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Geoff Boycott: A Cricketing Hero
Leo McKinstry
Few modern British sportsmen have fascinated the public more than Geoff Boycott. In this first comprehensive and balanced account of Boycott’s life – fully updated to include his battle against cancer – award-winning author Leo McKinstry lifts the lid on one of cricket’s great enigmatic characters.A record-breaking Test cricketer and acerbic commentator, Geoff Boycott has never been far away from controversy during his long career in the game.Based on meticulous research and interviews with a host of players, Test captains, officials, broadcasters, friends and enemies, this definitive biography cuts through the Boycott myth to expose the truth about this charismatic, single-minded and often exasperating personality.What was Boycott like as a schoolboy? How did his England cricket colleagues such as Graham Gooch, Dennis Amiss and Brian Close feel about him as a person? Why was he so unpopular in his early career for Yorkshire? And what is the real truth about the relationships that soured his private world?From his upbringing as a miner’s son in a Yorkshire village, through highlights like his hundredth century at Headingley against Australia, to the low points such as the damaging court case in France, this warts-and-all account of his life makes for captivating reading.
Geoff Boycott
A Cricketing Hero
Leo McKinstry
This book is dedicated to David Robertson, another great Yorkshireman
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u63ff1d87-1140-52fe-96cb-4d195d8ee452)
Title Page (#uc77e2708-7050-5fb1-9d2d-896ab811564b)
Preface and Acknowledgements (#uf1a86def-91e6-5e42-9cbe-6ecee27e5327)
1 A Contradictory Personality (#u1ff20035-a57f-57b7-9d37-8444b4c385bf)
2 ‘A Very Quiet Boy’ (#ud6f6e0b7-b3d0-5147-baa8-8b4d42c24faf)
3 ‘Dedicated Absolutely to Cricket’ (#u3f55a101-cfd3-5f1b-ad0a-f661168f16c0)
4 A Late Developer (#u4ca96764-4199-5131-b906-4cbb1c5de021)
5 Proving Them All Wrong (#u3a816d08-1842-5512-abc6-c77e68f68613)
6 An Ideal Temperament (#u7d81df73-8d16-5556-8e1b-8e3e0608657b)
7 ‘Why the Hell Didn’t He Do That Before?’ (#u332181d0-4a37-59ed-b0d8-0e3ff85772a8)
8 ‘A Great Score, in Anyone’s Language’ (#u4f5e4380-15f8-555e-9300-73f844baa8ae)
9 ‘So That’s What You’ve Been Up To’ (#u098bae17-6e63-5ab3-a5e9-c1c4ab2751a3)
10 Disciple of Hobbs (#u2704378b-456e-543b-a6a9-11805cb70392)
11 Master of His Own Destiny (#u955143c3-5d95-50a0-a98b-11f0cdb06c76)
12 A Question of Captaincy (#uf9c5d466-664d-5876-80c4-4ca9b3b5c89d)
13 ‘The Worst Win for English Cricket’ (#ub8e43ae7-43df-54d1-9f66-c4b88a3e6326)
14 ‘I Just Want to Play for Yorkshire’ (#ua3b0c516-d1e2-52a9-b804-b9971a819b85)
15 Achieving the Impossible Dream (#u185a5753-1d8b-5af3-9300-47b2e11a36e3)
16 ‘Go and Run the Bugger Out’ (#ue225f697-136e-5ba9-9b41-c68ae1d7b0e9)
17 The Worst Months of My Life’ (#u77d16bd1-c005-5863-9fcc-161aa740ff2c)
18 Return of the Master (#u08759c93-1404-5728-a51a-6482d5006549)
19 Constructing the Image (#u57405918-8bcd-56bc-851b-dc40414538d8)
20 ‘Look, Ma, Top of the World’ (#u1631254c-8c7a-5bb0-b056-15dc120419eb)
21 Boycottshire (#u5e3538b2-d8c5-552b-94e9-9426aceb6caa)
22 The End of an Era (#u69fc7dff-0d40-5721-9797-4521676f2cb8)
23 A New Beginning (#uf5f2312e-4837-5dfb-b9f5-4435407d52d5)
24 ‘Just a Dad’ (#ud8579a91-c9ff-5f7b-a788-6f3484e65dd6)
25 Before the Fall (#u31318fc2-711a-5627-ad93-d9cf1e63bf15)
26 En Grasse (#u94b2fe0b-e1f0-524c-9f4c-ed44d93fd61d)
27 To Hell and Back (#u6f3cd4cf-f0da-53fb-97d5-788427c0de24)
Statistical Appendix (#u7a41f9c8-2018-5f8c-bd5c-e0828a17caca)
Bibliography (#u9356af8b-01c5-5050-aaf4-d6054b161ca6)
Index (#ue9c5893e-e0de-5a3f-a08f-d03374db0ba1)
About the Author (#ub7f834b9-4722-5897-b97b-73ea05fb9eb8)
Praise (#ud3c68789-79c0-5f0d-9b0b-61e1c5a62c75)
Also by Leo McKinstry (#u49622b24-931c-5a3a-9df0-789910ade39a)
Copyright (#u216837f6-e780-5198-a761-28a3f0155d34)
About the Publisher (#u2b0cc2d7-a450-5c90-a5dd-36c8f84f93d2)
Preface and Acknowledgements (#ulink_43b15a5e-6dee-5a75-ad56-3d33c02e2fec)
Geoffrey Boycott has been a presence in my life since I first fell in love with cricket as a Belfast schoolboy in the early seventies. For me, his appeal lies in the way he embodies a heroic ideal. His struggles to overcome the social disadvantages of his background, the limitations in his natural talent and the contradictions in his own nature are almost epic. He set himself a goal, to become one of the greatest batsmen in the world, and in the face of numerous obstacles – many of his own making – he ultimately achieved it. His story is, rightly, the stuff of legends.
