Читать книгу Heroes and Contemporaries (Text Only) - David Gower - Страница 7
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Geoff Boycott is enough of an enigma to puzzle the Sphinx. When he feels wanted, when he knows the proper respect due to him is there, and when he’s given a successful and pleasant atmosphere, the old Fireball can glow. Geoff Boycott needs to be happy.
There are at least two sides to Geoff. He must be one of the few people in the world who can make either instant friends or instant enemies.
I never knew Geoff when he was at his peak, indisputably one of the two or three best players in the world. We first met as players when I joined him in the England team shortly after his return from self-imposed exile, in 1978. As a young batsman I was so much aware of his reputation that if he played and missed I was aghast: I didn’t expect to see an error from him and anything that passed the bat came as a big surprise.
I shared a third-wicket stand of sixty-one with him in the Second Test against New Zealand at Trent Bridge in August 1978. As I expected, he was very much the senior partner and this was the kind of occasion when he could be so good, talking to you, guiding you, keeping you going. He is so experienced, he has seen it all before and has consequently developed a great sense of anticipation.
Wind and weather, the number of overs bowled, the next fielding change, the next bowling change, how long to the interval, the state of mind of the opposing captain, of the opposing bowlers – all this is going on in Geoff’s computer brain while he is playing the very next ball strictly on its merits. Oh, and keeping an eye on his partner, too.
Once he is set into an innings nothing intrudes upon his concentration on the task of building a big one. If he senses that his partner is becoming restless, perhaps itching to have a whack, he will warn about taking risks; but he knows he cannot bat alone, though he likes some partners more than others. He doesn’t so much score runs as accumulate them – I think it was John Woodcock, in The Times, who named him The Great Accumulator. Geoff has the ability to wait, never becoming distracted, never wavering in his belief that if you stay at the crease the runs will come. At the same time he does harbour secret ambitions to play the cavalier. Those dreams sometimes surface, as when he told me: ‘I wish I could play like you, just go out there and cream it around.’
In Barbados once, I was sitting by an hotel pool sampling a pina colada, a sweet, sticky and potent rum-based drink popular in the Caribbean. Geoff took a sip, as he passed, screwed up his face and then, with that famous lop-sided grin, pronounced judgement: ‘No wonder you play like you do. If I drank that bloody stuff I’d play some daft shots too.’ I have admitted I wouldn’t mind some of his application for my game, but his is the last word: ‘If I could add your shots to my brain I would be an incredible player.’ The irony of all this steely joking is that Geoff Boycott has got the shots, but has revealed them to a select audience on very few occasions, a topic we’ll return to later.
I would love to add his self-control, his self denial and his technique to my game. There have been times when I’ve played as long an innings as Geoff and there are times, I admit, when I’ve given away a lot of hard work. My thoughts go back to Barbados and the last Test England played there.
Geoff had been given a torrid time by Michael Holding and wasn’t feeling too pleased (0 and 1 in the match) and was even less pleased to see me out playing a casual shot at Viv Richards, after battling it out for 54 in the second innings. But although he was far from happy himself we were able to talk quite openly about my dismissal and he told me he had noticed the signs of relaxation coming into my play. As soon as the fast bowlers had been rested and Viv had come on to bowl he thought that both Graham Gooch and I had eased up. In fact, in the context of a Test match, it wasn’t necessary to think in terms of taking runs off Viv. We were there to try to save the match, so the bowling of Richards had to be treated just as seriously as that of Holding. Both Gooch and I knew in our hearts that if Geoff Boycott had been batting at that time he would have come in to tell us about it at the end of the day. To Geoff a Test match is a Test match no matter who is bowling; a 100 always looks better than 50 and is certainly more valuable to the team. This Boycott attitude has rubbed off on some younger members of the England team, although none of us has been able to maintain his astonishing consistency.
I first toured with him in Australia in 1978–9 when he was going through a bad patch. His mother had died, Yorkshire had taken the captaincy away, he was given little peace by the media and in the circumstances it’s not surprising that he snapped a few times. He tried to reply, as always, through his bat, playing doggedly throughout and being shaken out of his depression, very often, by Ian Botham. Ian had decided, very early on, that he wasn’t going to take any elderly statesman stuff from the famous Yorkshireman. To Boycott’s surprise and then, I suspect, secret delight, Ian pulled his leg mercilessly, regularly addressing him as ‘Thatch’, in reference to his famous hair transplant. Geoff responded by nicknaming Botham ‘Guy the Gorilla’, one that has stuck and these two great players struck a merry relationship that served England well through many Tests. Now there isn’t a great deal of overt respect between them but, after India, they don’t take quite the same casual approach to each other either.
On that 1978–79 tour I had a fourth-wicket partnership of 158 with Geoff at Perth. I scored 102, Geoff 77 in seven and a half hours, but it was he who kept me going through that long day. England had lost 3 wickets for 41 and it was essential that Boycott stay there, as he did. I played a few shots and got to my 100 just before the close. As a young player it was the highlight of my career and I was feeling pretty pleased with myself, but I noticed he showed no signs of self-satisfaction. He wasn’t saying to himself ‘I’ve done well, I can switch off now.’ He was thinking about the next day.
