Читать книгу Geoff Boycott: A Cricketing Hero - Leo McKinstry - Страница 9

There 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 just three runs and thus finishing that summer with an average of only 7.66 in the seconds. The 1960 season, with Boycott now nineteen, went even more badly. After a bright start for Barnsley, he was actually selected as twelfth man for Yorkshire against Sussex at Middlesbrough. But then he pulled his hamstring playing in a match for Barnsley and was out for the rest of the summer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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