Like most heroic tales, however, accounts of his life have always varied in the telling. It has therefore been my aim to look beyond much of the mythology that surrounds Boycott and build a more balanced and realistic portrait. Using extensive research and interviews with Boycott’s colleagues, friends and family, I tried to provide a deeper understanding of this flawed but compelling sporting personality. In particular, I have sought to place Boycott in a wider context than just that of Yorkshire cricket, the subject that dominated the two previous – and partisan – biographies of Boycott, one (the pro-Boycott version) by Yorkshire Evening Post journalist John Callaghan, published in 1982, and the other (the anti-Boycott version) written by the late Don Mosey, published in 1985. ‘Only a Yorkshireman can properly comprehend the character and characteristics which have given the Boycott story its unique place in the history of English cricket,’ Mosey wrote. If that were true, then I, as an Ulsterman living in Essex, have laboured in vain. Yet I believe that this robust view has been part of the problem of interpreting the Boycott phenomenon. By focusing narrowly on Yorkshire, such an approach ignores the truth that Boycott has always been much more than a Yorkshire cricketer. He has also been one of the all-time greats of Test cricket, an England captain, a brilliant coach, a widely read columnist, an iconic broadcaster, and an international celebrity.
Despite my admiration for Boycott, this is not, in any sense, an authorized biography. Boycott politely refused my requests for an interview, though I must record my thanks to him for his assistance in checking facts and in expediting interviews with several of his friends. In the foreword to his 1985 book, Don Mosey wrote of a ‘conspiracy of silence’ from Boycott’s supporters. I am grateful to say that I encountered no such difficulty.
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to all those many first-class and Test cricketers who generously gave me the benefit of their views: Dennis Amiss, Geoff Arnold, Mike Atherton, Bill Athey, Chris Balderstone, Jack Bannister, Bob Barber, Jack Birkenshaw, ‘Dickie’ Bird, Chris Broad, David Brown, Alan Butcher, Rodney Cass, Brian Close, Howard Cooper, Colin Cowdrey, Andrew Dalton, Mike Denness, Ted Dexter, Keith Fletcher, Norman Gifford, Graham Gooch, David Gower, Tony Greig, Tom Graveney, Frank Hayes, Simon Hughes, Robin Jackman, Paul Jarvis, Peter Kippax, John Lever, Peter Lever, Tony Lewis, David Lloyd, Brian Luckhurst, Richard Lumb, Mark Nicholas, Jim Parks, Pat Pocock, Graham Roope, Kevin Sharp, Mike Smedley, M.J.K. Smith, Robin Smith, Don Shepherd, Ken Taylor, Bernie Thomas, Derek Underwood, Peter Willey, Don Wilson.
Apart from ex-cricketers, many other figures in the media also contributed, as follows: Peter Baxter, Dave Bowden, Max Clifford, Charles Colvile, John Etheridge, Gary Francis, Alan Griffiths, Kelvin MacKenzie, Steve Pierson and Bill Sinrich, plus some who wished to remain nameless.
I would also like to thank the members of Boycott’s circle of friends and family who assisted with this project: Philip Ackroyd, Peter Boycott, Peter Briggs, John Callaghan, Alice Harratt, Ted Lester, Lord MacLaurin, Albert Speight, Rachael Swinglehurst, Tony Vann, and Shirley Western. Invaluable memories of Boycott’s youth and schooldays were provided by: Des Barrick, Bernard Conway, Bernard Crapper, Eddie Hambleton, Arthur Hollingsworth, Roland Howcroft, Peter Jordan, Terry McCroakham, Terry Newitt, Ken Sale, and Dudley Taylor. I am particularly appreciative of the help that George Hepworth and Malcolm Tate gave me. My many requests for advice and information were always treated with the greatest courtesy. In addition, Sid Fielden showed me the kindest hospitality during a day’s visit to Headingley.
Others who kindly provided assistance and interviews were: Sarah Cook, Alf Evans, Mike Fatkin, Martin Gray, Nigel Grimes, Keith Hayhurst, Councillor Brian Hazell, Brian Holling, Doug Lloyd, Eric Loxton, Keith Rogers, Keith Stevenson and Barrie Wathen. I am grateful to the staff at the Daily Mail, the Yorkshire Post, and the Westminster Reference Library for helping with newspaper research. Chris Dancy in the BBC archives and Stephen Green at the MCC Library were generous with their time, while Brooke Sinclair and James Perry provided a host of unique insights. The first edition of this book would not have been possible without the backing of the excellent staff at the Partridge Press, especially Patrick Jenson-Smith, Alison Barrow, Katrina Whone, Sheila Lee and Elizabeth Dobson. I was also privileged to have as an editor Adam Sisman, a distinguished, award-winning author in his own right. For this edition, I am grateful to Michael Doggart, Tom Whiting, and the rest of the team at HarperCollins. Thanks also to Paul Dyson for his excellent and original statistical appendix, and to David Hooper for his legal advice.
