London: Geoffrey Boycott has undergone a quadruple open heart bypass and will miss out on the first two India Tests, his family has revealed.
The Daily Telegraph columnist and former England opening batsman underwent surgery on June 27 and is now recovering at home in Yorkshire, his daughter, Emma, announced. He spent ten days in a Leeds hospital, mostly in the cardiac critical care unit, before being discharged, she said.
The operation was deemed a success by the surgeon and Boycott was allowed to return home to recuperate.
Boycott, 77, is hoping to return to his role as a commentator for BBC’s Test Match Special in time for England’s third Test against India at Trent Bridge next month. Messages of support quickly flooded in, with Jonathan Agnew, his BBC colleague, joking that his thoughts were with Boycott’s wife.
“I went to visit the old so and so this morning and can confirm that he’s in rude health and will probably outlive all of us,” he wrote on Twitter. “My sympathy lies with Rachael, who has to nurse him! (Great to see you looking so well, Fiery. Treat this convalescence like one of your innings... SLOW x).”
Boycott, who played 108 Test matches and was England’s leading Test run scorer when he retired in 1982, was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2002.
He got through the gruelling schedule of chemotherapy and radiation treatment in the same methodical fashion in which he played one-day cricket, when he counted how many runs he had scored and how many were needed each over.
“I would count each and every one until we got to the halfway mark,” he once said. Throughout the treatment, Boycott, who was awarded an Order of the British Empire in 1980, likened the stages to a match to help him cope, as he went for check-ups over the next four years with his consultant before getting the all-clear.
He added: “Sitting there waiting for the verdict is like waiting for the umpire to put up his finger or say ‘not out’. I was lucky she always said not out.”
