It seems you can't wish Geoffrey Boycott a happy birthday anymore

It seems you can't wish Geoffrey Boycott a happy birthday anymore

Rich Clarke

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It was Geoffrey Boycott’s 81st birthday last week and naturally, Wisden marked the occasion with a tweet celebrating his cricketing career.

While most of the replies lauded his abilities with the bat, as usual, a number bemoaned his widely-reported selfishness as a player. Then there were a few who focused on his character outside of sport. One reply took my eye, it read: “Nimble footwork to lift up that carpet and sweep under it his record as a rebel tourist and conviction for domestic assault”. 

It reminded me of an exchange I had on Twitter a few months ago after I had heaped praise upon Graham Gooch for his Zoom calls with vulnerable fans and endless food runs in lockdown plus the £50,000 paid from his own pocket to support PCA education funds in 2016.

“Did it come from his South African tour account?” came an immediate reply.

Now let’s be crystal clear, going on that rebel tour remains indefensible in political, ethical and cricketing terms while violence about women is simply abhorrent. Get that, abhorrent. This piece is not about that. These actions should not be forgotten. They will be in the early paragraphs should I write obituaries of these men when they pass.

However, does that mean the worst deeds of their life must be present in every tweet or they are incapable of any goodness because of some badness in their previous actions?

Of course, social media is full of ‘knee-jerks’, many of whom post for the very attention a reaction affords. Twitter, in particular, is a sewer and if you spend too much time down there then you start to smell yourself. We live in a world battling over hard facts, let alone blurry lines such as morals. Those we don’t agree with are labelled in the most simplistic, definitive terms and we all fall easily into the groove of our tribe's groupthink.

And, it must be remembered, supporters’ opinions on famous athletes are gained from a minuscule amount of clues placed in the public domain. I have never met Boycott but, purely based on what I have seen and yes that conviction, I have never warmed to him on the pitch or off it. Yet I can’t be sure of myself.

Gooch, on the other hand, is my all-time Essex hero. I have had a couple of cursory acquaintances but, more importantly, have been impressed with stories of his devotion to my county and the game in general. I accept my bias here but his actions over lockdown fit the impression of a dogged, empathetic self-improver. If anything, it makes the indelible stain of leading that rebel tour in 1982 stand out all the more.

But let’s widen the scope of this debate. Timpson, a 150-year shoe repair, key-cutting and locksmith company, has won universal praise for its progressive employment practices. Two decades ago, they started employing ex-offenders and now this marginalised group comprise 10 per cent of its workforce. Earlier this month Sir John Timpson supported the Justice Secretary’s plan to fill the shortfall of HGV drivers etc with low-level offenders.

This is part of a raft of measures that have turned an unheralded company in a fringe market into one of the most admired on the High Street. In the same week as Boycott’s birthday, they won more praise by agreeing to pay HRT prescriptions for staff. They have been giving generous bonuses and pensions, free holidays and extra days off long before it became trendy in Silicon Valley.

In short, Timpson believes in the power of kindness, care and the ability of us all to find redemption. It is staggering and depressing in equal measure that they remain an outlier in the business community. Remember, Facebook, Amazon and Google all started a few decades ago with similarly lofty, progressive aims, the last of these even had the motto “don’t be evil’. Yet they left the moral high ground long ago in search of profits.

So, can we wish Geoffrey Boycott a happy birthday without mentioning his conviction? Can a sentence be written about Gooch’s generosity without someone mentioning the Rebel Tour? What about Hanse Cronje, the Australian sandpaper cheats, any of the match-fixing players or even Kevin Pietersen for ‘texting his mates’.

In truth, our personalities are a mosaic of our thoughts, words, intentions, deeds and, certainly, our mistakes. But even a litany of errors can be cauterised with sincere contrition and regret.

Perhaps it is just the soap opera of modern sport begs for these reactions because the participants are no longer players but characters. We enjoy the simplicity of the good and bad, the black and the white, the clear and the distinct. You cannot ‘do’ nuance in 280 characters and it will not get a retweet anyway. You don’t have to back up your argument face-to-face so why not just post it up and then stick to your guns?

But all this labelling, name-calling and whataboutism creates a constant culture of dragging down when we should be lifting up. Or at least illuminating the positives to reveal the right path.  To err is human so we cannot judge anyone, let alone athletes we barely know, on their worst moment.

After all, the biggest problem of competing in a race to the bottom is you just might win.

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