” Arthur replied: “That’s right. If we can teach him to play a few shots, that’s all he needs, really. This lad will get runs.” And I told Arthur: “I think you may be right.”’

As we have seen, Boycott’s devotion to practice was almost fetishistic, playing in every game, every net session he could possibly manage. No match was too obscure for him, no distance too long. Philip Ackroyd, a member of the Yorkshire committee and in the fifties a keen club cricketer with a team known as the Ratts, recalls the earnest Boycott playing for his side because ‘he wanted a game every day of the week’. Ackroyd recalls ‘a brilliant century he made for us, getting his hundred before lunch. He was a fine strokemaker, an excellent hooker and puller. Nobody played the short ball better.’

Ackroyd admits that, even then, he could be a controversial figure. ‘He was utterly single-minded. He was a very insular young man and did not mix well. He did not drink and, because of his dedication to cricket, seemed to have no other interests. If he did come to the bar, he would only talk about cricket. He did not pay much heed to women either. In fact there was an umpire who stood in all of our Sunday games and he had an attractive daughter. We tried to push them into each other’s company. She thought the world of Geoffrey but he was just not interested, not at all.’

But Boycott was far more interested in women than Philip Ackroyd could have known. While he was still at school, he had privately confessed to a friend his deep attraction to a local girl, even joking about a possible engagement so that he might be able to go beyond just a teenage kiss. In his job at the Ministry of Pensions in Barnsley, his liking for female company was obvious. His first supervisor told me: ‘There was a rather pretty girl in the office and on one occasion he took her into the manager’s office and tried to kiss her but she broke away. I remember that well because she told us all about it.’ The way Boycott deceived so many contemporaries over his attitude towards the opposite sex was through the simple expedient of remaining highly secretive about this side of his life. Unlike other young men, he was rarely one either to boast of his conquests or to parade his personal feelings. And this was to be the stance he adopted throughout his career, where his urge to seduce was matched by his desire to remain private.

But there was one relationship he could not keep secret. While working at the Ministry of Pensions he met Anne Wyatt, an attractive, raven-haired married colleague with whom he was to share his life, in the most unconventional manner, for the next four decades. Contrary to subsequent press reports, she was not his supervisor but on the same grade as Boycott as a clerical officer. Fourteen years older than him, she was born Ethel Senior in Barnsley in 1926. Her marriage had not been particularly happy before she became involved with Boycott, and she often spoke to colleagues in derogatory terms of her husband, Bob Wyatt. But once Wyatt found out about his wife’s affair, he is said to have been so infuriated that he threw all her belongings out into the street, forcing her to move in with her parents. Later, he took even more drastic action to escape his failed marriage, emigrating to Canada.

Ethel Wyatt’s romance with Boycott led to a transformation in both her appearance and her name, according to Boycott’s supervisor. ‘When I first knew her, she was a buxom lady, well-dressed but hardly glamorous. But after she began the relationship with Geoffrey, she went on a crash diet, lost several stone and took to smart suits and high heels. She never wore the same outfit two days running. Before she was with Geoffrey, her hair had grey streaks. But then she had it dyed black and wore it long. She would disappear two or three times a day to do her makeup.’ In 1960, she suddenly announced that she wanted to be known as Anne rather than Ethel. Their work colleague says that she and Boycott soon became quite open about their affair: ‘They used to meet in a little room at lunchtime, and anyone else who had to go in there felt uncomfortable. I liked her but she was not the most popular person in the office. Her hackles could easily be raised and she was quite prickly. I think some of the ladies were jealous of her because she was so far ahead of them in style and fashion.’

