Geoff Boycott

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B B C Sounds Music, Radio, Podcasts.

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Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. For rights reasons, the music is shorter than on the original broadcast. The presenter is Roy Plomley. I hope you enjoy listening.

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Our castaway this week is a cricketer.

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Captain of Yorkshire and opening bat for England, it's Geoff Boycott.

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Jeff, have you visited any desert islands on your travels?

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Well, I visited one or two uh very nice islands in the West Indies which uh seem nice to be cussed away on. You've got your eye on one, have you? One or two, very definitely. How do you think you could face up to the prospect of loneliness of that sort?

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Well, I'm not one of these people who always needs somebody to talk to. I like a bit of quietness, and I suppose I get plenty on a desert island. And I like to sit and think and do all kinds of things like that. Are you interested in music? Very much so. When I'm playing cricket, we have a lot of travelling up and down the country, and we often have the radio on. We like to listen to all kinds of music. Do you sing or play an instrument? Like everybody else, I suppose I think I can sing when nobody's listening, but no, I can't sing very much.

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Did you have any particular plan on selecting your egg record?

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Well, I basically selected ones that uh I liked very much the first time I heard them, and the more I have heard them played, the better I've liked them. And also I tried to uh select

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A selection whereby they fit into the various moods I probably get on a desert island. What's the first one?

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Well a very beautiful song by sung by Dion Warwick. I'll say a little prayer. What mood's there for? Well, I think there might be many times when I'd like to say a few prayers on a desert island.

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The moment I wake up

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Before I put on my makeup

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I say a little prayer for you.

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Jeff, whereabouts in Yorkshire were you born?

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At a mining village or community called a FitzWilliam.

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Very much in the heart of the uh south of Yorkshire, South West Riding. Yes. Were the family were your family in the mines? Yes, uh I think all my uh relations and people connected with me uh are in the mines. My father was a miner until he died in nineteen sixty seven. A cricketing family? No, definitely not. I got an uncle who was very, very fond of cricket and he really helped me in the early stages of my uh boyhood ambitions. Yes, you were captain of your primary school.

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Yes, and I believe there was a local cricket school where you used to get some coaching during the winter. Oh yes, he's now a tremendous friend of mine, a chappie by the name of John Lawrence, who absolutely adores cricket and he has his own indoor cricket school where he coaches young boys from very early age. What age did you start? Ten, ten years. As a schoolboy, did you ever envisage cricket as a career?

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Well, I think every schoolboy who loves cricket envisages that one day he'd like to play for England or Yorkshire and I was just the same. But round about the age of about fifteen you suddenly find out there are lots of other boys.

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or as good as you and many of them much better. And it's then really that you you begin to feel a little bit despairingly that you'll never make it. But uh I I wanted to be a cricketer and I'm glad that I've made it. What job did you take up when you left school?

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Well, I went into the civil service because it was a steady job and also they would allow me to have some time off or take some leave in mid-week and try and further my cricket ambitions with Yorkshire Cricket Club. You were playing league cricket for Barnsley, weren't you? Well I actually started with a little village club called Ackworth, a very beautiful little village club, and I moved on to Barnsley to further my ambitions because I played in a bigger league and eventually went on to Leeds to, what shall I say, finish my cricket career off.

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With the Yorkshire Colts? Well, yes, from Leeds I went on to play with Yorkshire's second team and then into the first team. Yes.

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And while still a coach you hit a century against Lancashire. Yes, a memory which I'll never forget because it was the first of four actually. I got a hundred against the Lancashire second 11 and the next three occasions I played for Yorkshire against Lancashire were with the first team and I scored 100 each time so I'm very proud of that. For a Yorkshire man, that must have been a wonderful feeling. Oh tremendous.

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You ask how much I

Geoff Boycott5:15

Indeed.

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Yeah.

Geoff Boycott5:18

Must I explain?

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I need you, O my darling, my closest.

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Police

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Now, 1963, your first season in big-time cricket, and you were nominated Best Young Cricketer of the Season. And the following year, really a year of achievement, your first Test series. You opened for England against Australia over here. Rather a disastrous series with only one match played to a finish. But you came out of the series very well, didn't you? Yes, I was disappointed in the series because we seemed to have a little bit of rain about and that's usual for England, isn't it? But I was pleased to be playing for England and getting the feel of it, although there were many players in the team who were far better than myself.

