England cricket great Sir Geoffrey Boycott says he has been diagnosed with throat cancer for a second time and is set to undergo surgery.
The 83-year-old was first diagnosed with cancer in 2002 and went into remission after being treated with a combination of chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
But Boycott, widely regarded as one of England’s finest opening batsmen in history, was informed last week that the cancer had returned following a series of scans.
The former Yorkshire captain will go under the knife in a bid to remove the cancer in a fortnight’s time.
‘In the last few weeks I have had an MRI Scan, CT Scan, a PET Scan and two biopsies and it has now been confirmed I have throat cancer and will require an operation,’ Boycott told The Telegraph.
‘From past experience I realise that to overcome cancer a second time I will need excellent medical treatment and quite a bit of luck and even if the operation is successful every cancer patient knows they have to live with the possibility of it returning.
‘So I will just get on with it and hope for the best.’
Boycott was given just three months to live after being diagnosed with cancer 22 years ago but returned to full health after undergoing 35 sessions of chemotherapy.
‘I can tell you that being given three months to live is a real show-stopper,’ he wrote in his 2015 book The Corridor of Certainty.
‘I will never know why I am still alive. The only thing I really do know for certain is I would not have survived without my wife Rachael being there for me.’
Later on in his autobiography, Boycott revealed how he went about his treatment in exactly the same manner as he approached his cricket during his playing days.
‘In one-day cricket I used to count my runs, how many an over we needed to win and whether we were above or below the asking rate,’ he added.
‘I went about it in exactly the same way when I had treatment.
‘I would count each and every one until we got to the halfway mark.’
Boycott retired from England Test duty in 1982 after playing 108 matches for his country, racking up 8,114 runs and 22 centuries while boasting an average of 47.72 with the bat.
The Yorkshireman is England’s seventh highest run scorer of all time, with only Alastair Cook, Joe Root, Graham Gooch, Alec Stewart, David Gower and Kevin Pietersen sitting above him on that list.
After bringing his international career to an end in 1982, Boycott was a part of the BBC Test Match Special team for 14 years and has since contributed regular columns for The Telegraph.
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