Читать книгу Geoff Boycott: A Cricketing Hero - Leo McKinstry - Страница 12

It is one of the many paradoxes of Boycott’s career that his greatest domestic innings should have also become a millstone round his neck. His volcanic 146 at Lord’s in the 1965 Gillette Cup final against Surrey, where he displayed every stroke on an awkward pitch and a damp outfield, was cited as an example of the way Boycott could play if the mood took him. From 1965 onwards every act of stonewalling was compared by his detractors to that exhilarating knock.

‘He was fantastic that day,’ says Don Wilson. ‘All of a sudden he was hitting the ball over mid-off and mid-on. We had never seen him lift the ball in the air in our lives. The shots he played were phenomenal. As he came off, the noise was amazing. Every person on the ground stood and applauded him. I couldn’t believe this was happening at Lord’s, normally a sedate place. The trouble is, people were asking, “Why the hell didn’t he do that before?”’

Boycott’s innings was all the more extraordinary because it took place at the end of a disappointing season for him, which saw him lose his place in the England side and fail to score a first-class century. After almost two years of rapid advance, Boycott’s progress in professional cricket ground to a halt. True, he topped the averages once more for Yorkshire, but this time with a figure of just 34.88 from 942 runs. Overall he fell from fifth to fifteenth in the national averages, with 1447 runs at 35.92.

In the Test matches his final record was equally modest. This was the first summer in which England hosted twin series, with New Zealand and South Africa the visitors. In the opening Test of the season, against New Zealand at Edgbaston, Boycott hit 23 and 44 not out in a nine-wicket victory, though the two main talking points were the icy weather – hot drinks had to be served twice during the second day – and Ken Barrington’s painfully slow century. His 137 took 437 minutes, including an excruciating spell when he remained on 85 for 20 overs. As a result of his stagnation, he was dropped for the second Test as a punishment, exactly the same fate Boycott suffered two years later over his perceived tardiness in compiling a double century against India. ‘Brighter cricket’ was the slogan taken up at this time by the English cricket authorities, worried by dwindling gates and declining popularity. It is telling that Boycott and Barrington should have the same cautious, hard-nosed approach to batting. Both had had a tough upbringing – Barrington was the son of a soldier and first worked in a garage – which compelled them to eschew frivolity and to treat their chosen profession more seriously than most.

Boycott played an important role in England’s victory in the second Test at Lord’s, scoring 76 as England went after a target of 215 in the final innings. They won by seven wickets with only fifteen minutes to spare, their run-chase made more difficult by the loss of five hours through rain on the last two days. Having missed the third Test at Headingley due to a shoulder injury – his replacement John Edrich hit a record-breaking 310 not out – Boycott returned against South Africa at Lord’s. But the Yorkshire opener was unable to re-establish his rhythm, scoring 31 and then a wretched 28 in 105 minutes in the second innings as England struggled to a draw after being set only 191 in four hours. Following the Barrington precedent, there was talk of dropping Boycott as a disciplinary measure, with some outspoken critics even arguing that his innings had cost England victory. In an interview with the Daily Express, Boycott explained his philosophy of batting: ‘If the selectors want to drop me, that’s their business. I am not the world’s greatest cricketer. I never will be. But I think I am good enough to open for Yorkshire and England. If I am going on playing for England my attitude to opening the innings will not change. I simply believe the job of the opener is to knock the shine off the new ball by cracking it solidly in the middle and trickling the runs along without taking swipes or risks.’

The selectors reprieved Boycott, but not for long. In the second Test at Trent Bridge, though he did some useful bowling – in one spell in South Africa’s second innings he delivered 19 overs for just 25 runs – he gave another dismal performance with the bat. Out for a duck in the first innings, he was almost strokeless in the second as England wickets fell all around him. After two hours 20 minutes at the crease for just 16 runs, he was finally bowled by left-arm spinner Athol McKinnon. Even the normally measured tones of Wisden described this as a ‘dreadful effort when courage was needed’.

Boycott’s sacking was now inevitable, and for the final Test at the Oval he was replaced by Eric Russell of Middlesex. But the selectors were not so disillusioned as to exclude him from the MCC party for the Ashes tour to Australia that winter, and was picked along with three other openers: Barber, Edrich and Russell. Not all the press were happy about the Yorkshireman’s methods. J. J. Warr (who played his only two Tests as a Cambridge undergraduate on the 1950/51 tour) wrote in the Cricketer: ‘Boycott has transformed the admirable quality of determination into a fetish. Every wicket he plays on is made to look difficult and batsmen later on in the order frequently get themselves out trying to compensate for his slowness. His second innings at Nottingham was exquisitely painful to watch.’

