Over Boycott's 18-year career he scored 8,114 runs in 108
Test matches for England. He was the first England cricketer to pass 8,000 Test runs and, as of 2023, is seventh on England's all-time run scoring list (behind
Alastair Cook,
Graham Gooch,
Joe Root,
Alec Stewart,
David Gower and
Kevin Pietersen). His average of 47.72 runs over 193 innings is the highest completed career average by an England player since 1970. His Test career included 22 centuries, fourth in England's records, held jointly with
Wally Hammond,
Colin Cowdrey, and
Ian Bell and surpassed only by Pietersen (23), Cook (33) and Root (41). England did not lose a Test match in which he scored a century and only 20 of his 108 Tests ended in defeat.
John Arlott wrote in 1979 that "any expectation of an English win, except in freak bowling conditions, is based on a major innings from Boycott." He made 58 at
Old Trafford, and then hit 113 at
The Oval, his maiden Test century. He finished his first Test series with 291 runs at 48.50. He made a mixed impression on the other England players, who were impressed by his talent but perplexed by his introverted attitude each time he was dismissed.
Early career England hosted New Zealand and South Africa in 1965. Against New Zealand, Boycott scored 23 and 44 not out in the first Test at Edgbaston and 76 in the second at Lord's, but missed the third Test owing to injury. He returned against South Africa at Lord's, but after scores of 31 and a slow 28 in 105 minutes, the press began to speculate that he might lose his place in the team. In the second Test, Boycott made a
duck in the first innings and later took 140 minutes to score 16 runs when England needed to score quickly;
Wisden described the latter innings as a "dreadful effort when courage was needed". Boycott returned to the team at the end of the season for the tour to Australia. In the
1965–66 Ashes series, illness dogged his performance initially. He then hit a form of "brighter cricket" during the First and Second Tests. Uncharacteristically, he hit a four from his very first delivery at
Perth, and put on 98 in 16 overs with
Bob Barber in the Second Test. In the Third Test, Boycott and Barber shared an opening partnership of 234 in four hours; Boycott hit 84, his highest score of the series. But in the Fifth Test he monopolised the strike, ran out Bob Barber and took 75 minutes to make 17 runs. His form deserted him again when the MCC went on to tour New Zealand. In 1966, England faced the West Indies. Boycott was omitted from the first Test, but in the second he shared a partnership of 115 with
Tom Graveney. However, he struggled during the series and managed an average of 26.57. It was a disappointing year for Boycott both for England and Yorkshire, and his average for the former fell to 36.60. Furthermore, he had only passed 50 twice in his last 12 first-class innings. His slow scoring frustrated the selectors, who dropped him from the team, partly in response to media pressure. A combination of low confidence and a throat infection limited Boycott to two further Test appearances, playing once more against India and once against Pakistan, for the rest of the year. He nevertheless again topped the domestic averages with 1260 at 48.46. In 1967, Boycott toured the West Indies with England, where he hit a rich seam of form. He scored 463 runs at 66.14 in a series England won 1–0. Over the next two years, Boycott appeared only intermittently in the Test team. A back injury forced him to miss half of the 1967 season, and an average of 32.40 against the Australians during the 1968 Ashes was unspectacular. Health problems with his spleen and trouble adjusting to wearing contact lenses meant that Boycott missed the tour of Pakistan in 1968/69, but he returned to the team by the summer of 1969, scoring 128 against the West Indies at Old Trafford, and another century at Lord's. However, he lost form in the rest of the season; he scored 12 and 0 in the third Test and averaged only 20.20, with two ducks, in the three Tests against New Zealand. Boycott was left out of the first three Tests against the World XI in 1970; he played in the fourth and scored 15 and 64, and in the final Test of the summer scored 157. He won the
Walter Lawrence Trophy for this century. He scored 173 in the opening first-class game, followed by 124 against
Queensland. In the third Test match, having hit good partnerships in the first two, Boycott made 77 and 142 not out. This incident was used as evidence for Boycott's selfish attitude for many years after. His highest score was 142 not out in the second innings of the Fourth Test at
Sydney, in a 299-run victory. The Fifth Test was drawn, Boycott making 12 and 76*, and in the Sixth Test he was
run out for 58. Boycott initially refused to leave the ground in disbelief, and eventually walked off to jeering from the crowd. He made 119 in the second innings but injured his arm against fast bowler
Garth McKenzie in a following one-day match and missed the final Test, when England retained the Ashes. He later maintained that the injury permanently affected his wrist, and that he carried a squash ball in a sock in his pocket, which he could squeeze to keep his wrist strong. He ended the series with 657 Test runs at 93.85. In the summer of 1971 he enjoyed an average of over 100 in domestic cricket, Boycott and Denness did not get on well, and at the end of the tour they clashed over Boycott's preference for a one-day match over a three-day game against
Bermuda. Boycott recalled in his autobiography that when Denness confronted him on the issue he replied "Get out of here before I do something I'll regret." Boycott had "no confidence in Denness's professional ability and no respect for him as a man and another tour like the previous one to the West Indies was the last thing I wanted."
