Famous Cricketers No 69 - G. Boycott

Geoffrey Boycott The eldest of three sons, Geoffrey Boycott was born on 21st October 1940. The mining village of Fitzwilliam, in the South Yorkshire coalfields, where he grew up, must have seemed a dismal place, overshadowed as it was by the local Colliery, made more so by the inevitable austerity of the war years. His father, who worked as a miner, suffered a long illness and despite money being short, as it was for so many families in the post-war years, his mother, Jayne, maintained a comfortable home for the family. Boycott remained devoted to his mother all her life. As for so many youngsters before and since, a talent for sport meant the possibility of escape from a life of hard toil and low pay down the local coal pit. After attending Fitzwilliam Junior School, Boycott moved to Hemsworth Grammar School. At the age of ten he scored 45 out of 52 all out and took 6 wickets for 10 runs for his school team, to win a Len Hutton bat offered by a local newspaper. Encouraged and supported by his close family, particularly his uncle, Albert Speight, Boycott displayed, at a very young age, his determination to learn and to succeed. At the age of 14 he learned that he needed to wear glasses and although initially upset he soon overcame this handicap. Years later he successfully exchanged glasses for contact lenses. He joined Ackworth Cricket Club and was playing in their 1st XI at the age of 13, moving on to Barnsley in his mid-teens and then on to Leeds. He captained Yorkshire Schoolboys and played in the Yorkshire Federation XI. Boycott first played for Yorkshire’s 2nd XI in 1959 and in 1961 headed their batting averages with 688 runs at 38.22. He made his first-class debut in 1962, at the age of 21, playing five matches during that season. Before the start of the 1963 season he left his job with the Ministry of Pensions, determined to win a regular place in Yorkshire’s powerful 1st XI. He finished the season with 1628 First-Class runs at an average of 45.22, with three hundreds, the highest being an unbeaten 165 against Leicestershire. The career of one of England’s greatest run-makers was successfully underway. Boycott played for Yorkshire from 1962 to 1986. In 414 matches for the County he scored 32,570 runs from 674 innings, at an average of 57.85, with 103 hundreds. In all first-class cricket he scored 48,426 runs at an average of 56.83, with 151 hundreds and in 26 seasons, at home and abroad, he passed 1000 runs. His batting average is the highest achieved by any English cricketer. He stands at eighth in the list of run-scorers and fifth in the list of century makers. Boycott was the first Englishman to average over 100 in a season and is the only English batsman to have done this twice. He captained Yorkshire for eight years from 1971 to 1978, with a singular lack of success. A generally weak Yorkshire side seemed, in addition, to be in constant political turmoil. Boycott made his debut for England in 1964 and played his last Test match in January 1982. The 8114 runs he scored in 108 matches remains the third highest aggregate for England, after Gooch and Gower. But for his self-imposed three year exile from Test cricket he would probably still head this list. He scored 22 hundreds for England, a record he shares with Cowdrey and Hammond. His highest score in Test Matches was an unbeaten 246 against India in 1967. He was promptly dropped for slow scoring! In a long Test Match career with many highlights, perhaps three stand out. In Australia in 1970-71, at the age of 30, he reached his peak as a batsman, scoring 657 runs at an average of 93.85 to help England regain the Ashes. Again against Australia, in 1977, he returned to the Test side after a three 5