Boycott’s ability to secure one end has been invaluable for both Yorkshire and England. When there is a strokemaker going well at the other end it’s a perfect partnership, but if Geoff bats with someone who is going through a sticky patch he tends to stagnate that much more. In those circumstances he will allow the bowlers to dictate to his partner. A batsman on form and well set should try to relieve the pressure by scoring runs, forcing the opposition to think again.
Back in England in 1979, Geoff and I shared 191 against India at Edgbaston. He began doggedly; he and Mike Brearley had done all the hard work – as he was quick to tell me – when I arrived at the crease. After that we had some good-humoured, friendly rivalry on a beautiful pitch against bowling that was fairly amiable, once the young Kapil Dev had rested. I tried to get my 50 before he reached his 100. If he hit a 4 I would try to hit one, or two; I saw this as something of a competition but it can’t have done him any harm, as he then began to open up and play a few shots himself.
We were to see him in an even better light on the 1979–80 tour of Australia. He was feeling happier for much of that tour and once again, as an England batsman, you knew you couldn’t say you had had a good day unless you finished with more runs than he did. What really jolted him then was to be dropped from the one-day side. This was the first World Series Cup, a triangular one-day contest with Australia and the West Indies, in which every match, especially those under the Sydney lights, seemed as hectic as a Cup Final. Geoff had to be recalled at Melbourne where he played very positively and showed he could slap the ball around. Then, at Sydney, in the next floodlit match, he was brilliant. He scored a devastating 105 off only 124 deliveries and made a fool of anyone who ever suggested he lacked the ability or the shots to score quickly. He may not have been too happy playing that kind of cricket but he did leave a huge Australian crowd gaping and gasping for more. It was such a shame that he played like that only when his place was in danger.
That was on 11 December 1979. A month later all had gone sour again. A violent thunderstorm flooded an unprotected Sydney Ground (the ground staff were celebrating New Year’s Eve) and, as several experienced observers predicted: ‘Whoever won the toss won the Test.’ Greg Chappell won and although Boycott didn’t want to play, complaining of a stiff neck, Brearley insisted, saying: ‘I don’t care if you are slightly unfit, I want you to play, I want you in.’ England were 1–0 down in a three-Test series and we needed to be at full strength. It was a dreadful wicket to bat on, Boycott getting 8 and 18, but his attitude was never of the best. It was a time he would like to forget and we with him.
I didn’t see much of Geoff in the next home series against West Indies, being dropped from the team after the First Test at Trent Bridge. But the West Indians did pay him the compliment of making him their prime target and we all admired the way he stood up to what must have been the most concentrated fast attack in history. He survived. At the age of forty he played through nine Tests against them, at home and in the Caribbean. Clive Lloyd knew very well that Geoff was always the stumbling block. There was much blocking and much more testing of that well-tried defensive technique: he batted on tremendously in his own style, got a century in Antigua and it was no exaggeration to call him the pillar of the team.
He also seemed to have accepted, philosophically, that his long-standing ambition to become England’s captain was unlikely ever to be fulfilled. After he had taken over the reins briefly in Pakistan and New Zealand in 1977–8, when Brearley was injured, he was then overlooked when the question of Brearley’s successor arose, in favour of Ian Botham, Brearley again and then Keith Fletcher. Yet Boycott served under Botham happily enough and again under Brearley during that epic 1981 series against Australia. Any misgivings about his availability for a long and difficult tour of India and Sri Lanka were also put aside where he began by fitting in perfectly and doing his job. There were no clouds on those Indian horizons.
To someone as dedicated to scoring runs as Geoff, it must have meant a great deal to him to pass Sobers’s record of aggregate Test runs, becoming the heaviest scorer in Test history. Breaking a record of the greatest cricketer of all time is an achievement anyone would have cherished. So it was all the more sad that he should almost immediately retire to his sick bed after Delhi, leaving himself open to criticism and jibes and initiating the first rumours that he might be going home.
I wasn’t in the dressing-room that dramatic afternoon in Calcutta during the Fourth Test when he is alleged to have appeared from that sick bed and invited team-mates to a round of golf. Whether he actually took his clubs or just walked round the course I don’t know, but by the evening stories were circulating among the players. Officially he was still unwell, although the various doctors called in seem to have given differing accounts of the virus responsible. What isn’t in dispute is that Geoff had appeared for lunch that day at Eden Gardens, quiet but bright; he didn’t have to crawl in, despite having been in bed for a week. England had finished batting so that all he had to do was field. But he didn’t make any fuss, merely packing his bag and saying that the doctors thought him unfit to field and that it would do him some good to stroll around the golf course.