Anne Wyatt was always sensitive about the difference in age between her and Boycott. On England’s trips abroad, for instance, she was reluctant to give up her passport to tour management for safe-keeping, though other wives and girlfriends happily complied with this requirement. But pseudo-Freudian claims that she has been a ‘mother figure’ to him are little more than psychobabble. Why would Boycott need or want such a figure when he was living with his own devoted mother – and would continue to do so for almost two more decades? And how many sons have mothers only fourteen years older than themselves? For Boycott, according to his uncle Algy, the attraction is easily explained: ‘Young men are drawn to older women. When you are young there is a sense of mystique about them and Geoff went down that road.’ Boycott’s childhood friend Malcolm Tate perfectly understood why he should fall for her. ‘He was only eighteen and she was a really lovely lady of about thirty. She was intelligent, smart, glamorous, what you would call “a cracker”. She was pleasant, easy to talk to. Geoff’s mother thought the world of her. Anne was a great influence on Geoff.’

She and Boycott had much in common. Both from mining families, they were always immaculate, intensely private and never afraid to speak their minds. Because her father was a local umpire, she had been brought up to understand cricket, always a necessity with Boycott. ‘She mirrored a lot of Geoffrey,’ says his friend Tony Vann. ‘She’s forceful, very straight, knows where she’s coming from.’ Where they differed in their personalities was that Anne appeared much better mannered than her partner, never going in for his public displays of rudeness. Peter Kippax, who knew both reasonably well, says: ‘I found Anne a lovely person. She was genuinely nice, nice with my children when they were very young and that counts for a lot. When we were playing cricket, my wife sat with Anne and they always got on well.’ But even Anne could be exasperated by Boycott’s moodiness. Kippax recalls an incident when he happened to run into Boycott in Hong Kong – one of Boycott’s favourite cities – and he and some other players happened to walk past the pair in the street: ‘Geoff just blanked us, didn’t say a word. Then Anne turned round to me and said, “It’s one of those days, Peter, you know what’s it like.” I just said, “Yeah, it’s OK.”’

5 Proving Them All Wrong (#ulink_e2679e2b-5fd3-5f02-b668-6b4d5908e8fa)

An excellent start to the 1962 season in the Second XI led to Boycott’s call-up to the first team. In the opening match, he scored another century against Cumberland, 126 not out, which led to the award of his second team cap. Innings of 32 and 87 not out followed against Northumberland, then a century against Lancashire’s Second XI, in what was known as the Rosebuds match. Peter Lever, one of the Lancashire bowlers then, recalls that his colleagues, like so many others, thought far more of John Hampshire than Boycott at this time. ‘At Old Trafford in the second team, we used to look for Hampshire’s name at number four, that’s who we were bothered about. Boycott wasn’t nearly so talented. You could bowl half volleys at Boycott all day and he would never try and score off them.’

Whatever the junior Lancashire dressing room thought, Boycott’s rich vein of early form had made inevitable his promotion to the first team. The greatest English first-class batting career of modern times began on 16 June 1962 against the Pakistani tourists at Bradford, when Boycott went out to open for Yorkshire with Brian Bolus. Astonishingly, he hit the first ball he received for four, a feat he was not to repeat many times in his subsequent 24 seasons as a professional. Soon afterwards, however, he was bowled without adding to his score by the medium pace of D’Souza. In the second innings of the drawn game, he also failed, again dismissed by D’Souza for four.

Despite his poor start against Pakistan, Boycott was selected for the next Yorkshire game, at Northampton, thereby making his first appearance in the County Championship. Dropping down the order to number four, he was dismissed for just six in the first innings, though in the second he battled to 21 not out amidst a dismal Yorkshire collapse, which allowed Northants to win by six wickets. He did even better in the following drawn match against Derbyshire, scoring 47 and 30 as an opener. It was a useful but hardly dazzling beginning, and Boycott now returned to the second team for the rest of the summer, apart from two appearances against Essex and Kent. Against the latter, he hit 18 in the first innings and recorded his first duck for Yorkshire in the second, though he also displayed early signs of that showy confidence, which was a mask for his insecurity. The Kent player Brian Luckhurst, later to be one of 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 might have looked slim, especially when he was up against his rival John Hampshire. And there was a long-established stream of Yorkshire-born players leaving the club after failing to make the grade as a junior. Of Boycott’s own contemporaries, Duncan Fearnley (Worcestershire), Jack Birkenshaw (Leicestershire), Mike Smedley (Nottinghamshire), Dickie Bird (Leicestershire) and Rodney Cass (Essex) were all forced to seek their fortunes elsewhere because of limited opportunities in their native county.