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And then to South Africa with three centuries and five innings. Oh, that's a wonderful country. My favorite country. Beautiful. Well, you were the 1964 Player of the Year. Now, all the cricket writers, with someone new and exciting to work on, began their own brand of psychoanalysis on you. And one thing that emerged from all their stories is that you're a very positive thinker at the wicket.

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Yes, well uh

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I'm

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I'm rather proud of this because there are many times in your career or when you're batting that you have to make a decision very, very quickly indeed. And it depends which way you choose to go, depends whether you succeed or fail. And I've always been able to make a very quick decision. And you never allow yourself to envisage any possibility of being out.

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No, no, I've got to believe that I I'm good enough to get runs and uh I also believe that any ball that's bowled, a batsman can stop it getting out get getting him out. There is a way, and there's also a way to make runs off every ball that's bowled. Yes. That doesn't always happen, mind you.

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Yeah.

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You would like to be on your own for a bit before you go out to the wicket. What do you think about it?

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Well, I'd just like to get into a situation where I can do what I call is my homework. I can think about what type of pitch we're going to play on and the various situations I'm going to be countered with and what the bowler might ball. It's just like a schoolboy coming home from school and having to do a little bit of thought on the next day's play. Well, I do mine just before I go to bat.

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A hammer hammer

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I have

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For this last

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I have a

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Uh

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Well, like all careers, yours has had ups and downs in the last six or seven years since that sensational 1964. A down, I suppose, was that rather cautious period you had in 1967. You decided not to take any risks. And despite your score of 246 against India, you got the sack for that innings. Yes, well.

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I think uh I came on the cricket scene very quickly in nineteen sixty three. I did rather well and the publicity that surrounded me uh told everybody I was going to be a great player and I did fairly well for a short while.

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But I think what people forgot is that I came into Griggs so quickly that I didn't have the maturity and the experience.

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And all this rise to the top very quickly caught up with me around about 66, 67. And I became very introspective, a little bit nervous of my own talents. And I stifled myself. And I didn't go out and play my normal game. I learned a lesson from it. And I think since then I've been a far better player. Yes. Then you had another bad patch in 1969, a really bad patch with three ducks and four testing. That was after you'd been laid up for a long time, wasn't it? Yes, well that patch was very sad because I had a back injury in 1968 in the middle of the season and it took 10 months to get right until April of 69 and it left me a little bit like Cassius Clay. Three years out of boxing, he was struggling to regain his former glory and it was like that with me. I was playing okay but I just lost a little bit of the finesse of the game and it showed him my figures.

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That was our

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What's the most enjoyable innings you ever played when it was all really going your way? You were happy and relaxed and all one long moment of truth. Could you remember one like that? Oh yes, no doubt at all. The Gillette Cup final of nineteen sixty five. It just seemed that uh

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Once Brian Close came into bat with me, it just seemed that nothing could go wrong. Every ball that was bowler, I just never let it enter my head that I could get out. I just felt every time that I could hit it for runs, four or six. And very, very pleasingly, it was a moment when that did happen. Yes, how many did you score? 146. And everyone enjoyed. Oh, tremendous. Let's have record number four. I like Rachmaninoff, Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini. Yes. Why'd you choose that? Because it's so beautiful, you can sit down and relax to it.

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The eighteenth variation from Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Baghdadini, Julius Catchen, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boat.

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And one good thing about your job, Jeff, I think every winter since nineteen sixty three you've been playing in the sunshine. Oh, I'm very happy about that because my second love after cricket is traveling, meeting uh

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new people and seeing new countries, so it's marvellous. Of course, our great trip was the last tour to Australia when you won back the ashes. It was pretty hard work that tour, wasn't it?

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Well, playing Australia is always a very trying series because England and Australia are the oldest cricket enemies, as it were. We played against each other for many years. I enjoyed it, though, because it was very successful and we came on with the ashes. Yes. There are a lot of temperaments being thrown here, including one by you, which isn't characteristic, is it? No, it's not. Usually I play my cricket and enjoy it, but I don't show a lot of emotion on the field. I'm very sorry about it, actually. I'm very sad that it happened. It's not something I hope will keep happening. It's never happened before, so it's best forgotten. Anyway, Clear Pierre. Now, you had a telephone call while you were in Australia that was very important in your life. Oh, I just said the most important call in my life. It came as a tremendous surprise at 8.30 in the evening in Brisbane.