Exile Between 1974 and 1977, Boycott elected to make himself unavailable for England. He said in 2006 that he had simply lost his appetite for Test cricket and the stress became too much for him. Boycott's biographer, McKinstry, speculates that the self-imposed exile may also have been linked to the appointments of
Mike Denness and then
Tony Greig to the England captaincy, in preference to Boycott. Boycott was very critical of Denness's captaincy and his standard of batting in his autobiography in 1987, citing it as a factor in his decision, along with the pressures at Yorkshire. Furthermore, he was dismissed for 99 in the first innings against the West Indies at Port-of-Spain in 1973–74 and scored 112 in the second, followed by a career-best 261 not out against a West Indies Board President's XI. All of these teams included Roberts, with a young Holding representing the Board XI.
Comeback Tests ,
Basin Reserve, February 1978 . February 1978,
Basin Reserve When Boycott returned to the Test team
against Australia at
Trent Bridge in 1977 he ran out
Derek Randall in front of his home crowd before going on to make a century. In this match, in which
Ian Botham made his England debut, Boycott batted on each of the five days of the match: his first innings 107 started at the end of the first day, he batted throughout the second day and was dismissed on the third day; he started his second innings at the end of day four and batted throughout England's successful run chase scoring 80 not out, scoring the winning runs in partnership with Randall. Among England batsmen, only
Allan Lamb,
Andrew Flintoff and
Rory Burns have emulated this feat of batting on all five days, and all three subsequent to Boycott. He also had a 215-run partnership with
Alan Knott. Botham later remarked that "The Aussies, shell-shocked at having to bowl at Boycott for twenty-two and a half hours, capitulated without much of a fight." On 11 and 12 August 1977, he scored 191 against Australia in the fourth Test in front of a full house at his home ground of Leeds, becoming the first cricketer to score his one hundredth first-class century in a Test match. Boycott reached the milestone from the bowling of
Greg Chappell with an on drive for four. In the match, Boycott became the fourth English player to be on the field for the entire duration of a Test. In the second Test match, he scored 79 and 100 not out, bringing his Test total since his return to the England team to 684 runs at 136.80. Following Pakistan, Boycott and the England team travelled to New Zealand. In the opening Test match, New Zealand defeated England for the first time in 48 years. Boycott took seven hours and 22 minutes to score 77 runs in the first innings, and in the second innings England were bowled out for 64 when chasing 137 to win. In the second match, Botham's first Test century took England to 418, but by the end of the match England needed to score quickly to force a win. Boycott, however, told his team that he would play the way he always had, and proceeded to accumulate runs very slowly. Derek Randall was run out, and Botham went out to bat with his captain, informing the dressing room that "Boycs will be back in here before the end of the over." Indeed, some have suggested that this was a team order. Boycott disputes the suggestion that the run-out was deliberate in his autobiography, referring to Botham's account as "a story that gets bigger and more fanciful with every telling". The tale does nevertheless remain a renowned story. Boycott then delayed his declaration, much to the frustration of England bowler
Bob Willis. England did eventually declare, and Willis took 4/14. New Zealand were bowled out for 105 and England won by 174 runs. Boycott suffered a scratch on his
cornea and missed the last two days of the final match, and by the start of the 1978 season, Brearley had taken the captaincy back from Boycott.
