PM tells Test Match Special she’s a fan of Boycott, known for avoiding risks, creating deep divisions and clinging on to power

Theresa May has declared her admiration for the leadership style of Geoffrey Boycott, the famously obdurate former England cricketer who was eventually sacked from his county captaincy amid an acrimonious dressing room revolt.

The prime minister, a cricket fan, was the lunchtime guest on Friday on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Test Match Special, where she insisted that she was not robotic and gave the presenters a box of her homemade brownies to make the point in the break during the match between England and the West Indies.

But she became most animated in her analysis of Boycott, who she described enthusiastically, saying “he just stuck in there and got on with the job, that was the great thing”.

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Boycott recently apologised for saying that he would have to “black up” to get a knighthood and was convicted by a French court for beating his former lover Margaret Moore in 1998. He said in 2014 that taking on the captaincy “was the biggest mistake I ever made in my cricketing career”.

Boycott enjoyed huge success as a player, despite gaining a reputation for dull play that avoided unnecessary risks. He was chosen as captain of his county, Yorkshire, in 1970, and despite a rapidly growing sense that his approach had created deep divisions, he clung on to power.

Boycott, now an analyst on Test Match Special, was eventually deposed in 1978 after it became clear that dissent in the ranks was making it impossible for him to succeed. Having been wildly successful in the 60s, Yorkshire won nothing during Boycott’s time in charge. “Of course there were things I could have done better; I wasn’t a good man-manager,” he later said. “I took on senior players, so should not have been surprised when the whispering campaign against me began.”

During his brief time as England captain, he once scored so slowly that his deputy was said to have once dispatched another player, Ian Botham, to deliberately “run the bugger out”.

On Test Match Special, May was asked by the presenter Jonathan Agnew: “Didn’t he bore you to tears?” She replied: “The whole point was he stuck at it. He had a plan and he got on with it, and more often than not delivered.”

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After an initial chat about Hurricane Irma – which May called “absolutely devastating” – the prime minister said she had baked chocolate brownies herself at Downing Street.



Asked which recipe she used, May said: “As this is on the BBC I don’t know if I can reveal which cook I used,” before saying it was from Nigel Slater.



She said the brownies were “made with my own fair hands”, prompting Agnew to joke that she had “got her priorities right” in spending her time cooking for the TMS team rather than running the country.

“I’m a woman, I can multi-task and do them both at the same time,” she retorted.



“I have made brownies for TMS before, once when Geoffrey Boycott was invited. I brought some brownies up. I handed them to Geoffrey but I don’t know whether they ever made it into the TMS box.”

She added: “All I will say is that Geoffrey Boycott’s still got my Tupperware.”

May said she did not like being characterised as repetitive and impersonal in her delivery. “I get frustrated,” she said. “People use the term ‘robotic’ about me. I don’t think I’m in the least robotic.”