But, as so often with Boycott in a career of interwoven triumphs and disasters, he now had a stroke of good fortune. Vic Wilson announced his retirement in 1962 and Brian Close was appointed his successor. Close had a much more favourable view of Boycott. He told me: ‘When they made me captain after Vic left, I said to the committee, “Right, keep him and let me sort him out.” You see I realized that he had the ability to concentrate which you do not often find amongst young players. And he was so intent on improving. He spent all day long thinking about his game.’

Thinking about his game was exactly what Boycott did during the winter. Practising at the Johnny Lawrence school, he worked diligently on the deficiencies of his technique which had been so ruthlessly exploited by opposition bowlers, particularly a frailty outside the off-stump. The following summer, 1963, Boycott was a man transformed. After a hesitant start, he cemented his place with a wonderful innings against Lancashire in the Roses match at Bramall Lane, Sheffield. His 145, scored on a difficult pitch against top-class bowling, was not only his first century for Yorkshire but also a performance of such quality that the great cricket writer A. A. Thomson recorded: ‘Bramall Lane spectators, a craggy lot not easy to please, were unanimous in asserting that apart from half a dozen artistic masterpieces from Sir Leonard Hutton, this was the finest innings played by a Yorkshire batsman since the war.’ What made Boycott’s innings all the more admirable was that it took place when Yorkshire were in deep trouble against a Lancashire attack consisting of four future or present England bowlers: pacemen Brian Statham, Ken Higgs and Peter Lever, and the leg-spinner Tommy Greenhough, with 380 Test wickets between them over their careers. As Boycott walked to the wicket to join Bryan Stott, the scoreboard read 56 for 3. But the 22-year-old was undaunted. He was nursed through his early overs by Stott; then, once he was established, he broke loose and outscored the senior player with a series of flashing drives and cuts. He and Stott eventually put on 249 together and Yorkshire won the game by 10 wickets. As so often, Boycott took some of the gloss off his triumph with a tactless remark. ‘I got more than you,’ was the first thing he told his senior partner back in the dressing room. Stott was appalled, feeling the comment was stupid and childish. But, then, he was a successful businessman with his own electrical firm and a comfortable living. Cricket was a pleasure for him, whereas for Boycott it was an endless struggle – not just for his livelihood but also for self-justification.

This maiden century was followed by a string of good scores in June: 76 against Somerset, 49 not out against Gloucestershire, 50 against Warwickshire and, against Sussex in the Gillette Cup in front of a crowd of 15,000 at Hove, 71. This brilliant innings – in a losing cause – showed how far Boycott had developed as a stroke-player. Jim Parks, the Sussex and England wicket-keeper, recalls: ‘We had a good attack but Boycs was magnificent, played all the shots and had we not run him out I’m sure he would have gone on to win the match for Yorkshire. It was my first sight of him and he looked such a fine player that day.’

Boycott’s excellent run of form convinced him, in July 1963, to hand in his notice at the Ministry of Pensions in Barnsley and become a full-time cricketer. As he told his fellow civil servants, he was apprehensive about giving up a secure job in exchange for a precarious living as a sportsman. But it is wrong to exaggerate the risks he took. It was hardly as if the Barnsley branch of the Ministry of Pensions was the only occupation open to him. With his obvious intelligence and drive Boycott could have taken many other jobs if he had failed at Yorkshire. At the end of the 1963 season, for instance, Boycott quickly found a clerical position with the Yorkshire Electricity Board. This was, after all, the era of full employment – in July 1963, the number of registered unemployed stood at 494,000, a figure that any government today can only dream of. Furthermore, as soon as Yorkshire heard that he had left his job, he was offered a guaranteed payment – not a contract, Yorkshire never gave those until 1971 – of £16 a week in summer and £8 in winter, giving him some measure of security.

