England cricket great Sir Geoffrey Boycott is back in hospital with pneumonia after he underwent surgery on throat cancer earlier in the week.
Boycott, 83, announced earlier in the month that he had been diagnosed with the disease but was released from hospital on Friday following a three-hour operation to remove the cancer.
However, the former England batsman has had to return to hospital just two days later after his condition took a ‘turn for the worse’, his family have revealed in a short statement on social media.
‘Thank you all for the well wishes, we’ve been blown away by the sheer number of them!’ they said.
‘Unfortunately things have taken a turn for the worse and my Father has developed pneumonia and is unable to eat or drink so is back in hospital on oxygen and a feeding tube for the foreseeable.’
Boycott revealed earlier in the month that he would have to undergo treatment for a second time having already recovered from the disease back in 2002.
‘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 at the time.
‘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.’
The Yorkshiremen retired from England Test duty in 1982 after playing 108 matches for his country, racking up 8,114 runs and 22 centuries with the bat while boasting an average of 47.72.
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.
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