Cricket’s unofficial code of conduct lays down that unless you are injured or genuinely unwell – not just off-colour – then you take your place in the field, through the heat and burden of the day. It was Geoff’s apparent flouting of this code, more than anything else, that enraged other members of the team. At that time, in Calcutta, I doubt if a single member of the party was a one hundred per cent fit. We all had complaints about little things, coughs and sneezes, tummy rumbles. Whatever afflicts you in India, Delhi-Belly or otherwise, the normal approach is to keep taking the tablets and keep eating what is available to keep your strength up. The right example had been set by Bob Willis who had been really ill for the first month of the tour; he would sit in the dressing-room, after night upon night of sleep disturbed by stomach aches and bathroom visits, only just able to keep his eyes open. If anyone had the right to pull up the ladder it was Willis. Geoff had made do with the steaks served in the best hotels but was much less happy with the food served up-country. Even though most of us felt the same way, it was a question of having to make do in the circumstances. In short, when Geoff went walking instead of fielding he did not have an especially sympathetic audience.
In fact, he touched off an explosion in the England dressing-room. Botham – who would shortly afterwards go down with a nasty virus infection in Madras, sweat through all one night and still go out to bowl the following morning – was especially furious. The extreme view in the dressing-room was that Boycott should never play for England again. Another opinion was that he should be sent home immediately. A third section disagreed, believing that going home was Geoff’s objective and that he should now be made to stay to do his job in India. No-one really knew what was in Geoff’s mind at that time, only that he seemed as confused as the rest of us.
Initially the attitude of the tour management committee, Raman Subba Row, Fletcher, Willis and Bernard Thomas, seemed to be that Boycott should stay. No-one was having the time of his life; going home, at that point, could seem to be a privilege and an allowance denied the rest of the party. Why should Geoff Boycott be favoured? The issue seemed settled when we heard that Geoff would definitely be going on to Madras with a view to playing in the Fifth Test. Then, while the main party went off by rail to play East Zone in Jamshedpur, rumours multiplied: Boycott was reported to have said he wanted to go, then he didn’t, then he did again.
When the final decision was taken that he could fly home from Calcutta the news was delayed, at his request, until he had actually departed, which left the press, the great majority of whom were stuck up-country in Bengal, buzzing like angry wasps. Yet by the time we arrived in Madras the atmosphere had lightened and improved. A day on the coast, a swim in the sea at Fisherman’s Cove, the first holiday of the tour for most of the party, helped to raise spirits as we digested the impact of Geoff’s arrival at Heathrow in the middle of a tour.
His early departure set up another train of questions. Did he go home early to help arrange the ‘rebel’ tour of South Africa that followed in March? I can’t believe that there can be any truth in that, although his actions laid the basis for the rumours. Only Geoff can supply the full answers to that whole episode. I can say that the initial approaches for South Africa were made before the tour of India began and that Boycott was a key figure in those approaches. He was always keen to go and that those first invitations came from him or his solicitor, Duncan Mutch, is beyond dispute.
In September 1981 the Indian Government were still pondering whether they should admit Boycott and Geoff Cook after their previous South African connections. Mrs Gandhi is said to have been finally convinced that she could take the political risk of allowing the tour to go ahead by a passage in one of Boycott’s books, in which he expressed his opposition to apartheid. While I agree that it is possible to abhor a political system yet compete with their sportsmen (e.g. Russia and Argentina) this episode seems to be an example of double-think sufficient to surprise even George Orwell.
There is no doubt that the financial considerations were tempting. Professional sportsmen will always appear to be over-conscious of their earnings to the general public. But what the public often forget, which the professional athlete is sometimes too often aware of, is that he may have less than ten years to make the best of his career. So the South African offers involved many arguments, financial and ethical. Was the offer worth jeopardizing a Test career? Would we be supporting an oppressive régime by playing in South Africa? Were we being hypocritical in even considering these offers while playing in India?
For much of the Indian tour the offers lay dormant while players wrestled with the problems. One agent did arrive by a roundabout route, a middle-man trying to give us a nudge in the required direction. We all had to become devious and secretive for an hour or so in turn while we disappeared to talk it over. Then the whole thing seemed to die. I pulled out and several others felt the same way. Once I was out I heard very little of what was going on. What was clear was that Boycott, up until the time he left Calcutta, was the keenest to carry on and go to South Africa.
After his departure it seemed to me that the great majority of the England players felt as I did and that the whole venture would collapse through lack of support. When I returned to England, to depart again on holiday, I was very surprised to read that the South African tour had started and that the party included Graham Gooch who had left me ninety per cent certain that he wasn’t going. Yet even if Geoff Boycott hadn’t gone to South Africa I doubt if he would have played for England again, no matter how many runs he scored, such was the strength of the dressing-room feeling after Calcutta. The selectors could have chosen him, of course, but they would have had to accept they would have been putting him into an England team that felt much better without him. The anger was such that no one dare say they felt sorry for him, although I think most of us were sad that he could do this to himself, that a man of his standing and prestige in the game could upset so many of his closest colleagues.
It would have been nice for Geoff to have left us at his best when he was happy, wearing his wry grin, talking to you as a colleague. I would prefer to remember the Geoff Boycott who used to offer me advice freely, and talked quietly and sensibly about all aspects of the modern game. He has contributed a lot to English cricket over a long career – perhaps it could have been more. Whatever controversies surround Geoff Boycott, now or in the future, I shall always be glad to listen when he talks cricket sense.