Finally I would like to thank my wife Elizabeth for her wise counsel and wonderful support during the long months in which Boycs appeared to dominate my every waking thought.
A NOTE ON NOMENCLATURE: Geoffrey Boycott is universally known throughout the cricket world as ‘Boycs’, though this is occasionally spelt ‘Boyks’ or even, in Mike Gatting’s autobiography, ‘Boyx’. His other main nickname has been ‘Fiery’, which Boycott says was first used during the South African tour of 1964/65 and is a contraction of ‘Geof-fiery’. It was coined, he believes, because he came from the same county as ‘Fiery’ Fred Trueman, though many have maintained that it referred ironically to his dour batting and public demeanour, just as Chris Tavare was known as ‘Rowdy’.
Alternatively, others have said it reflects his quick tongue and temper. The name was generally only used by fellow Test cricketers and never had much currency in Yorkshire. Amongst his followers, GLY (Greatest Living Yorkshireman) or Sir Geoffrey are deemed more suitable.
1 A Contradictory Personality (#ulink_1b5c8117-d24c-5409-acba-d5dae232aeb9)
Wednesday 21 July 1999: Geoffrey Boycott attends an early evening reception at a restaurant in central London where he is one of the guests of honour for the launch of the Federation of International Cricketer Associations’ new Hall of Fame. Accompanied by his partner Rachael Swinglehurst, he moves amiably through the gathering, sipping from his glass of champagne and indulging in banter with some of the other guests. Then, in the central ceremony of the evening, he is summoned by the former England batsman Tom Graveney on to a stage to accept his induction into the Hall of Fame. In a polished acceptance speech, mixing modesty, humour and charm in equal measure, he describes Tom Graveney as his boyhood hero and pays fulsome tributes to Ian Botham and Fred Trueman, the two other guests of honour.
Anyone watching this performance who did not know of Boycott’s reputation would have thought he was one of the most gracious and popular figures in the cricket world. There was no inkling of the festering animosity that has long characterized his relationships with Botham and Trueman, no sign of his notorious boorishness, no evidence of his supposed inability to socialize with others.
22 January 1998: Geoffrey Boycott attends a press conference in central London, where he gives his response to the decision of a French court to convict him of assaulting his former girlfriend Margaret Moore. With his position as a media sports star under threat as a result of the £5,100 fine and three-month suspended jail sentence, Boycott decides to go on the offensive. Bristling with indignation, he denounces Ms Moore, accusing her of telling lies about the incident and claiming that she is out to destroy him because he refused to marry her. As journalists begin to question his account, Boycott slips into the belligerent tone so well known by colleagues from broadcasting and cricket. ‘Shut up,’ he tells one reporter, ‘this is my conference, not yours.’ Finally, there is a collective admonition for the press: ‘I am a public figure and the only people I have to answer to are the public, no one else.’
Alec Bedser, who saw the best and worst of Boycott during his 13 years as chairman of England’s Test selectors, once spoke of the Yorkshireman’s ‘enigmatic and contradictory personality’. And these two events, the champagne reception and the stormy press conference, encapsulate the different sides of Boycott’s character. On one hand, there is the brilliantly successful cricketing figure – in his time the greatest run-scorer in the history of Test matches and, after his retirement from the playing arena, a commentator in demand throughout the world – relaxed, affable and generous when basking in the recognition of his achievements. On the other hand, there is the sorry figure with the tangled web of personal relationships and the reputation for selfishness and bad manners, who, in the words of one former England cricketer, ‘has left a trail of social wreckage across the cricket world’.
In a rare moment of self-analysis, Boycott once admitted to being baffled by his own contradictions. During an appearance on the BBC radio programme In the Psychiatrist’s Chair, he told Professor Anthony Clare: ‘We are like diamonds. There are so many facets to the diamond and you cannot tell why it glows on one side and why it doesn’t on the other. Like me, I don’t always understand myself.’ We all, of course, have different, often conflicting, aspects to our personalities. Yet for Geoff Boycott the contrasts are much stronger than for others. He is an intensely private man who has lived his entire adult life in the fiercest public gaze. Indeed, almost two decades after he played his final Test, he is still probably the most famous name in English cricket, though many colleagues who have played and commentated with him say that they hardly know him. He has developed an image of self-confidence bordering on arrogance, yet possesses a streak of almost chronic insecurity.
He craves respect yet, through his behaviour, continually alienates those who might provide it. Even his admirers admit that his extreme moodiness and introspection make him something of a Jekyll and Hyde character. Fellow England star and broadcaster David Gower says, ‘He has the ability to be extremely charming, and an equal ability to be a complete sod.’ Peter Willey, the Test umpire and an England colleague of Boycott’s, told me: ‘Some days he won’t seem interested, then on others he will sit down and talk for hours. He is definitely a split personality – and it’s just a shame that the good side has not come out more.’ Brutally frank in his opinions of others, Boycott can be overly sensitive of any criticism fired in his direction. His career has been littered with the debris of constant feuds and rows. As Derek Hodgson wrote in Wisden on his retirement from cricket: ‘He has a facility for making enemies much faster than he made runs.’ Always a loner, he revels in the adulation of the crowd, whether as a media star in Calcutta or a century-maker in Leeds. He has displayed great inner strength during his rise to the top but is so emotional that, during much of his career, he burst into tears at professional setbacks. Despite often being the most dour of openers, he built up a personal following that no other English cricketer has ever attained. Even in his batting he could be contradictory: in 1965 he played what is still the greatest innings in a Lord’s one-day final and then, less than two years later, he was dropped for slow-scoring against India.
