The comparisons have begun already. When Joe Sayers carried his bat against
Durham at Headingley in April to make 149 out of a Yorkshire total of 414 in
nine hours and 13 minutes, the references to Geoff Boycott in next day’s
reports felt as inevitable as one of the old master’s forward defensives.
Not that this will have displeased believers in the white rose: in a county
that regards Boycott as a deity, they are always alert to the possibility of
a second coming.
“It’s a compliment to be associated with him,” says the 23-year-old Sayers.
“But at the same time I’m Joe Sayers. Comparisons aren’t always as accurate
as we think they are. I’m looking to develop a game that is unique to me.”
He is certainly doing that. Two games after defying Durham - an innings which
the Yorkshire batting coach, Kevin Sharp, says his teammates “loved” - the
left-handed Sayers knuckled down for a further seven hours and 39 minutes to
make 123 against Worcestershire. And for those who say he bats too slowly,
the proof was in the Yorkshire pudding: both games were won, in Durham’s
case with a day to spare. If the likes of Younis Khan and Jacques Rudolph
put more bums on seats, Sayers was every bit as instrumental in putting
Yorkshire on top of the county championship after five matches.
“He’s the ultimate professional,” says Sharp, who has worked closely with
Sayers since returning to Yorkshire to join the coaching staff five years
ago. “He’s very conscientious, he knows what his role is and he’s very
gutsy. There aren’t many around like him in the modern game, people who can
bat for sessions at a time. It’s invaluable to have somebody who is so hard
to get out.”
To listen to Sayers’s account of his self-denial masterpiece against Durham is
to hear a player who is totally at ease with his game. “We were facing a
sharp attack of Steve Harmison, Graham Onions and Ottis Gibson,” he says.
“I’d come up against Shoaib Akhtar against Worcestershire, and he was
somewhere near Harmison’s pace, but he didn’t have his bounce. It was the
most hostile spell I’ve faced.
“Our plan was to take them into their third and fourth spells and then score
runs off the others. It was a long-winded way of taking them on, but it paid
off.” Harmison finished with figures of 37.3-9-87-6 and Yorkshire won by
nine wickets. Martyn Moxon, the county’s director of cricket, said the
battle between Harmison and Sayers was like a Test match.
In an age where international sides are disappointed if they score fewer than
300 runs in a day, not many young openers with England ambitions would be
prepared to graft for a living (Sayers’s career strike rate in first-class
cricket is 39.37). But it is a role that Yorkshire, replete with
middle-order stroke-makers, are encouraging. It is also a role his career
seems to have been preparing him for.
Born in Leeds and brought up in nearby Otley, Sayers learned his trade on what
he calls “typically slow northern wickets”, opening for Yorkshire schools
from the age of 12, playing league cricket for Guiseley and then moving to
the Yorkshire academy at 15. It was not long before he was skippering
England under19s. In the latest edition of Wisden he is touted as a possible
future captain of his county, a claim that might have been helped by an
innings he played against Middlesex at Scar-borough late last summer when he
became the first Yorkshire left-hander to carry his bat since Bryan Stott in
1959. His seven-hour knock of 122 out of a total of 326 was typical Sayers.
He also developed some backs-to-the-wall steel during his time as captain of
Oxford University, when the students desperately needed a bulwark against
the county bullies. Asked whether his degree in physics - he finished with a
2:1 at Worcester College - helps him assess the angles that are so crucial
to the lifespan of the left-handed opener, he jokingly concedes it can’t
have done him any harm.
His education did not stop there. During the winter, Sayers spent time in
South Africa with the London County Cricket Club and met up with Boycott,
who has a home in the republic and might just have spotted a kindred spirit.
“He pointed out that one of the most important things for a top-order
batsman, especially a left-hander, is an aware-ness of where your off stump
is,” says Sayers. “He spoke about getting the angles right and lining up the
bowlers, and about the importance of developing the ability to leave the
ball well and be patient. After a while, bowlers will start to drift on to
your pads. He sent me a letter in the spring and we’re in touch via email.
He’s showing a keen interest.”
Boycott’s patronage is just part of the impressive network of pastoral care
Sayers can call upon at Headingley. He singles out Steve Oldham, who works
with Yorkshire’s academy as well as with their fast bowlers, and says the
arrival at the club of Moxon, a technically accomplished opening batsmen in
his time, has helped too.
Then there’s Michael Vaughan, who has already spoken to Sayers about taking
his game to the next level. Vaughan himself was inspired several years ago
by Darren Lehmann, who encouraged him to look for more quick singles, and
Sayers admits it is a strategy he has “looked into in recent weeks”.
And while he is keen to add to a risk-averse repertoire of strokes, including
a leg-side nudge off the hip that encouraged the Surrey captain Mark Butcher
this week to compare Sayers with the former England opener John Edrich, he
is content to fit into the needs of the team and cement a regular place in
only his second full season of county cricket.
Sharp, though, is confident higher honours await. “Succeeding at Test level is
not just about playing cricket but handling other demands, from the crowds,
TV and the press,” he says. “Joe’s a very intelligent, balanced fellow, and
he’d have no difficulty dealing with it.
“He’s very mature and has a very good cricket brain as well as being an
academic. His efforts would be priceless in five-day cricket.” It sounds
like music to Boycott’s ears.
Yorkshire’s stonewallers
Geoff Boycott Few batsmen have based a long and successful Test career
around a forward defensive, but Boycott managed 8,114 runs in 108 matches.
His teammates did not always appreciate his efforts: Ian Botham deliberately
ran him out in Christchurch
Brian Bolus Represented Yorkshire in 107 fi rst-class matches between
1956 and 1962 before moving to Nottinghamshire, but established himself as a
percentage-playing blocker with distinctive yellow pads that seemed almost
as big as him
Edgar Oldroyd Described by one contemporary as ‘the best sticky-wicket
batsman in the world’, the Batley-born Oldroyd averaged 35 in 384 matches
between 1910 and 1931, but did it rather slowly. ‘Reliable and patient to
the point of being dour and dogged,’ explains the book of 100 Yorkshire
Greats