There could hardly have been a more thundering riposte to such comments than Boycott’s legendary Gillette innings in September. As with so many matches in the 1965 season, the final was played in damp conditions that were expected to help the bowlers. With his usual vividness, Don Wilson described to me the build-up to the game: ‘We set off from Scarborough the day before in torrential rain. By the time we got to Lord’s to leave off our bags that evening, the ground was saturated. Lord’s used to have the Tavern pub at the bottom of the slope, with some white railings in front of it. And I can tell you, the water had reached the top of those railings. It seemed that there was no way that Yorkshire, or anybody, were going to play in any final the next day.’ That night, the entire Yorkshire team – apart from Boycott, of course – set off for a night of revelry in the West End, starting with The Black and White Minstrel Show at the Victoria Palace and ending in Snow’s Hotel on the Cromwell Road. But the next morning, there was blazing sunshine and the only sign of the heavy rain the night before was the bags of sawdust everywhere. Wilson recalls: ‘We had quite a few hangovers round the dressing room. To our horror, we were told that play would soon be under way.’

Fortunately for the groggy players, Surrey won the toss and put Yorkshire in to bat. Unsurprisingly, given the wetness of the outfield and the quality of the new-ball bowling from David Syndenham and Geoff Arnold, openers Boycott and Ken Taylor made a sluggish beginning. Only 20 runs had been scored from 12 overs, when the first wicket, Taylor’s, fell. This start was what Surrey supporters had predicted. It was joked at the Oval that all their team had to do to lift the trophy was to keep Boycott batting at one end. But the game was transformed when Yorkshire captain Brian Close strode to the wicket. Suddenly, quick singles were taken, then Boycott began to hit out all around him, despatching Syndenham over square leg and driving Arnold straight for six into the pavilion. By the end of his innings of 146 he had hit three sixes and 19 fours, putting on 192 with Brian Close and ensuring that Yorkshire had made an unassailable total of 317 for 4. With Ray Illingworth taking 5 for 29, Surrey were shot out for just 142. As Yorkshire picked up their first limited-overs trophy, Boycott was the only possible choice for the Man of the Match award.

Boycott has always emphatically denied the claim that it was a lecture from Close, delivered on his arrival at the crease, that galvanized him into action. In his Autobiography he wrote: ‘So far as I am concerned, at no time did Close tell me to get on with it, or anything remotely similar. The myth about my attitude and motivation that day supports the image of a bold, decisive captain dominating a reluctant subordinate by the force of his personality – but not once did he threaten or cajole me into playing the strokes I played.’

Yet the version Close gave me is very different: ‘I’m out there and straight away I get stuck into Boycs: “Come on, you’ll run when I tell you to bloody run. Now let’s get a move on.” I threatened to wrap my bat round his bloody neck. Soon we were getting three or four singles every over and the field started to creep in to close us down. So I said, “Listen, Boycs, if there’s anything up, just bloody belt it.” Next ball from Geoff Arnold, he cracked it through extra cover for four. No one had ever seen him hit the bloody ball off the square. The spinner came on and I said to him now, “Look, they’re all expecting you to push the bloody ball back. Hit it anywhere from long on down to deep square leg.” He smashed three in a row. He had never played like that before. The whole point was that it was a cup final. I had to take away from him the worry about getting out. I forced him to do it by relieving him of responsibility. If he got out, he had an excuse. He could say, “It’s the captain’s fault.’”