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And all it said was uh there's a call for Mr. Wilson and Mr. Boycott.

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I had no idea who it was because I don't know anybody in Leeds and it turned out to be mister Nash asking me to be Captain of Yorkshire, which was tremendous. Apart from the obvious responsibilities in the pavilion, what does being captain involve?

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Well being captain of Yorkshire particularly is very important because Yorkshire members and the people who follow Yorkshire Cricket desire success I think more than anybody else in the country. They've had such great teams in the past so I've got that to live up to. And secondly being captain of a cricket club you have to really do what a manager does at football, a lot of organising and administrative work. But I'm looking forward to it very much.

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Yesterday

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Uh

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All my troubles seem so far away

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God looks as though they're here to stay, Oh I believe

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Yesterday

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Suddenly

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I'm not half the man I used to be

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Go straight into record six, what's that?

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A lovely song called Somewhere from a musical called Westside Story which I thought was terrific. It was years ahead of its time. You saw it in London, did you? Well, I was very lucky actually. I came down to London the first time ever as an 18-year-old and I walked up to the box office where people were queuing and I said, could I have a ticket please?

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And everybody looked very surprised at me, but fortunately I got a ticket right in the third row, right in the center stalls, and I saw this wonderful music musical when everybody was queuing for three months to get in.

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Just sheer luck. Just sheer luck.

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A time.

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Murder.

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Time together with time to spare time to work time to

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Somewhere from West Side Story from the record of the American Stage production.

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How good would you be at looking after yourself on a desert island, Jeff? Well, I don't do very much at home, actually, yeah.

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But uh I'm usually very good at survival of the fittest and I think uh I'd make out. Uh-huh. What are you gonna do in your spare time if there is any?

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Well one of the things I would definitely do is teach the monkeys how to bowl coconuts at me because I've never had enough net bowlers and I've been batting. I think actually I would try and keep myself very fit. I believe in fitness because I would do some exercise and some running on the beach and I believe if you're a fit person you're far more capable of doing anything in life. And you could make some bats. You use a special kind of bat don't you? Yes I do. I have a a lightweight bat uh which made with a a chunky thick handle makes it like a little mallet.

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Makes it beautiful to use.

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Would you try to escape?

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Oh, I don't think so. I can't swim very much. Well, then don't try. Just stay exactly where you are. Wait till we come and fetch you. Let's have record number seven.

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I'd like a Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from the Nutcracker Suite. Why'd you choose that?

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Well, I've just discovered uh ballet. Uh I never interested in it before, but uh the London Festival ballet I played at Bradford in Yorkshire and I thought it was beautiful.

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The Dance of the Sugar Plum Theory.

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Played by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Herbert von Cadillac. And now we come to your last record.

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For I like the king himself singing my way, Sinatra.

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Why do you choose that particular recording of Sinatras?

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I think because he's trying to say as he comes towards the end of his career that he's had many ups and downs, but he he's still gone on believing that he was right and uh I think it says something uh

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Like my career, I've had my ups and downs, uh my troubles in Australia and uh getting dropped from a test match and yet I've gone on believing that the game is bigger than me and that I'm still enjoying it.

Geoff Boycott18:09

And now the end is near.

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And

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And so I face

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Face

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The final curtain.

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My friend, I'll say it clear, I'll state my case.

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Of which I'm certain

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Thanks, Sinatra. If you could take just one disc of the eight you've chosen, which would it be? Oh, definitely, Sinatra. And one luxury to take with you? A telephone.

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Oh no, wait a minute nurse. This isn't a luxury you could ring up for help, ring up for rescue.

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Well, it'd be nice to ring up people in the world and find out day-to-day affairs and have a nice bit of chit-chat. I get lonely on a desert island, you know. Okay, I'll tell you what we'll do. We can have the telephone, but we'll plug it in to some sports paper that'll just give you cricket scores with marvellous. And one book to take with you? Well, my career has been wrapped up in cricket since I was 10 years old, and I hope I'll go on being involved with cricket for many, many years. So I'd like to take a volume of Wisden's Almanac. If you'd like to knock up a bookshelf of some sort, we'll give you a complete set of wisdom. Thank you. And thank you, Jeff Boycott, for letting us hear your Desert Island days. It's a pleasure to be here. Goodbye, everyone.