THERE was a moment when Geoffrey Boycott had to contemplate his life beyond cricket.

Twelve years ago, the most recognisable voice of his sport was diagnosed with cancer of the tongue. The corridor of uncertainty, the phrase he had invented to describe a batsman’s predicament when facing a ball pitched on or just outside the line of his off stump, now applied to his own health.

Geoffrey recovered but, to quote the jacket of his latest book, he “emerged as a different man, with a new perspective on life”. You can hear it in his broadcast work for BBC radio’s Test Match Special and Channel 5’s highlights packages; you could see it in his two-year presidency of Yorkshire County Cricket Club. Above all, there has been his partnership on air and on stage with the BBC’s cricket correspondent, Jonathan Agnew. Agnew is the calm before the Boycott storm, as can be witnessed at York Barbican on Thursday in An Evening Of Boycott & Aggers.

In a game of questions and answers, Aggers sets them up, Geoffrey knocks them out of the ground. It reminds Geoffrey of their cricketing days. “Listen, he’s my favourite bowler. He used to aim for the middle of my bat and he was very successful at it,” says Geoffrey, chuckling at his own humour. “He loves it when I say that one.”

The autumn tour’s press release delights in quoting how Boycott and Aggers have been called “the Lennon and McCartney of cricket commentary”, a comparison that Geoffrey had not heard. You are the Lennon, I tell him. “Lennon?! I hope I don’t get shot like him...Expletive deleted hell. I know I have my enemies, but not that bad.”

Geoffrey doesn’t do subtlety, but he talks as straight as his bat used to come down. No double-speak, no political correctness and no-nonsense. I mention his new book, “The Corridor Of Uncertainty”. “The Corridor Of Certainty,” he corrects me, but not aggressively, as he might once have done. And certainty is the point. Certainty marks out everything he says.

We last spoke just before England headed to Australia last winter. Geoffrey was not alone in expecting England emerge victorious albeit in a tighter series, but then a hurricane called Mitchell Johnson with a Freddie Mercury moustache blew England away. “They were awful,” he says. “My wife is a better judge than me. She said they wouldn’t win.” And so the Boycott corridor of certainty now has room to admit when he was wrong; the self-righteousness assuaged.

In hindsight, suggests Geoffrey, the key factors were Graeme Swann’s elbow woes, combined with Jonathan Trott’s stress-related early exit. “Those two losses, more than the (Kevin) Pietersen factor, were crucial. They were the nuts and bolts; they held it together; once that came apart, and when (Alastair) Cook started failing, that was it.”

Let’s look to the future, Geoffrey. Yorkshire leg-spinner Adil Rashid was mistreated when first picked at 21 by the England selectors, I suggest, but could this be time to re-introduce him after his contribution to Yorkshire’s first County Championship triumph since 2001?

“I don’t think he was mistreated; I don’t think he was ready,” he says. “They’re starting to look at him again because, in the one-day game in particular, we have a very experienced off-spinner in James Tredwell, but if you have two bowlers turning the ball the same way, that’s never a good thing. You need variation, off-spin and leg-spin,which is always the policy at Yorkshire. With spin, if the ball is turning away from you, it’s harder to hit.”

When you hear Geoffrey express sadness that spinner Azeem Rafiq has left Yorkshire after a knee injury left him struggling with his confidence, you are struck by how Boycott has taken on a paternalistic air. “He was the best young cricketer I’ve seen in years to take captaincy so naturally. The last time I saw someone do that so early was Michael Vaughan. It’s a gift. He’s the best since then, and I just hope he’s not lost to the game.”

The stereotypical image of Boycott the batsman was of dour concentration, conservatism, caution, self-preservation and metronomic precision. Not Geoffrey the entertainer, which he has become behind the microphone. Would the younger Geoffrey have said: “It’s only playing cricket; for god’s sake, get it into perspective. There are young guys going to war in Afghanistan and getting blown up by grenades. Cricket should be pleasurable. It’s a game. All right, it’s an important game; it has an effect on our lives, but it’s not as if you’ve lost a leg in war.

“If you watch Shane Warne bowl; it’s magical how he teases people out. You watched Bishen Bedi bowl and it was a thing of beauty.”

This is the Geoffrey Boycott that has come with age and life’s experiences: “Losing is not a crime. It’s how you lose. That’s what went wrong for England in Australia. If we lose our bottle again, the public won’t wear it.”

An Evening With Boycott & Aggers, York Barbican, Thursday, 7.30pm. Box office: 0844 854 2757 or yorkbarbican.co.uk