He has accumulated great wealth and adores luxury, always staying in the best hotels and flying first class, yet has a reputation for colossal meanness. ‘He is for ever trying to squeeze another few pence out of whoever he is dealing with,’ fellow commentator Simon Hughes told me. He professes his undying love for Yorkshire cricket, yet helped to tear the club apart in the seventies and eighties. No one was ever better equipped technically and tactically to lead country and county yet, because of his inability to relate to colleagues, he failed dismally in both jobs when given the chance. Though he left school at 16, and has an accent and mannerisms that are a gift to impressionists, he is more articulate and insightful behind the microphone than a host of far better-educated analysts. Despite living with his mother until he was almost forty, he long enjoyed a surprisingly exuberant, even chaotic private life, one that eventually landed him in court. His cosmopolitan outlook, love of travel and phenomenal popularity in the West Indies, India and Pakistan – Asian children have even taken to copying his accent – are in contrast to the narrow horizons of his upbringing in a tightly knit Yorkshire mining community.
It is, perhaps, because Boycott’s own personality is riddled with contradictions that he arouses such violently contrasting opinions in others. For all the antagonism he has incurred during his career, he has a circle of friends and supporters who maintain a passionate loyalty towards him. It is a tribute to his ability to inspire long-term devotion that the key women in his life, Anne Wyatt, Rachael Swinglehurst and Shirley Western, have always stuck by him through his many crises. Other close friends, like Tony Vann of the Yorkshire committee, George Hepworth from Ackworth, and Ted Lester, the former Yorkshire scorer, speak of his personal kindness. And while there are numerous ex-players who loathe him, there are also many cricketers who feel just the opposite, such as Paul Jarvis, the Yorkshire fast bowler, who describes him as ‘a father figure’. Batsmen like Graham Gooch, Bob Barber and Brian Luckhurst have told me how much they enjoyed playing with him. ‘I am convinced that Geoffrey made me a better player, without any doubt,’ says Luckhurst. In the same way in the media today there are some who object to Boycott’s behaviour, such as Henry Blofeld, who recently gave a newspaper interview headlined WHY I WON’T GO IN TO BAT FOR THAT BULLY BOYCOTT. But again, many commentators, such as Jack Bannister, Charles Colvile, David Gower and Tony Greig, have found no problem in working with him.
All the contrasting flaws and virtues of Boycott have to be seen within the dominant theme of his life: his relentless pursuit of success in cricket. In his seminal book Rain Men (often described as cricket’s answer to Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch), Marcus Berkmann wrote of the hold that the game has over its enthusiasts: ‘At some cathartic moment in our stunted childhoods, this ridiculous sport inveigled itself into our consciousness like a virus and never left. In adulthood, you somehow expect to recover from all this. But it doesn’t happen. Your obsession remains as vivid as ever.’ Boycott, having been drawn in by street games in Fitzwilliam, Yorkshire, and by his uncle Algy’s enthusiasm at the local Ackworth club, never attempted to let go of this obsession once he had succumbed. Instead, he made cricket the driving force of his existence.
‘Cricket mirrors life, if you think about it. Life, death and change in the middle,’ said Boycott philosophically, in May 1999. Many would argue that Boycott’s approach to cricket mirrors his personality. The adjectives used to describe his batting could be applied to his character: cautious, tough, single-minded, intelligent. His fear of failure, which compelled him to eliminate all risks, also reflected his insecurity. In an interview on BBC 2 in 1978, Ray Illingworth said: ‘In technical terms, Geoff Boycott is the best batsman in the world today. His problem is his own insecurity. He’s never trusted people and I think this facet of his personality comes out in his batting style.’ Mark Nicholas, the Channel Four presenter, put it to me like this: ‘Every time he went to the crease he was batting for self-justification, not only as a cricketer but as a man.’ A duck, therefore, was not just a disaster in cricket terms, it was a blow to his self-worth.
Yet it must also be said that cricket helped to mould his character. For Boycott, unique among the great batsmen, was not endowed with phenomenal natural talent. No one who saw him in his early days with Barnsley, Leeds or the Yorkshire Colts would have believed that one day he would become a leading international cricketer. Boycott only reached the top through an astonishing effort of will and all-consuming dedication. And in that process, he had to be more ruthless than his contemporaries. Focusing every fibre of his being on his ambition, he eschewed almost everything else in life, marriage, family, friendships, a social life and all the other normal compromises of human existence. He was not interested in being popular or likeable, only in batting himself into the record books.
To many observers, it seemed that nothing and no one could stand in the way of Geoff Boycott, a disastrous attitude in a team sport. His total self-absorption made him careless of the needs and feelings of others. Tales of his rudeness and social ineptitude became legendary in the cricket world. David Brown said to me of his first tour to South Africa in 1964/65: ‘He thought of nothing else other than Geoffrey Boycott and the rest of the world could go lose itself. He treated everybody, public, press, the players, the same. He was intolerably rude.’ The outrage he caused was made all the greater by both his gift for ripe language, honed in the back-streets of Fitzwilliam and the dressing rooms of the professional cricket circuit, and the traditional Yorkshireman’s love of plain-speaking. But if Boycott had paid more attention to the usual niceties of relationships, I doubt that he would have become such a great player. Social acclaim had to be sacrificed to professional glory.