Apart from this famous knock, 1965 was a pretty miserable season for Boycott. And his problems continued when the MCC tourists set out for Australia under M.J.K. Smith almost two months later. First of all, he developed a severe bout of gastro-enteritis after a stop-over in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, thereby justifying all his fears – often sneered at by his critics – that the childhood loss of his spleen had left him prone to infection in south Asia. While the rest of the team flew on to Perth, he was detained in a hospital in Singapore. Even when he caught up with the MCC, he was plagued by another medical ailment, sciatica, which had developed as a result of the injections administered by Singapore doctors. This meant he could only play in two of the six first-class matches in the run-up to the opening Test. One of the visitors he received while he was laid up in an Adelaide hospital was that grandest of correspondents E. W. Swanton. As he wrote in Swanton in Australia, he was immediately struck by Boycott’s passion for his job: ‘Visiting the patient, I came to know a zeal for playing and making runs that was more intense than I have ever encountered. The pain at missing this first chance of an innings was clearly far harder to bear than that of sciatica.’ As if to echo Swanton’s view, when the MCC party were asked by immigration authorities on their arrival in Ceylon to make a written declaration of the purpose of their visit, fourteen players wrote, ‘To play cricket’; Bob Barber said ‘Holiday’; Boycott just put ‘Business’.

His clinical single-mindedness, however, did not always endear him to the other players on this tour. Jim Parks was a room-mate for part of it. ‘We used to have to share Boycs out a little bit – he wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea. I remember Kenny Barrington once said to me, “I don’t think I can handle a whole tour with him.”’ The touring party had a Saturday club, where two barmen would be appointed to make sure that everyone’s glass was full. Parks continues: ‘Geoff, of course, didn’t drink much. All he would have was Cinzano, so getting him a bottle of that could be a bit awkward if you were the barman. Fine, he didn’t want to drink a lot and he was his own man. But the real problem was that all he wanted to do was talk about himself. So when you came back into the room, it was all about how Geoff had played and, really, at eleven o’clock at night, you didn’t want to hear this. He wasn’t my type of person. I enjoyed a few beers and a good night’s sleep. That said, I got on all right with him, didn’t mind sharing with him.’

After his horrors against South Africa, Boycott resumed his alliance with Bob Barber, a partnership that was perhaps the brightest feature of England’s tour. Bristling with aggression, confident in his strokeplay, Barber was determined to take command from the start. To the delight of his England colleagues at Perth, the very first ball he received on the tour was smacked straight back over the head of the bowler, Graham MacKenzie, and reached the boundary on the first bounce. This was truly the ‘brighter cricket’ that the English authorities craved. Barber’s freedom to attack was enhanced by the knowledge that this was his final tour before giving up cricket for business. He was playing for enjoyment, not for his future.

After a draw at Brisbane – Boycott’s 63 not out guiding England to safety on the last afternoon – the second Test at Melbourne saw Boycott and Barber put on 98 for the first wicket in just 16 overs, with Boycott hitting another half-century after being dropped at slip in MacKenzie’s first over. In this high-scoring draw he also took his last two wickets in Test cricket, 2 for 32 in Australia’s second innings of 426. His second victim was stumped by Jim Parks, who recalls: ‘He wasn’t the worst bowler, open-chested, fired in his little inswingers. He was very accurate and we could use him to block up one end.’ Yet, after this tour, Boycott was only to send down another 25 in the remaining sixteen years of his Test career.

It was in the next Test at Sydney that the Boycott-Barber combination achieved their greatest triumph. In a glorious exhibition of batting, they put on 234 for the first wicket in just four hours, England’s highest stand for the first wicket in an Ashes Test since Hobbs and Sutcliffe’s 283 at Melbourne in the 1924/25 series. The partnership was almost over before it began. On 12, Boycott was dropped at short-leg off MacKenzie. After that, there was scarcely an error as Barber, backed by his young partner, took a scythe to the Australian attack: 93 were scored up to lunch; 141 in the next two hours. Then Boycott was caught and bowled by the leg-spinner Peter Philpott for 84. Fifty minutes later Barber was out for his breathtaking 185, still the highest score by an England batsman on the first day of a Test against Australia.

The Boycott-Barber stand laid the foundations of a big innings victory. M.J.K. Smith’s side, now one up with only two to play, dreamt of regaining the Ashes. But then things started to go wrong for both England and Boycott. In the next Test at Adelaide, Barber and Boycott failed badly in each of their two innings, as England slid to an innings defeat. In the final Test, Boycott’s form declined further. Yet instead of giving Barber the strike, he hogged the bowling to such an extent that he took 60 of the first 80 balls, scoring just 15 runs. Then to compound the sin, he called Barber for a ridiculous run after hitting the ball straight into Graham MacKenzie’s hands as he followed through. It was the last ball of the over and, as so often before, Boycott was trying to retain the strike. Twice Barber shouted, ‘No,’ but Boycott ignored him in his charge up the wicket. ‘I just walked off the field, didn’t bother to run at all. It was unfortunate. Geoffrey must have had some sort of mental block. I did tear into him a bit afterwards but he didn’t apologize. Maybe he was just too shy to speak like that. It was the only problem we ever had together.’

