CRICKET legend Geoffrey Boycott has launched a £1 million-plus claim against lawyers he says let him down on a Sandbanks property deal.

The former England batsman turned broadcaster forked out in 1996 for a home for his former partner, Anne Wyatt, in the Poole peninsula.

But when she died, aged 82, in 2009, her half of the house – bought for £450,000 but now thought to be worth £3m – went into her estate, rather than being automatically inherited by Mr Boycott.

He says that had his lawyers done their job properly 15 years ago, Mrs Wyatt would only have been able to stay in the house, in The Horseshoe, Sandbanks, for her lifetime and, on her death, it would have been his outright.

When the house was bought, it was put in both their names as “joint tenants” and Mr Boycott said it was “a huge surprise” to discover that, in 2007, she had converted that to a “tenancy in common” so that she could leave half the property to her heirs.

Referring to Mrs Wyatt as his “friend and confidante”, Mr Boycott said he had for years let her live in the house, free of rent, although they were no longer partners.

He said he was shocked when he learnt that she was within her rights to sever her interest in the property, and told the court: “I didn’t understand why she was doing it. I was running half way round the world doing my commentating and I just couldn’t understand it”.

Expressing confusion at the complexity of the legal issues, he added: “Us ordinary people are meant to get a fair deal from the law.

“How are ordinary people expected to understand when it’s double-Dutch like this?

“We have come to think English law is for decent, honourable people all over the world. Why does it not really mean what it says? Like this property: if one of us dies, it goes to the other.

“If it had just said, ‘either one of you can change this at any moment’, that would have been easy.”

Mr Justice Vos apologised for the ‘obscurity’ of the law in the field which dates back 300 years.

He told Mr Boycott: “It’s history. Life’s difficult sometimes and that’s why, unfortunately, you have had to come to court.”

Defence counsel, Hugh Evans said it was Mr Boycott’s case that the true terms of his agreement with Mrs Wyatt were not drawn up as they should have been at the time of the purchase.

Had that been done, he claims, the house would have been entirely his when she died.

“He says that’s what we didn’t do for him – negligently on his case – and that that’s something we could have done. The essence of his case is: ‘You didn’t get me what I wanted’.”

At the preliminary hearing, lawyers defending Mr Boycott’s suit – who deny any liability – argue that he has left it too late to sue them. The hearing of that issue is due to last two days and Mr Justice Vos is expected to reserve his decision until later.