It would be wrong, though, to argue that Boycott’s social difficulties stemmed entirely from his cricket. After all, to this day, long after his retirement as a player and despite a new mellowness in his personality brought about by the ordeal of cancer, he still retains the capacity for brusqueness and irascibility. Mark Nicholas has worked all over the world with Boycott and is a great admirer of his talent as a broadcaster, but says that ‘he can be so rude to people that sometimes you just want to punch his lights out. It is rudeness born of bad manners.’ Even as a child and young man, he could be pigheaded and moody. One of his colleagues at the Ministry of Pensions in Barnsley, where Boycott worked before he signed full-time with Yorkshire, says that he was a loner who did not hesitate to tell other employees to ‘get stuffed’. So, parts of his character were already deeply ingrained before he became a professional.
Without going too far down the road of pop psychology, I suggest that Boycott’s close relationship with his mother must have been at the heart of the development of these traits. His mother’s unconditional support led him to develop a self-absorbed, naive and childlike outlook on life. This meant that, in some respects, he behaved as he felt. If he was in a bad mood, he did not attempt to cover it up. If he thought someone was ‘roobish’, he said so to their face. Like a child, he continually wanted his immediate demands fulfilled, and was furious when they weren’t. And, like a child, he clung to routine and stability and security – one reason he treasures the loyalty of friends and family.
Given the complex nature of his personality, it is hardly surprising that Geoff Boycott should have been such a controversial figure throughout four decades in our national summer sport. His has been a rollercoaster career, with Kipling’s twin imposters of triumph and disaster waiting to greet him at every turn. It is one of the most telling features of his life that each success has invariably been accompanied by some misfortune. Barely a year after his unique achievement of scoring his hundredth first-class century in a Test, he was sacked as Yorkshire captain and was fighting for his career at his beloved county. Only days after becoming the greatest run-scorer in the history of international cricket in 1982, he had to resign from the England tour of India, having appalled his fellow players with his conduct in Calcutta. His reinstatement as a Yorkshire player in 1984 after his sacking the year before only plunged the club deeper into turmoil. At the peak of his career in the nineties, he was brought low by Margaret Moore’s case against him. More recently, just as he was being rehabilitated in the British media, he contracted throat cancer, one of the most deadly forms of the disease.
Yet through all these tribulations, including the brutal experience of cancer, which meant that he lost three stone and could only be fed through a stomach pump, Boycott has displayed a remarkable fortitude. Lesser men would never have reached the heights he attained, nor would they have been able to cope with the catastrophic lows. Even if he has often been the author of his own misfortune, he has never surrendered, whether it be in taking on the most fearsome West Indies attack of all time at the age of forty or overcoming the sneers of critics to become best Yorkshire batsman of his generation. It was England’s finest captain of modern times, Mike Brearley, who wrote this tribute to Boycott during the Australian tour of 1978/79: ‘As I stood at the non-striker’s end and watched him avoid yet another hostile ball, I felt a wave of admiration for my partner, wiry, slight, dedicated, a lonely man doing a lonely job all these years. What was it that compelled him to prove himself again and again among his peers?’ In recent years, he has proved his courage once more in overcoming the twin challenges of the French court verdict and a life-threatening illness. Not for him the prolonged sulk or the retreat into seclusion. Instead, he has kept on fighting, to clear his name, to rebuild his career, and, above all, to save his life. Now, like some heroic knight emerging triumphant from an arduous quest, he is back where he belongs on mainstream television, pontificating, hectoring, wisecracking, and exulting about the game that has been his obsession since childhood. ‘You have to remember that he is in love with cricket, more than anything else. He would never knowingly do cricket down,’ says Mark Nicholas.
For all his many faults, the game has been richer for his presence.
2 ‘A Very Quiet Boy’ (#ulink_eb3e22c9-fb6a-59b5-ad5a-66ccd76e54c5)
There can be few more depressing streets in England than Milton Terrace in the village of Fitzwilliam, near Wakefield. Several of the two-storey, red-brick properties are boarded up or derelict, while the shell of a burnt-out car lies along the gutter. Many of the local residents seem without jobs or hope. Truancy among the children is rife, police drugs raids common.
Number forty-five, Milton Terrace, is now as bleak as the rest of the houses in this brick-built warren of despair. Yet this neglected edifice was once home to one of Britain’s greatest sporting legends. For almost forty years Geoffrey Boycott lived here, from his early childhood until his mother died in 1978. But when Boycott was growing up in Fitzwilliam in the forties and fifties, the same air of abandonment did not hang over the street. With most of the men working at the local Hemsworth colliery – now long closed – there was a strong sense of community and neighbours knew each other well, a spirit also engendered by the much closer family ties of that era. As Boycott wrote in his own Autobiography in 1987: ‘As I have got older I’ve realized that growing up in a community like Fitzwilliam did me a lot of good. In many ways I was lucky to experience a sense of belonging and togetherness which seems to have been lost in so much of life nowdays.’
Geoffrey Boycott – his straightforward Yorkshire parents dispensed with the frivolity of middle names – was born in Fitzwilliam on 21 October 1940. At the time of his birth, his parents did not actually live in the village but in neighbouring Ackworth. In Britain of 1940, because of the lack of antenatal facilities, home births were usually a working-class necessity rather than a fashionable middle-class lifestyle choice. So Geoffrey’s mother, Jane Boycott, delivered her first-born in the home of her parents in Earl Street, Fitzwilliam. He was a healthy child, weighing eight pounds, ‘a smashing little kid with curly blond hair’, in the words of his friend from Ackworth, George Hepworth, who remembers visiting the newborn Boycott.