Yet the very fact that he had now to earn his living from the game reinforced his single-mindedness. Failure became even more unthinkable, dedication to his craft even more vital. Echoing in his head were the words of his former headmaster, Russell Hamilton, who had told him when Boycott sought his advice on becoming a full-time cricketer: ‘You should have learnt enough at school to know that if you want to go in for professional cricket, you have jolly well got to work at it, for it is a career.’ Never was a school-master’s warning more diligently heeded.

But his new status as a professional coincided with a brief dip in his form, as he was shuffled up and down the batting order. Throughout much of his time with Hemsworth Grammar, Ackworth, Barnsley, Leeds and the Yorkshire Second XI, Boycott had been an opening batsman, and in his first match against Pakistan in 1962 he had opened with Brian Bolus. His great recent success, however, had been achieved in the middle order. Now, in July, when he was asked by skipper Brian Close to open once more, he became anxious. Poor scores against Sussex and Surrey only seemed to confirm his doubts about the opening role, but his captain was unsupportive. Close says: ‘I asked him to open against Surrey at Bramall Lane and Geoff Arnold bowled him out for a duck. He came in and completely sulked. I gave him a right rollicking about it. I said, “Look, I’ve taken the decision to make you into an opening batsman because your particular temperament and approach fits it. Now, you go out and do your bloody best and try.” He was so sorry for his bloody self that he started to cry. But I made him realize that he had a job to do. I said to him, “Sympathy won’t get you anywhere.”’

Close was soon vindicated. Boycott, opening the innings against Warwickshire, scored 62 and 28, then scored his second century of the season, 113, in the Roses match at Old Trafford, batting for five hours without giving a chance – a rare double against the old enemy Lancashire. Then, at Sheffield for Yorkshire versus the West Indians he scored a brave 71 against the full might of the Caribbean attack, Wes Hall, Charlie Griffith and Gary Sobers. Even better followed in his first match at Lord’s, when Yorkshire played Middlesex. Boycott’s remarkable innings of 90 was made out of a Yorkshire total of just 144 against a new-ball attack, which included internationals Alan Moss and John Price. Boycott was bitterly disappointed not to have reached a century and, as usual, went into a sulk. But his astonishingly mature innings prompted that most perceptive of sports writers, Ian Wooldridge of the Daily Mail, to prophesy that he would soon become ‘a permanent opening batsman for England’.

Boycott rounded off this brilliantly successful first full season with the highest score of his career thus far, 165 against Leicestershire at Scarborough. He topped the Yorkshire averages – as he was subsequently to do in every single season until 1978 – with 1446 runs at 46.64, while he also finished second in the overall national batting averages. The conquering hero was wreathed in laurels. Yorkshire awarded him his cap. The Cricket Writers Club named him ‘Young Cricketer of the Year’, as did the Wombwell Cricket Society. Wisden said he was ‘easily the most successful batsman in Yorkshire and created a big impression with his reliability’. Former England all-rounder Trevor Bailey, still captain of Essex, was another to be impressed by Boycott. In Playfair Cricket Monthly he wrote this judicious analysis: ‘Geoff is clearly a dedicated cricketer, prepared to make any sacrifice that will help him succeed in his chosen profession. He has certainly remembered the advice of the old Yorkshire coach who used to say to his pupils, “Get your head over the ball and smell it.” I am sure that with his concentration and singleness of purpose, he will make many runs in the years that lie ahead.’

6 An Ideal Temperament (#ulink_039c24ac-6a12-55b4-a3f5-b3bdc45a6615)

Test cricket could almost have been designed for Boycott. Technically and temperamentally, he was ideally suited to the five-day game. Grinding down the opposition, concentrating for session after session, guarding his wicket with an impeccable defence, this was what Boycott did best. He did not have to struggle with the artificialities of the county set-up, like bonus batting points and sporting declarations, which were to lead to so many rows later in his Yorkshire 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.’