Oh how England could do with Sir Geoffrey, our new appointed Knight of the Realm, right now.
An opening batsman built for the rigours of Test Match cricket, a present day Boycott would be a shoo-in for the ongoing Ashes series.
Boycott scored 8,114 runs in 108 Tests for England between 1964 and 1982, including 22 hundreds, and is one of only six Englishmen to reach the 8,000 mark in Tests.
His Test best score of 246 not out came against India at Headingley in June 1967.
A Yorkshireman born and bred, the now 78-year-old’s career was intrinsically linked with the famous old Leeds venue.
At domestic level, he scored 32,570 first-class runs for Yorkshire between 1962 and 1986, scoring 103 of his 151 hundreds at that level for the county.
He is the county’s third leading run-scorer behind David Denton (33,282) and Herbert Sutcliffe (38,558), and twice averaged over 100 in a season.
More importantly, he played a huge role in five County Championship title wins through the 1960s. He then captained the side through the seventies and briefly in the eighties.
Arguably, his most famous moment was scoring his 100th first-class hundred against the Aussies in a Headingley Test victory which helped England retain the Ashes in 1977, scoring 191 (August 11) in front of an adoring home crowd.
He has long since been nicknamed Sir Geoffrey, so many will view this knighthood – for services to sport – in Prime Minister Theresa May’s resignation honours list as ‘about time’.
Despite his ‘over my dead body’ style of batting, Boycott also returned an impressive one-day record both at international and domestic level.
He played 313 matches in all, including 36 ODIs for England, and averaged nearly 40 in a haul of 10,095 runs.
Sir Geoffrey also played in the very first ODI, against Australia at the MCG in early 1971, scoring eight at the top of the order in an England defeat.
His career wasn’t all smooth sailing, with his forthright nature getting him into a scrape or two.
But since hanging up his boots, he has forged a successful career in the media and is currently one of BBC Test Match Special’s flagship voices for their international coverage both at home and abroad, including the ongoing Ashes series.
In fact, an opening partnership of Boycott and Andrew Strauss, who has also been knighted, would surely give England fans endless amounts of confidence.
Sir Geoffrey. It’s no longer a nickname. Congratulations.
