Geoff Boycott: A Cricketing Hero. Leo McKinstry
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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.’
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