Both Geoffrey’s father Tom and his paternal grandfather Bill were employed in the local pits. As president of the Ackworth Working Men’s Club, Bill was a figure of some standing in the local community. The Boycott family originally hailed from Shropshire but had come to West Yorkshire in 1910 in search of work in the coal industry. One Fitzwilliam resident, Arthur Hollingsworth, remembers them both. ‘I worked on the coalface with old Bill Boycott, he were a grand chap. Geoff’s father Tom were also a gentleman. He were a roadlayer down pit, and he used to look after ponies. He were a quiet chap, very harmless, never liked to cause any friction. Never did much talking either, unlike his son.’
When he was three years old, Boycott’s parents moved from Garden Street, Ackworth, to Milton Terrace, Fitzwilliam. Though money was short, his childhood appears to have been happy. He indulged in most of the pursuits followed by boys of his age, cricket and football in the street, trainspotting, going to the pictures, playing with his two younger brothers Tony and Peter. ‘He definitely had ball sense from an early age,’ says George Hepworth. ‘I was five years older than him and I remember once, when he can only have been about two or three, I nipped over the wall, took his ball out of yard and then played with it in the street with his cousin, Gordon Naylor. It was only little plastic football, but he created such a fuss, running to the gate and demanding it back.’ His aunt, Alice Harratt, remembers him as ‘a quiet boy, pleasant and polite, who kept himself to himself, and always tried to avoid trouble. He was bright as well, and was very neat, always smartly dressed. He became a choirboy and altar server in the Anglican Kingsley parish church.’ One of his Milton Terrace neighbours from boyhood, Bernard Crapper, recalls a less angelic side of Boycott: ‘Everybody got into fights in those days. We had a gang in our street and a couple of streets down were the enemy. We might throw a stone at them and they’d throw one back. He could look after himself, Geoff. It was the way we were all brought up.’
Much of Geoffrey Boycott’s outlook on life was shaped by his upbringing. The long hours and permanent danger endured by his father inspired his famous work ethic and titanic self-discipline. It is also probable that the intensity of Boycott’s ambition was fired by his desire to escape the austerity of a Yorkshire mining village. Sensing early on that he had a special talent for cricket, he could not afford to squander it and thereby lose the opportunity to build a new life for himself. ‘It’s better than working down pit,’ Boycott often used to tell fellow professionals, when they complained about their lot. And Boycott’s delight in luxury and the accumulation of wealth is understandable in a man who lived in a house with an outside toilet until he was 25.
But the mining background cannot entirely explain the peculiarities of Boycott’s character, that strange mixture of toughness and sensitivity, boorishness and charm, passion and dourness. After all, many others in the cricket world grew up in exactly the same sort of environment: Fred Trueman, Dickie Bird, Harold Larwood to name but three. When I put it to Doug Lloyd, an Ackworth local with long experience of Boycott, that economic circumstances might provide a clue to Boycott’s attitudes, he exploded: ‘We all went through those experiences, work down pit, outside toilets, we’ve all been brought up that way round here, not just Geoffrey Boycott as he likes to make out. Everybody in this area has been in the same position, learning to rough it. When I left school, what did I do? Went down pit. Boycott didn’t. He worked in an office. He were really quite fortunate.’
Part of the answer to the riddle of Geoff Boycott lies in the huge influence his mother Jane had over him. Theirs was an intensely close relationship, so close that Boycott never considered leaving the family home while she was alive. Even when he was an international sporting star in the seventies, she still washed and ironed all his laundry. ‘I owe it all to Mum,’ Boycott has often said, and there is no doubt that Jane doted on her eldest child, doing everything she could for him. Not surprisingly, he says that he resembles his mother much more than his father, believing that he inherited her characteristics of fortitude and resolution. ‘She was a very, very determined lady, with a lot of inner strength in a quiet way,’ he has said. ‘She would never be easily got down.’
Boycott may have also inherited his notoriously sharp tongue from his straight-talking mother. Local Fitzwilliam newsagent Harry Cordon told the Yorkshire Post in August 1977, the day after Boycott scored his hundredth century: ‘His mother comes in here a lot, a marvellous lady, but like everybody in this part of the world, she’s not averse to calling a spade a spade. I suppose Geoffrey himself is very much like that, and that’s why some people may not have taken to him.’
The attention that Jane lavished on young Geoffrey may have had a number of paradoxical consequences. One was the feeling that, with such unquestioning parental support, he could achieve anything he wanted – psychiatrists have often referred to the almost messianic sense of purpose that can grip an eldest son who is close to his mother. But on the negative side, the intense love may have also made him suspicious of the outside world, leading him to appear a loner, unable to trust others. Throughout most of his playing career, the only two places he appears to have felt totally safe were either at home or at the batting crease. His neighbour and childhood friend from Fitzwilliam, Bernard Crapper, recalls how Geoffrey’s mother appeared over-solicitous towards her son: ‘She was all right, but she was over-protective of Geoffrey. She was always coming out to see where he was, checking who he was with. She and Geoffrey were very close. I was in and out of his house, used to play in his yard. But then, after an hour or so, his mother would come out and tell Geoff he had to come in.’
