New neighbours stumped by Boycott's arrival

Sir Geoffrey Boycott, whose gruff tones have come to symbolise Yorkshire as much as the white rose itself, is abandoning the county of his birth to go and live by the seaside in Dorset.

The former England batsman and now television commentator enjoys near- legendary status in the Ridings, where cricketing achievement is widely seen as the mark of a man's worth.

But among the retired gentlefolk of Poole, his reputation counts for less. Two of his prospective neighbours asked "Who is he?" when told yesterday of the Yorkshireman's pending arrival at his new harbourside abode. "To be perfectly honest, I don't expect people would know he was here," said another near neighbour. "You only occasionally see your neighbour, although to be truthful I don't expect I would recognise him if I saw him."

Sir Geoffrey, 57, grew up in the coal mining village of Fitzwilliam. During one of his many run-ins with the Yorkshire county cricket committee he once boasted: "I have lived in the Wakefield district all my life and I have no wish to live anywhere else."