Episode 100: Geoff Boycott celebrates yet another century

Cricket authors (and obsessives) Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast early in 2020 to help deprived listeners endure a world without cricket. They’re no longer deprived of cricket, but still chat regularly about cricket topics with different guests each week – cricket writers, players, administrators and fans – hoping to keep a good line and length but with occasional wides into other subjects.

Throughout his playing career, Sir Geoffrey Boycott made a habit of celebrating special occasions with a century. It makes him the ideal and appropriate guest for Peter Oborne and Richard Heller on the hundredth recorded edition (according to official statisticians) of their cricket-themed podcast. With him is his new opening partner, Jon Hotten, his collaborator on a revealing, intimate book Being Geoffrey Boycott.

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Characteristically, Sir Geoffrey takes the opening over. He fires a series of blazing shots against the proposals of the England & Wales Cricket Board in the “high performance review” by his fellow knight Sir Andrew Strauss. He derides the ECB’s repeated claims to prioritize Test cricket: on the contrary they fill the season with short-form cricket to prioritize television and make money. He contrasts the compressed overseas tours of today with those of his career, where all the squad were given an opportunity to acclimatize themselves and get form in first-class matches. England’s Test performers in the past were developed and nurtured by a strong county programme: now county cricket had been degraded, exiled to the margins of the seasons when conditions are poor. Its standard was falling, and counties’ best players hardly ever played for them. Yorkshire had just been relegated without the services of Joe Root and Johnny Bairstow, the players they had nurtured and whom members and spectators wanted to see.

Geoffrey and Jon explain the scheme and origins of their “book of two halves”. Geoffrey’s is a detailed first-person diary from memory of every one of his Test innings from 1964 to 1982, undertaken at the behest of his wife Rachael in pandemic lockdown at their home in South Africa. Matt Thacker at the publishers Fairfield (like Jon a past guest on the podcast) had the idea of submitting it to Jon to respond to each passage, explaining its background and deepening the reader’s understanding of Geoffrey’s life and feelings at the time. Geoffrey had rejected Jon’s first effort (for making him sound like a stage Ee-Bah-Gum Yorkshireman) but after some conversations between them and more advice from Rachael Jon’s later drafts had grown on him (and he had cancelled his threat to run him out.)

Finally gaining the strike, Jon describes Geoffrey’s massive influence in his first encounters with cricket and his excitement at recognizing Geoffrey’s distinct voice in his manuscript. It revealed his private personality, his humour and his prodigious memory. Jon had adopted a second-person voice (beginning with the arresting sentence “You hear it on the radio” – how cricketers learnt of their selection for England in 1964) as if Geoffrey were talking to himself about each Test but also as a device for describing other factors influencing his life at the time, especially Yorkshire cricket and his family. He describes his first meeting with Geoffrey at Lord’s and the impossibility of having a conversation with him as a national figure who provoked strong feelings, as so many other spectators came up to talk to him, uninvited. It made him aware of his challenge in unwrapping and revealing the real, not public, Geoffrey Boycott.

Geoffrey explains how, after reflection, he had found Jon’s passages both authentic and revealing. He had accepted him as his number 2 opener and it leads him into a delightful story about a regular batting partner, David Bairstow.

Jon describes his response to getting a regular masterclass on batting in his conversations with Geoffrey, especially in his descriptions of his pre-match routines and his striking revelation that he never dreamt about cricket. Jon had also discovered the mindset of a professional against that of an amateur or social cricketer and the pressure of having to succeed in every single innings. Geoffrey relates the special pressure he felt at the outset of his career, when he gave up a regular civil job and became dependent on appearance fees for Yorkshire of £8 a match.

Geoffrey shares his admiration for some great contemporaries, Sunil Gavaskar, Imran Khan, Graeme Pollock and, above all, Garry Sobers. He tells a revealing and creditable story about batting with Sobers, and cites his often forgotten dedication and professionalism. Sobers had captained the best team he ever played against, the Rest of the World in 1970: his two matches in that series are rightly included in his diary.

He describes his fluctuating relationship with John Snow (and how Snow had broken his finger at Hove) and how Ray Illingworth as England captain astutely placed him at mid-on to Snow to wind him up to bowl fast. He relates and analyses another famous encounter with a great fast bowler, the magic over he received from Michael Holding at Bridgetown in 1981.

He vents his enduring bitterness at Doug Insole (then chairman of selectors) for dropping him after his highest Test score (of which he corrects the total instantly) for alleged slow scoring. He was scarred for ever and says that Insole never spoke to him, only behind his back to the media. Jon cites the vivid passage in which Geoffrey describes his intense struggle for form before that Test against India in 1967 and his release on the second day.

Contact lens wearers of a certain age will empathize with Geoffrey’s description of the problems of his transition to contact lenses in 1969 and their impact on his batting and his self-image.

Cricket-lovers of any age will empathize with the powerful passage on his abiding passion for the game, rooted in Yorkshire. On reflection, he thinks he might have loved Yorkshire cricket too much. They will recognize the boy of ten battling through the winter snow to practise and be coached on a rubber mat at a cricket school inside an icy greenhouse.

Signed copies and two limited editions – celebrating Sir Geoffrey Boycott’s 100th first-class hundred and 108 Test caps, respectively – of Being Geoffrey Boycott are available to buy from thenightwatchman.net.

Standard copies are also available to Oborne & Heller on Cricket listeners at the discounted price of £19.99 + p&p when you use coupon code OHBOYCS at the checkout.

Get in touch with us by emailing obornehellercricket@outlook.com, we would love to hear from you!

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Peter Oborne & Richard Heller

Peter Oborne has been the chief political commentator for the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, a maker of several documentaries and written and broadcast for many different media. He is the author of a biography of Basil D’Oliveira and of Wounded Tiger, a history of Pakistan cricket, both of which won major awards.

Richard Heller was a long-serving humorous columnist on The Mail on Sunday and more briefly, on The Times. He worked in the movie business in the United States and the UK, including a brief engagement on a motion picture called Cycle Sluts Versus The Zombie Ghouls. He is the author of two cricket-themed novels A Tale of Ten Wickets and The Network. He appeared in two Mastermind finals: in the first his special subject was the life of Sir Gary Sobers.

Oborne & Heller cricketing partnership

Jointly, he and Peter produced White On Green, celebrating the drama of Pakistan cricket, including the true story of the team which lost a first-class match by an innings and 851 runs.

Peter and Richard have played cricket with and against each other for a variety of social sides, including Parliament’s team, the Lords and Commons, and in over twenty countries including India, Pakistan, the United States, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, France, Greece, Australia, Zimbabwe, New Zealand and Morocco.

The Podcast is produced by Bridget Osborne and James Willcocks at The Chiswick Calendar.

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