Boycott still dividing opinion as milestone is reached

THERE is a delightful touch of irony in the fact Geoffrey Boycott, as he reaches the milestone of three score and 10 years, shows no sign of slowing down; he built a career and risked a reputation by doing slowly what he did best and took the consequences of his single-minded approach.

The result is that he is revered by many who follow the game – especially in Yorkshire – as a great batsman, perhaps the best Englishman of that calling since the Second World War.

For others – many of them in Yorkshire – he will never rank alongside Herbert Sutcliffe and Sir Leonard Hutton and will forever carry the stigma of being the individual who brought a great county cricket club to its knees.

That is Boycott; hero and villain, at the same time selfless and selfish, good companion or implacable foe depending on whether one or the other sat comfortably with his position.

Perhaps these days the fire has died down a little; there are no more centuries to be made, Test matches to be won or captaincy ambitions to be furthered.

Maybe the onset of throat cancer and the painful but successful battle to overcome it – none who have known Boycott had any doubts that his will would prevail – have mellowed the man, although some of his comments on radio and in his newspaper column might argue against that position.

He once described himself as "not the marrying kind" yet has now been happily wed for seven years and is immensely proud of his daughter, Emma.

He was as devoted a Yorkshireman as any but eventually, like his great friend Michael Parkinson, left his native heath and now spends much of the year at his beautiful house in the South African sun.

Some would suggest he should not sleep well, considering the damage he did to Yorkshire cricket, but he has few regrets and has mended some of the bridges he had left in ruin, not least his relationship with the late Fred Trueman.

To sum up assessing Geoffrey Boycott is like – and this comes from several good sources – batting with him.

When Bill Athey, a batsman of immense potential, left Yorkshire for Gloucestershire, he cited Boycott and the pantomime surrounding him as his reason for leaving yet several other young cricketers praised Boycott for helping with their technique during his years as club captain.

Within the confines of any dressing room opinion was divided: you either disliked Boycott (probably intensely, as did Richard Hutton, son of Sir Leonard) or you respected him.

Few people – David Bairstow being one – actually liked him but that did not cause Boycott any problem: he had his ability and ambition to drive him.

Those qualities were instilled in him by his family as he grew up in the mining village of Fitzwilliam and persuaded him, when he found his

eyesight was defective and could damage his chances of playing for Yorkshire and England, to write to the bespectacled Mike Smith, the captain of England and Warwickshire, seeking advice.

Smith told him to wear glasses and continue to work at his game; that was a turning point for Boycott.

So was his first century for Yorkshire – 145 against Lancashire at Bramall Lane in 1963 – and his first appearance for England a year later.

He excelled in scoring 146 against Surrey in the 1965 Gillette Cup final but in 1967 was dropped by his country for scoring too slowly in an innings of 246 against India at Headingley.

The pinnacle came at Headingley in August, 1977 when he batted beautifully – as even his critics acknowledged – and reached his 100th first-class century, becoming the first cricketer to reach the landmark in a Test match.

At that moment, he might well have been the most popular man in the country.

It was the dismissal by Yorkshire of Brian Close as captain in 1970 which plunged Boycott into the most controversial period of his playing career.

He was appointed as the new captain by a casting vote and proceeded to play as he had always done, reasoning that if he batted well then the team would perform.

Sadly, his game-plan had its faults, the major one being that Boycott loved batting, no matter what the state of the game or the demands of the clock.

After a period of great success under Close, Yorkshire endured eight successive seasons of failure and eventually Boycott was asked to step down.

The resulting uproar would divide families as pro and

anti-Boycott factions took up their positions for a cricketing civil war which continued,

with varying levels of hostility, until he left the county in

1986.

Now he is again serving Yorkshire, albeit from afar, as he advises the board on potential signings and other matters in which his enormous experience is of value.

He is still an icon of the general cricketing public, who would love nothing better than to see their hero knighted to mark his 70th birthday.

To them he has been "Sir Geoffrey" for years; to others he will always be simply Boycott.