Geoff Boycott, stricken with cancer four months ago, is optimistic that the New Year will bring him some much better news.

The 62-year-old former Yorkshire and England batting maestro, who lives at Woolley, near Wakefield, has told friends that he will have tests in the next month or so to see if any further treatment is required.

After weeks of gruelling treatment, which caused him to lose two stones in weight, Boycott was cheered to learn that the secondary cancerous lumps in his neck had disappeared.

Although it is still too early for tests to tell about the primary cancer because the swollen tissue has still to settle down, Boycott says that as far as is known the treatment should have worked.

At the moment, he is going through a period of rest to allow his body to recuperate from the treatment and he hopes to build up his strength and weight once the pain subsides.

Boycott is fighting his illness with all the inner strength and determination which he exhibited as a player and in the New Year it will be exactly 20 years since he began his biggest battle with Yorkshire.

In August, 1983, he was reported to the committee by skipper Ray Illingworth for not scoring quickly enough while making an unbeaten 140 against Gloucestershire at Cheltenham and he was sacked at the end of the

season.

But his incensed supporters forced an extraordinary general meeting the following January and a motion of no confidence in the club was sensationally passed. It resulted in the general committee being overthrown and Boycott being re-instated as a player.