Even worse, Geoffrey may have become somewhat spoilt, at least in emotional terms, a trait that could have lasted to this day. One television producer told me: ‘The impression I have long had of him is that of a spoilt child, the brat who always wants his own way.’ Despite wartime rationing and low wages, Geoffrey was treated generously by his family. His uncle Albert Speight – Jane Boycott’s brother – recalls: ‘When he was born during the war, things were very hard to get. My parents used to collect all the sweet coupons so that Geoff would have some chocolate. You see, with him being the first grandson in the family, it was a tremendous boost.’ Even his shoes were polished by his parents.
Such a warm atmosphere may have provided Geoffrey with a security that few other children enjoyed. Yet at times, it seems that it was almost smothering, creating a mood of claustrophobia. In fact, Boycott occasionally voices his dislike of the pattern of family and community life in which he grew up. Before the onset of cancer, the themes of freedom from commitment, not being tied down to one place, ran through his adult life. In an interview on Radio Five in November 1998, when Nicky Campbell asked him about his ‘unconventional’ lifestyle, he said: ‘I grew up in a mining community, saw everybody have kids, have greyhounds, pigeons, an allotment and I wanted to travel.’ Again, cricket offered the means of escaping such a narrow existence.
Some observers from Fitzwilliam would argue that the most telling characteristic Boycott took from his mother’s side of the family was the Speight gift for causing social friction. ‘The Speights could be a bit obnoxious. They had this sort of tough, ruthless attitude,’ says Bernard Crapper. Arthur Hollingsworth, the local newsagent, is perhaps most revealing of all on this subject, since he knew and worked with both sides of the family: ‘Geoffrey was not a Boycott. The Boycotts were very different from the Speights; they were quiet, whereas the Speights were as awkward as bent nails. I used to drive to his grandfather, old Ned Speight, in my pony and cart to deliver a tub of coal for him. And he wouldn’t give you the sweat off his brow.’
Whatever the feelings about the Speights, two of them, Boycott’s mother and his uncle Albert (known as Algy), were to play a crucial role in the early development of his cricket, which soon became the driving force of his life: his uncle by introducing him to league cricket and his mother by conducting games in the backyard of 45 Milton Terrace. In the 1850s, it had been W.G. Grace’s formidable mother Martha who famously encouraged her children’s initial steps in cricket in the family orchard. Ninety years later, in the 1940s, Jane Boycott was to act in a similar fashion, organizing playing sessions at the rear of the house with just a bat, a bin and her two younger sons, Peter and Tony. ‘Mum kept on making my brothers and I practise shots and techniques in the backyard until we learned every shot in the book,’ Boycott said in 1963.
Because of his special talent for cricket, his parents made considerable sacrifices to further his career: buying him equipment, paying for cricket lessons and helping him through grammar school. But there was no sense of resentment from his two younger brothers at the support Geoffrey was given. Peter Boycott told me, ‘All three of us were treated exactly the same way by our parents. Yes, Geoff got extra help with coaching but as far as Tony and myself are concerned, there was absolutely no favouritism.’ Tony, the middle son, is three years younger than Geoff, and worked as a fitter in the coal industry before taking early retirement. Peter, eight years younger than Geoff, followed his father’s advice ‘not to go down pit’ and works as a transport manager. To this day the Boycott brothers remain close. ‘There has never been any rift in our family. Geoff puts great store by loyalty. He has always been there for us, a great brother, and, likewise, if he wants help on anything, all he has to do is pick up the phone,’ says Peter.
Both Peter and Tony have been useful cricketers without aspiring to the heights achieved by their elder brother. Tony, an opening batsman and left-arm spinner, is still playing, while Peter, a former middle-order batsman, now umpires in the West Riding League. ‘Geoff and I are different characters,’ says Peter. ‘If I had shown the same total dedication as Geoff I might have made it as a professional. But, from his earliest days, Geoff was so self-motivated, determined and single-minded. Anything he puts his mind to, he succeeds at. I’m very proud of him.’
It was, perhaps, inevitable that Boycott, from his earliest years, should have had an enthusiasm for the game, for cricket then was as much part of life in Fitzwilliam as the colliery. Given the great strength of Yorkshire in the 1930s, winning the county championship seven times in nine seasons up to 1939, few local schoolboys could have ignored the game. And cricket then was far more important to our national culture than it is today, especially in the north of England. But what was unique about Geoffrey Boycott was the depth of his passion for it. As his childhood friend from Fitzwilliam Malcolm Tate recalls: ‘Going back to his very earliest days, he were always cricket mad, just like me. We used to go for long walks in the fields around the village and we would talk about nothing but cricket for hours on end.’
His ability was also obvious to Bernard Crapper, though it was helped by the fact that Geoff, as a result of his family’s support, had better equipment than the other boys in Milton Terrace: ‘We used to play games in the cobbled street. The wicket would be a dustbin or a chalk mark on the wall. Only Geoff had a proper bat, the rest of us had to make do with crude bats made from planks or wooden fencing. For bowling we used a well-worn tennis ball with no fur. The ball would bounce off at awkward angles from the cobbles, shooting away in one direction, or keeping low, or going straight up in the air. I have often thought that is where Geoff got his great technique from dealing with the ball coming at all heights and directions. The rest of us would never last very long, with the dustbin often rattling after only three or four balls but Geoffrey, of course, could stay there for quite a time. He did used to sulk if he got out and could be a bit tempestuous.’