Boycott’s form continued to desert him as the MCC flew on to New Zealand for a three-match series. In the first two Tests, Boycott failed to reach double figures in any of his three innings and was dropped for the final match, the second time he had been left out of the England side in just eight months. As The Times put it, ‘The Yorkshire opening bat has looked stale and out of touch since leaving Australia.’

The 1966 season brought only a modest revival in fortunes. As usual, he topped the averages for Yorkshire, scoring 1097 runs at 39.17 and, nationally, he secured ninth place in the averages with 1854 runs at 39.44. He also scored six first-class centuries in the summer, including 164 against Sussex at Hove and, against Nottinghamshire at Sheffield, a century in each innings for the first time in his career.

But none of his hundreds were scored where it really counts, in the Test arena. England’s opponents in 1966 were the West Indies, then the unofficial world champions and at the peak of their powers. Led by probably the greatest all-rounder of all time, Gary Sobers, their bowling attack, built around Wes Hall, Charlie Griffith and Lance Gibbs, was just as formidable as a batting line-up of Conrad Hunte, Seymour Nurse, Basil Butcher and Rohan Kanhai. England were hardly in the same league. They lost the series 3-1, tried out three captains, and were plunged into one of those national moods of panic, which have always been a feature of our domestic game since the Victorian era.

Boycott fared little better than the rest of the England team, averaging only 26.57 in the series. His poor form at the start of the summer, combined with his run of failures at the end of the antipodean tour, ensured that he was left out of the side for the first Test at Old Trafford, where England’s massive defeat cost M.J.K. Smith the captaincy. Boycott returned at Lord’s to open with a new folk hero, the Falstaffian Colin Milburn, whose 94 on his debut had been the only highlight of England’s performance at Manchester. Yet a far more important and emotional comeback at Lord’s was that of thirty-nine-year-old Tom Graveney, out of the side since the Australian tour of 1962/63. Intriguingly, Graveney, despite his attacking style, had always been young Boycott’s hero. ‘I can’t tell you why,’ he said, in a BBC radio interview in 1987 with Cliff Morgan. ‘The great player of Yorkshire cricket was Len Hutton but as a kid my hero was Tom Graveney, played in Gloucester, two hundred miles away. Elegant, lovely player, aesthetic, front foot, back foot. Sometimes he didn’t play for England, they didn’t pick him, just like me.’

Boycott soon had the chance to bat with his hero, when they came together at the fall of Milburn’s wicket with a score of just eight. They put on 115, with Boycott making 60 and Graveney eventually falling just four short of his hundred. Graveney recalls: ‘I had never batted with him before and it was great that day, super. We talked a lot and had no problems at all running between the wickets. It may have been that I was the sort of senior man, an old fella coming back, but he never gave me any anxiety. It may also have been that I did most of the calling. But it was a really enjoyable partnership.’ Graveney admires Boycott’s cricket but is critical of the Stakhanovite image of toil he has built around himself: ‘He tries to paint himself as someone who always had to work very hard but we all worked at our games without making it a chore. I used to have a net every day. I was just giving myself the best chance to get a few runs whenever I went in. I loved batting just as much as he did.’

Apart from a brave 71 at Nottingham, Boycott failed in his other Test innings against the West Indies. This was a worrying period for him. He had failed to average 40 in his last two seasons with Yorkshire. After 24 matches, his Test average now stood at only 36.6, acceptable but hardly high-class. Moreover he had scored only two Test centuries, the last of them 15 matches ago. Of his problems Boycott explained, in a 1971 interview: ‘I came on the cricket scene very quickly in 1963. I did rather well and the publicity that surrounded me told everybody that I was going to be a great player. But I think what people forgot is that I came into cricket so quickly that I did not have the maturity and experience. All this caught up with me around 1966 and 1967 and I became very introspective and a little bit nervous.’

By the end of 1966, Boycott was in danger of becoming just another useful but inconsistent performer. But the next 12 months were to take him to a position of far greater public prominence – and not always for the right reasons.