The only time I ever heard him admit to feeling vulnerable was in India, at a cocktail party in the grounds of the Maharajah of Baroda’s palace, when he sought me out for a heart-to-heart and said that he didn’t think people understood him properly. Well, following a conversation in his hotel room during a previous trip to India, I certainly knew someone who did not understand him. Me. We had arrived in Bombay for the Jubilee Test after the 1979-80 tour of Australia, a match I remember for three distinct reasons. Firstly, Both did his ‘Wilson of the Wizard’ bit and more or less won the game single-handed, then there were two strange incidents on the field. John Lever turned a ball off his legs for two, dislodging a bail as he did so. When he got back to the striker’s end he realized that no-one had noticed, surreptitiously put the bail back on, and got away with it. The other, even odder event, concerned Boycs, who had got a thin tickle down the legside to the wicketkeeper and was given out. However, at no stage did he look up at the umpire, and simply carried on marking out his guard and doing a spot of gardening. Eventually, the umpire put his finger down, the Indians appealed again and this time Boycs was given not out. It was extraordinary. I did not get any runs in that game, and had also had a poor tour to Australia. (I did get 98 not out in Sydney, having enjoyed a lot of luck in getting to 40, then ran out of partners when Willis lost his wicket. It was a barren period for me.) During the Bombay Test, I had some autograph sheets that needed signing, and I popped in to Boycs’ room at the hotel to get a few signatures. He looked up at me and said: ‘I can tell thee what tha doing wrong, tha knows.’ Pause. ‘But I’m not going to.’ I thought to myself: ‘Thanks very much’ and walked out.
On the tour of India in 1981-82 Boycott had the world record for Test runs in his sights, and he passed it with a century at Delhi. Our next game was in Calcutta, and although he got a couple of rough decisions, it was as if the whole mental effort of getting past the target had drained him of motivation. After the second dismissal he went straight to bed, stayed in his room through the rest day and reports came back through his lady friend that he was very ill. The doctors were called in, and we didn’t see him again until round about lunchtime on the final day. With the game heading for a draw, we were still in the field, and as we went out again after lunch, Boycs turned to the boys left in the dressing room and said: ‘Anyone fancy a game of golf? I need some fresh air.’ It was widely believed that if he really required fresh air (always assuming you can find any in Calcutta) then perhaps he should have been inhaling it out on the field. Anyway, he took himself off to the Tollygunge Club for nine holes, and the overwhelming feeling that Boycs’ personal ambitions were coming a long way before the team’s general well-being, and the suspicion that his continued presence would be divisive on a tour already proving difficult in terms of morale, earned him an early ticket home. He left us a farewell note, pinned with a corkscrew to the side of a very pleasant redwood cabinet in the team room of the Oberoi Grand Hotel. Some of his unscheduled time off, of course, was spent organizing the Breweries tour to South Africa.
He’s certainly different. He takes his ginseng tea with him everywhere, and he even had it written into his contract with Sky TV in England that he had to have a ‘proper’ cup or mug – no plastic. There are times when you can get on with him, and he has a lot to offer – although he got up Lamby’s nose during coaching before the last tour to the West Indies when he did everything except sing My Way to us. Technically and mentally he was a very strong player, although his first philosophy was always not to get out. We dropped him from the one-day side in Australia once, and when we brought him back he suddenly discovered a few shots. He had a lot of guts, and the number of runs he scored points to him being a more than useful player.
Boycs always made me concentrate harder when I was batting with him, although this was largely to avoid getting run out. He did me once in Jamaica, and during a Test at Edgbaston I erred on the side of safety when he glided one down behind square, declining his call for a single. Not long after, he returned the compliment after I’d knocked one into a space, and at the end of the over he said: ‘If you’re not going to run mine, I’m not going to run yours.’ He has the ability to be extremely charming, and an equal ability to be a complete sod. He has said many times that a combination of my ability and his brain would make quite a player, and I would admit that had I had more of his application and dedication to the game I might have scored a lot more Test runs than he did. I might not, however, have had quite so many chums.
I would count Mike Gatting among them, and we go back a long way. I have always admired his fighting qualities, and I thought it was typical of him to have scored so many runs in the summer of 1991 when he came back from South Africa. People who thought he would not have sufficient motivation without the incentive of a Test place, did not know the man. He murders bad bowling, and his eyes come out like organ stops when a spinner comes on. His eating habits are legendary, and the biggest shock I had all last summer was reading a report of a Middlesex game in the morning paper in which the captains, Gatt being one, had agreed to waive the tea interval. He has acquired a little dangerous knowledge about wine and crosswords, and although he invariably finishes the Daily Telegraph puzzle, he is not averse to putting a word in that fits the space rather than the clue. I like Gatt, although we are not that similar, and we don’t often seek out each other’s company after hours. I have never spoken to him on the subject, but it is rumoured that Micky Stewart told Gatt that he was about to be reappointed England captain ahead of me in 1989 when Ossie Wheatley applied his veto. What with getting sacked in 1988, his mother-in-law dying soon after, getting fined by the TCCB for an unauthorized chapter on the Shakoor Rana business in his book, and then getting knocked back by Wheatley, it was perhaps not surprising that he took the South Africans’ money later that summer.
Mike remains a very committed cricketer and loves his role as Middlesex captain, following in the footsteps, if not the style, of Mike Brearley and the likes, and continues to bat with complete assurance and disdain for most opposition bowling. He has a down-to-earth approach to both the game and the people who play it which endears him to most of those who play under him, who in turn are prepared to excuse his foibles in exchange for his support and leadership.
A millionaire? That’s rich
I WAS never tempted to play cricket, unauthorized cricket that is, in South Africa. It was nothing to do with any great moral stance, but I was strongly recommended against it by my advisers when the Breweries tour was being organized for the winter of 1981-82, and no approach was made in 1989 when I was England captain. The only time I have played there was in the mid-seventies, as a member of the Crocodiles touring team selected from seven southern England schools and captained by Chris Cowdrey. We were there for three and a half weeks over the Christmas holidays, visiting Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Durban, Bloemfontein and Johannesburg, and it was a fabulous trip. The cricket was good and the hospitality even better.
The rebel tour that Boycott organized in 1982, and which Gooch eventually captained, had sprouted its initial roots the previous winter during the England tour to the West Indies. There were a series of clandestine meetings, with shadowy figures emerging from hotel rooms, and various players were asked if they would be interested in a trip to South Africa should one be arranged. Most people kept their options open, waiting to see what sort of money was being offered, and it was all very hush-hush. It did not really gather momentum, however, until the tour to India the following winter. South African intermediaries would fly in, meetings were arranged in hotel rooms, and money was placed on the table. The standard plea, of course, was: ‘If you don’t want to come, fine, but please don’t blow the whistle on us.’
My agent, Jon Holmes, had told me that I would be risking too much from the commercial angle by going, and ‘Both’, whose solicitor had flown out to discuss the matter with him, received much the same advice. Simply as a cricketer I would love to have played there, but in practical terms it did not seem a good idea. There was no set punishment – as there was to be when Gatt skippered the 1989 side – but the players knew that repercussions were likely, among them a possible ban on playing for England. You don’t get paid that sort of money and go around behaving like an MI5 agent without suspecting that there might be a penalty