Cricket was also played on the tarmac playground of Fitzwilliam Junior School, which Boycott attended from the age of five. The school adhered to the traditional approach of the time, strong on discipline and short on sympathy. Bernard Crapper, who later became chairman of the governors of Fitzwilliam Junior, remembers the headmaster, Mr Perry, as a ‘big, ruddy-faced man, who looked like a farmer. He had hands like shovels, with one finger missing from the right one. When you’d get those hands whacked across you, you really knew you’d been hit.’ But, in the memory of Crapper, Boycott seems to have been a good pupil. ‘Geoff was a little bit better behaved than the rest of us. I think that was his mother’s influence. In lessons he would knuckle down. He was certainly a bright lad, good in all subjects, even in music with his recorder. He always seemed to understand everything.’
But some elements of the Boycott temperament were apparent even then. According to Crapper: ‘I thought he was a decent lad, and I usually got on well with him. But I knew he could be awkward and was prone to moodiness. I could generally tell what mood he was in and then I would leave him alone. Towards others he could have a standoffish attitude. Some people at school thought he was big-headed, probably because of jealousy at his ability, “He thinks he’s somebody just because he’s got a bat,” they would say.’
Before he had reached the age of 10, Boycott suffered two setbacks of the kind with which his life has been littered. The first occurred when he was just seven years old. Playing with some friends on the railings at the back of his house, he slipped and fell on a mangle lying in the neighbour’s garden. There was no obvious external injury but he bled internally through the night and had to be rushed to Pontefract Hospital the next morning. Due to the foresight of the doctor examining him, a ruptured spleen was diagnosed and an emergency operation was performed to remove the damaged organ. As his uncle Algy puts it, ‘In those days anyone with a ruptured spleen was very lucky to survive and he was in a critical condition. But he was taken to the hospital just in time and he pulled through.’ Situated in the upper left side of the abdomen, the spleen filters bacteria out of the bloodstream. Therefore, anyone who has been through a splenectomy is far more prone to infection. According to some medical experts, the risk of being infected, especially with septicaemia, may be eight times higher. This largely explains why Boycott used to be reluctant to tour south Asia, an attitude that blighted his Test career in the seventies.
The second, even more serious, misfortune occurred in March 1950, when his father was badly injured working down the mine. Tom Boycott’s job as a roadlayer meant he was responsible for laying and maintaining the underground tracks on which the coal tubs ran. In an interview with the Daily Telegraph in November 1998, Boycott described what went wrong and the sorry aftermath: ‘Some idiot sent these empty coal tubs along the line while my dad was still working on it at the coal face. Just mangled him up. Broke his back, broke his pelvis, both knees, ruptured his insides. What a mess. It destroyed his life. From then on he was a broken man. He had a rolling, shambling gait instead of being a six foot one inch upright man.’ If any such accident happened today, the employee would, rightly, receive substantial compensation. There were no such rights for miners in 1950 and, despite Tom Boycott’s poor health, he eventually had to return to his job underground. ‘There were just promises, promises from the union but no compensation. He only got a few tomatoes, eggs and apples when people called,’ recalled Boycott. His father never properly recovered from his injuries and died prematurely, seventeen years later. This experience further hardened Boycott. Not only did his family have to go through severe financial hardship as they struggled on his father’s meagre sick pay immediately after the accident, but also the treatment by both the union and employer must have made Boycott all the more distrustful of those in authority. Throughout his adult life he has clashed with such figures, whether they be Yorkshire committee men, England selectors, BBC bosses or French judges.
Yet one of the hallmarks of Boycott has always been his willingness to battle through any crisis. Even as a child, he let neither family disaster nor personal health problems disrupt his pursuit of success at cricket. So, at the age of nine, he was selected for the Fitzwilliam Junior School team. The following year, he was its captain. His developing reputation as a talented young cricketer was further enhanced when he won a national newspaper competition, organized to coincide with the 1951 Festival of Britain, for the best all-round performance in a schools match. He had been nominated by Fitzwilliam Junior after taking six wickets for 10 and scoring 45 not out from a total of just 52 in a fixture against Royston. The prize, appropriate for a would-be Yorkshire and England opener, was a Len Hutton bat.
Outside school, Boycott’s increasing passion for cricket was deepened by his uncle Algy, who was captain at Ackworth Cricket Club. ‘I talked cricket with him from his earliest days,’ he says, ‘and on Saturdays, for a day out, I would take him on the bus to the ground, maybe give him some tea there, and then he would have some lemonade and fish and chips on the way back. That’s really how he first got involved in the game. He was so single-minded as a child. Nothing else mattered to him except cricket.’ George Hepworth, who was secretary of Ackworth for more than thirty years, says that Algy was Boycott’s first real mentor: ‘I can see the pair of them now, Algy with his Brylcreemed hair, and little Geoff alongside, carrying Algy’s case and boots. It was Algy who really fed his passion for the game. He was a wise old bird, great at encouraging youngsters.’
George Hepworth has a clear recollection of an early game that Geoff played for the Ackworth Under 15s. ‘We were playing against Featherstone and I was captain of the side. Geoff was only about nine years old and he came in as last man, with eighteen still needed. He stayed there and we managed to scrape fifteen runs towards the target before Geoff got out. His mum and dad had been watching and there were tears streaming down his face. He thought he had let everyone down but in fact he had batted well for a little lad. And I thought to myself, This kid, he’s got a touch of steel in his makeup, a look of eagle in his eye. I had a gut feeling then that he would go right to the top.’