Ashes series, West Indies and India During the
1978–79 Ashes series, Boycott unusually went in as a Number 11 in the second innings of a match against South Australia (not due to injury). At Perth on 15 December, he scored 77 runs without hitting a boundary – the highest total of this nature – though it did include an all-run four. England went on to win the six-Test series 5–1, with Boycott struggling overall through three of the Tests with 263 runs at 21.91. Boycott then played in the
1979 Cricket World Cup held in England, taking two wickets in the opening match against Australia, which England won. The hosts then went on to win their next two games and topped their table for the opening round. Reaching the final after a close victory against New Zealand in which Boycott scored only two, he hit 57 from 105 balls as England chased Viv Richards 138 not out-inspired 286 to win, falling 92 runs short at 194 all out. Boycott ended the competition with the sixth highest strike rate of 42.99 and an average of 23.00. Following the World Cup, against Australia during a Test match at Perth
in 1979–80, Boycott became the first man to be marooned on 99 not out in a Test when he ran out of partners. England then
toured the West Indies. Here, Boycott again faced the West Indies' feared pace attack, but succeeded in scoring centuries off the likes of Holding, Roberts,
Colin Croft and
Joel Garner, despite having passed the age of 40 the previous year. Boycott was the third most successful batsman, behind Gooch and Gower, during a tour in which England went down 2–0. He scored 70 in the opening match, the only England player to pass 50. Though in 1987 Boycott would claim a 1966 delivery by
Gary Sobers to be the best he ever faced in cricket, he noted of Holding's over that "for the first time in my life I can look at a scoreboard with a duck against my name and not feel a profound sense of failure." He then played in the
1981 Ashes series, despite being aged 40. During the second Test at
Lord's Boycott was dismissed 40 short of a hundred by
Dennis Lillee, and was "crushed" given that, as it was his hundredth Test match, he wished to score a century. Forever keen on the England captaincy, Boycott's hopes were cut short when Botham's 149 not out secured victory in Boycott's 101st Test match, and
Mike Brearley's position as captain was made secure. During the series, Boycott became concerned with his form and that he may be dropped before he could chase Sobers' record in the upcoming tour of India. He had scored only 10 and 37 in the Fifth Test; however, in the drawn Sixth Test at
The Oval he scored 137, passing Colin Cowdrey's record of 7624 runs and becoming England's highest run-scorer. He ended the series behind only Botham, with 392 runs at 32.66.
'Bye-bye Boycott' Boycott was again refused the captaincy for the next Test series against
India over the winter of 1981–82. Angered by this decision, he stated that "even the Yorkshire Ripper got a fair trial in the dock but I've not been given a single chance." The series against India was to be his last. In his final ODI match during England's tour he scored 6 from 12 deliveries. During the following Test series he passed Sobers' career run record, hitting 60 in the first Test, 36 and 50 in the second to take him 81 runs short, and in the third Test he overtook the record with a flick off his pads for four. He became the leading Test run-scorer. During the tour, Boycott said he was too ill to field in a Test Match, but it was later discovered that he was playing golf while his teammates were still out on the field. He said in his autobiography, however, that he went to the golf course following medical advice to get fresh air. Later in 1982 he was instrumental in organising, in defiance of a United Nations and a
TCCB ban, a
rebel tour of
apartheid South Africa by 13 current and former England Test cricketers, who were almost all nearing the end of their careers. All the players were banned from international cricket for three years as a result. By the mid-1980s, with Boycott in good county form and physical shape, there was speculation that he might return to the England team.
David Gower, England captain of the time, stated, however, that "Geoffrey's been a marvellous servant for England but we have to look to the future and, in view of his age, it wouldn't make an awful lot of sense to pick him again." This was confirmed by the return of Graham Gooch and
Tim Robinson's 175 against Australia at Leeds, which prompted Botham, who had once remarked that Boycott was "totally, almost insanely, selfish", to sing 'Bye-bye Boycott' from the England balcony. ==Commentator, controversy and personal life==