How Boycott made friends in Temuka

Press, 24 December 1985, Page 20

How Boycott made friends in Temuka

Don Mosey’s just-released biography of the great Yorkshire and England batsman, Geoff Boycott, devotes considerable space to events surrounding the match between Boycott’s touring England team and a Young New Zealand XI at Temuka in 1978.

The respected English cricket writer and broadcaster was evidently most impressed with Temuka, and, more particularly, with its people. Neither he nor the England team, though, was proud of Boycott’s behaviour.

Mosey wrote: “The match was to be staged in Temuka, a delightful little township with a population of just over 1000 in the South Island — (Temuka’s population is nearer 4000) — where they had last seen a touring side in 1923 — A. C. McLaren’s M.C.C. team.

“The community banded together to make it an occasion to remember and they succeeded to a very high degree indeed,” said Mosey. “Botham and Hendrick were given leave to go off on a hunting expedition in the foothills of the' Southern Alps, giving rise to speculation that one or other would shoot his own foot off, which left the captain (Boycott) monarch of all he surveyed. Four days later he left with a reputation-for boorishness and bad manners which is remembered to this day in Temuka.

“The townspeople had created a sort of co-opera-tive to stage the match. Shopkeepers had donated food for lunch and tea; the ladies prepared and served it, and never had anyone on the tour seen lunches like those in Temuka: roast suckling pig, fresh salmon, giant prawns, fried sole, beef, lamb, chicken, mountains of salads, fresh peaches and ice cream and tables groaning with apricots, nectarines, and apples

"Temuka had no accommodation to cater for the whole .party so we were quartered at Timaru, about

12 miles south of Temuka, where the cricket ground was also the rugby ground and the wicket was prepared by the town policeman; Constable John Delaney.” (Temuka actually had five policemen at the time.) John Delaney, who is now stationed in Christchurch, is quoted at length in the book, starting thus: “I believe we are talking about two people here. The first is Geoffrey Boycott, the great opening batsman who will be a continuing legend in the days ahead — obviously a dedicated man who has given his life to cricket. This is probably the best way to remember him. The other person is Geoffrey Boycott, the self-centred, arrogant man who wants everything to go his way, or out comes the vicious tongue.” It was not long before the English players started apologising for Boycott. The England captain insisted on wearing spikes on the newly-varnished rugby hall floor after being asked not to. He berated the umpires before the match started, telling them that there was nothing he didn’t know about cricket. He complained about the 12mile, quarter-hour trip from Timaru to the ground. ■ Mosey continues: “Shortly after the game started Boycott was out for five, caught at backward short leg from a ball that lifted unexpectedly, and he was livid. In the dressing room he was bitterly eloquent on the subject of pitches prepared by amateurs, and he ordered Mike flatting, the twelfth man, to accompany him to the local high school playing fields to bowl to him.” Said John Delaney: “Before long Gaffing's bowling wasn’t enough so local schoolboys were called in and with much delight set about bowling to Boycott — and, I might point out, with some success. Then that wasn’t enough, so we had to hurriedly get as many South Canterbury representative players as we coulf and

have them go round and bowl to him. Again, they had success and Boycott did not, so then we were told that those wickets were no good and something would have to be done about them.” In defence of the wicket, Mosey pointed out that while Boycott was caught in an area where he had very rarely given a chance in his career, he was far from being the first batsman to find the ball doing something unexpected, even on a professionally prepared test wicket. “He had railed about the Temuka pitch to me and I had tola him that the groundsman was, in fact, the local bobby, and that building a first-class pitch in the middle of a rugby ground was not the easiest of tasks,” writes Mosey.

Boycott was not even satisfied with the sumptuous repasts set before him: “It was on the first day, while the workers were having their lunch, that the very minor thing arose that there was no cheese left on the tables. Of course, also sitting down for a meal at this time were the ladies who had prepared it. Boycott arrived, searched the tables, and in his demanding way asked where the cheese was. “He was told that more would be out , shortly, whereupon he said that there had better be more there for tomorrow.” The team continued to apologise for their captain’s outburst, but eventually Boycott himself deigned to apologise to the unpaid groundsman, John Delaney. The genial policeman remembers with relish the closing chapter in The Great Cheese Incident. The good ladies of Temuka bought a five-pound block of local cheese, put it on a cheese board ana presented it to the England captain just as the team bus was about to leave for Christchurch. Boycott was shattered. For once, he had nothing to say. PETER COMER