style="font-size:15px;"> Max also provided one of my most bizarre moments on a golf course in the inaugural Max Boyce Classic at the Royal Glynneath Golf Club. It absolutely hosed down and by the time we teed off, some of the greens were flooded. Max hinted we’d all be better off in the clubhouse, but I gave him the ‘wimp’ line once again. Local rules came into play for any ball landing on a flooded green – pick up the ball and put two putts on your scorecard. But my approach to the 17th green – which was completely under water – disappeared under the waves only about two foot from the hole. I wasn’t accepting two putts from there, so I stripped down to my underpants, waded through the water and ‘sank’ the putt for my birdie. So the members of Royal Glynneath were treated to the sight of I. T. Botham striding down the 18th fairway in his smalls!
Max and I have had some great times, but you need to keep a close eye on him during rugby weekends because, I’m sorry to reveal he’s a secret ‘tipper’. Sometimes the drinking rate gets rather fierce. That’s when he starts visiting the toilet with a full pint and returning with an almost empty glass. I followed him once and caught him pouring his beer away down the pan. Needless to say severe punishment was exacted as he was made to down the next pint in one.
Despite that filthy habit of wasting perfectly good booze I’m always delighted to see Max, except after Wales have beaten England. Thankfully, that rarely happens these days.
Boycs has never made any bones about it, so I won’t. Just about the most self-absorbed cricketer I have ever met. First, the undeniably good things about Geoffrey. Self-motivated and hard-working, you have to respect and admire the man for what he did. He was not a natural cricketer, but he made himself into a very good one. As an opening batsman for England, his record speaks for itself. He was, as he would have said, a ‘soooper’ player and his cricketing brain was always switched on. The problem was that as colleagues we all felt there were times when he was far more concerned with the needs of the one than the needs of the many.
My first experience of playing alongside Boycs for England contained an incident that told me much of what I needed to know. It happened on my Test debut in the third match of the 1977 Ashes series at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, the home ground of local hero Derek Randall. According to Wisden: ‘Randall began in great style but he was run out when Boycott went for an impossible single after stroking the ball down the pitch where Randall was backing up. In the end, Randall sacrificed his wicket to save Boycott.’ Listeners to Test Match Special heard John Arlott comment: ‘How tragic, how tragic, how tragic.’ The words used in the dressing room were somewhat more pointed.
To his credit, Boycs made a magnificent hundred and, fittingly, Randall made the winning runs. But the words ‘run out’ and ‘Boycott’ were destined to play a significant part in my future career. I didn’t realize it at the time, but looking back on events in the second Test against New Zealand on the following winter tour, there is no doubt in my mind that carrying out the orders of vice-captain Bob Willis to run out skipper Boycott did more for my standing within the England camp than any runs or wickets I was in the process of compiling.
Boycs will tell you until you are tired of hearing that his attitude to batting was that it is a selfish business. He sincerely believed that he was the best batsman in the side and therefore, if anyone had to sacrifice their wicket in a run out, for the benefit of the side it should be the bloke at the other end. There is some logic in that, but not enough for me to ever be fully persuaded that when he stood his ground he was doing so for the good of the team.
The thing that really hardend my thoughts on Boycs took place years after we had both retired from the game, during the court case brought by myself and Allan Lamb against Imran Khan for libel over his accusations that our motive for alerting the world to ball-tampering by the Pakistan bowlers was racism.
Boycs was called to give evidence in what we considered to be a serious matter and he turned the proceedings into a Geoff Boycott Benefit event. He apologized to the court for the fact that he had not had time to change, and so arrived wearing a shirt sporting a logo for Wills, the tobacco company. I’m sure it was an accident, but some observers were convinced otherwise. They pointed out the case was attracting huge publicity in India and Pakistan where Wills have massive interests. Surely that couldn’t have had anything to do with his choice of attire.
Then, in the eyes of some, he tried to railroad the case from the witness box by launching an attack on Brian Close, his former Yorkshire and England team-mate. True, Close had cast aspersions on Boycott’s character the day before, but his testimony was hardly startling stuff and was probably very much in keeping with the views of the majority of those who had come across Boycs during his career. And anyway Boycott had been summoned to talk about the case at hand, not himself. On second thoughts, some chance. The judge was so incensed by Geoff’s performance that he told him to belt up and was very close to charging him with contempt of court.
The way Boycs trampled all over the case made me distinctly queasy and I have to say our relationship suffered as a consequence. Indeed, until he has the guts to apologise to myself and my family, the most he will get from me is bare civility. Great player, strange bloke.
It never ceases to amaze me that English cricket failed to find a role for Mike Brearley after he retired from the first-class game. Brearley was without doubt the best captain I ever played under, a man with a billion-dollar cricketing brain. Bearing in mind the numbskulls we had to suffer running the team and the game itself after he packed up, his absence from the decision-making process must go down as the biggest waste of talent in England’s recent cricketing history.
Brearley wasn’t always right. My early progress in the team was hampered by the fact that he was convinced my team-mate, the Yorkshire paceman Chris Old, was a far better all-round prospect than I was, once he told me that he felt sorry for Geoff Boycott and he was forever going on at me to retreat from my advanced position at second slip. But his intellectual power and how he applied it to Test cricket was awesome. He spent his entire captaincy two steps ahead of the game, picking the minds of opposing batsmen and bowlers like a master safe-cracker, and, after a while, his reputation for being able to out-think opponents became a weapon in itself.
Quite often, his minor field adjustments would be part of a cunning plan. Sometimes, on the other hand, he would stick someone in an unusual position not because he believed it would work, but because he thought the batsman might think it would. It was kidology pure and simple, and Brears was brilliant at it.
My first experience of the phenomenon came during my debut Test series, the 1977 Ashes. The victim was Richie Robinson, the Australian wicket-keeper batsman. Brears was struggling to find a way to get inside Robinson’s head, and just for something different, stuck a man in short on the offside. For some reason, that was like a red rag to a bull for Richie, who promptly tried to remove the fieldsman with a wild yahoo only to be caught in the slips. From then on, Brears employed a similar tactic whenever Robinson arrived at the crease, and with the same result.
My only real criticism of Brears was that, in terms of his ideas on selection, I felt he was biased towards his own Middlesex men, but I suppose you could hardly blame him for favouring players he knew inside out. That apart, for me he was the complete captain, more than worth a place
