Grasse - Cricket legend Geoffrey Boycott emerged from a French court in the early hours of this morning after a 10-hour bid to quash his conviction for assaulting his former girlfriend.
Boycott, who is 58 today, is set to fly to Pakistan tonight to cover a Test series between that country and Australia as a newspaper columnist. He now faces a three-week wait until the judge passes judgement on yesterday's retrial.
The case follows Boycott's conviction in January this year, when he was given a three-month suspended prison sentence and fined £5,000 for assaulting Mrs Margaret Moore. Boycott was convicted in his absence, having sent a fax saying he could not attend the hearing because he was covering a cricket tournament in South Africa. Under French law, anyone convicted in abstentia has the right to a retrial.