10 - 16 May 1975 The Good and Bad of Geoffrey Boycott

 

Geoffrey Boycott was the focus of much attention this week, as he was so often in these years. Against Worcestershire, he made an unbeaten 152 and thus became only the third Yorkshireman (after Sutcliffe and Hutton) to register a century against the other 16 counties also his fiftieth in the cause of the white rose. Wisden said “Few of these previous efforts can have been technically better”. Nobody else passed fifty, except a bludgeoning Chris Old when the game was dead on the third afternoon.

The excellence of Boycott the batter was universally acknowledged, even by those who thought that he might speed up in his interest of his team from time to time. The following day the praise turned to blame, as it so often did. Boycott refused to respond to Norman Gifford’s declaration 101 in arrears by setting a meaningful target, an approach that John Woodcock did not care for:

 

These were more cautious times; later in the season I was at Canterbury when Richard Gilliatt of Hampshire was booed off the field for failing to set a target in similar circumstances.

Boycott had not yet answered the question of the day: would he play for England this season? As Woodcock records, he had been absent more than present for several years.

 

The great man’s reluctance to don the England cap has sometimes been put down to a reluctance to face the fast bowlers of the time. This is unfair. He had dropped out after the first test against India the previous year when there were runs to be harvested despite his habit of falling to the pedestrian left-arm seam of Erinath Solkar. When he pulled out of the tour to Australia in the winter Lillee was widely considered to be finished because of his back and Thomson was never mentioned. It was because Denness (and before him Tony Lewis in 1972/73) had been preferred to him as captain. Had he grimaced and borne it, Boycott, rather than Greig, would probably have succeeded the Kent man in 1975. Woodcock had a bit of a blind spot re Greig, even pre-Packer, but his appraisal of the Sussex captain’s chances of leading the national team: “His appointment would have to be conditional upon his renouncing altogether the law of the jungle” would have been widely shared in the St John’s Wood area.

The only opener who might claim more renown than Boycott was Barry Richards, probably the best in the world in 1975. His unbeaten 96 took Hampshire to victory and the top of the Championship table. Alan Gibson was at St Helen’s to rhapsodise.

 

I was at Canterbury on Saturday to see Kent lose to Sussex in the 55-over competition, a vengeful John Snow (11-4-11-3) keen to demonstrate to Denness the foolishness of his omission from the winter’s tour. I recall a spectator who was right behind the arm describing on the bus home the late swing of the ball that trapped our beleaguered leader lbw for one. Snow was at the crease to guide Sussex home in the 55^th and final over. Two hundred and fifty-two runs in 106 overs would have the marketing people these days phoning the Samaritans, but the low scoring games are often the most fascinating. “Kent’s golden touch has deserted them” wrote former Kent player Tony Pawson in The Observer. This was to be the case for most of this season, the worst of the seventies for Kent.

Sunday saw fewer overs but more runs, including a record aggregate for the Sunday League with Somerset’s 270 topping visitors Gloucestershire’s 255 at Bristol. Here, it was the other great Richards, (IVA), who set it up with 126 not out (six sixes and 13 fours). Sadiq Mohammad made 131 in reply, but with insufficient support.

Who said “there’s a mistake there, Gloucestershire would be at home in Bristol”? Not so. This was at the Imperial Ground in Knowle, south of the River Avon that marked the historic boundary of Somerset. I watched a Sunday League game there four years later.

That Sunday I was at Folkestone, or at least assume that I was, though I recall nothing of the game, even after reading the report in The Times by Gerald Sinstadt, better known as Granada TV’s football commentator. He highlights two things: the cold, but there have been so many cold days at the cricket that they stick to each other like buns too long in the freezer, one no more memorable than another. Also the running between the wickets of Mike Denness and Brian Luckhurst. When I see murmurations of  starlings performing their swooping impeccably synchronised displays, I think of Denness and Luckhurst stealing singles with wordless understanding.

 

Off-the-field cricket news concerned the standoff between the BBC and the TCCB (forerunners of the ECB) over the TV rights for the four test matches against Australia. The BBC had increased its offer to a “final” £116,000 (the equivalent of about £890,000 now according to the Bank of England’s inflation calculator). The ECB’s current arrangement with Sky TV for all cricket is said to be worth £220 million a year. Of course the BBC had an effective monopoly. ITV, now with a daytime schedule, would not contemplate a rival bid.

The Godfather Part II was released that week. “Few movie sequels are as good as the films they follow and even fewer have about them an air of necessity. Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part II is a rare exception” was the verdict of Philip French in The Guardian.

Most chilling headline of the week: “Inflation in Britain running at over 30%”.