Chief Sports Writer Martin Swain, who joined Ian Botham on one of his charity walks, pays tribute to a true great Englishman.

So Ian Botham, the man who first put rock and roll into cricket, becomes the latest rebel to receive the establishment’s ultimate seal of approval.

But this is a knighthood which will surely be royally received up and down the land.

As a cricketer, Ian Terence Botham smashed sixes, knocked over stumps and – it should not be forgotten – held breathtaking catches.

As a celebrity, he ticked all the essential boxes guaranteeing a career of sensational headlines – booze, birds and drugs.

But as a man, Ian Botham saved lives. And cut the great man to his core, and that will mean more than anything as he steps up to get this richly-deserved salute from the Queen.

It is not an exaggeration to say there are young people walking around our nation today who would be dead if it was not for Botham and if ever there was a legacy to stretch beyond sporting greatness then that surely is it.

Which is why when Botham visits Buckingham Palace later this year to pick up the knighthood conferred upon him in the Queen’s birthday honours, the cricket legend’s thoughts will not dwell too long on his inspirational, swashbuckling cricket.

His memory will be of the day he hobbled into a Taunton hospital in 1985 for an X-ray on a broken toe sustained in action for Somerset and departed with a heart melted by a ward full of children dying from leukaemia.

After that ‘Beefy’ was driven not to beat the Aussies – though he managed it a couple of times thereafter – but to raise money to help those youngsters and the Botham March, marathon walks designed to generate publicity and pounds, was born.

He covered thousands of miles on a personal crusade comprising 11 charity walks in all, most of them from Land’s End to John O’Groats, on which he has raised £10m to help battle the disease.

It remains one of the highlights of my career to have completed one alongside him, the Belfast-Dublin trek in April 1987 which provided a treasured insight into one of the very special performers who decorate our lives.

What I found did not surprise me. Botham was everything I expected – and that is just like the rest of us. Flawed, a little boorish when he has had one too many but essentially a big-hearted, warm, decent and generous man.

He was, of course, also dripping in charisma by then as became clear when the Irish villages and towns we passed through stopped to line their streets and garland him.

There is no Duckworth-Lewis method of working out the exact worth of all those miles pounded out – who can forget he even replicated Hannibal’s trek across the Alps – but in a sporting world which so often is portrayed as shallow and money-grabbing Botham’s actions speak for themselves.

How they contrast with the mad plane japes, the legendary drinking, the drugs admissions, the tour scandals and a hundred and one other examples of excess in a career in which he became English cricket’s greatest all-rounder as well as its most compelling personality.

To witness Botham taking the pavilion steps two at a time in the 1980s, twirling a small tree which was supposed to be a bat, on his way out to the middle, was an England cricket fan’s ultimate rush of anticipation

But Botham has never been a man to wallow in his legend. He respected the game, never cheated and went on to have some furious dust-ups with those he felt did, a Pakistan wicket-keeper famously coming extremely close to a clip around the ear in one Test.

That’s why his imposing manor house with its gravel driveway and wrought iron gates in a sleepy North Yorkshire village, appropriately no more than a long boundary throw from the village pub, is packed with pictures of family and friends and some of the legendary parties hosted there.

The stark omission is any obvious reminder of the moment which turned Botham from merely a barnstorming cricketer into a cross between Superman and Indiana Jones with a dash of Roy of the Rovers thrown in.

No meaningful sighting of perhaps the most celebrated English sporting moment of the last quarter of a century when, against all odds, Botham virtually single-handedly beat the Aussies at Headingley in 1981 with a batting performance – 50 and 149 not out – of Boys’ Own dimensions.

Nor is there a glimpse of him sprinting off the Edgbaston wicket one Test later twirling a stump above his head after his devastating bowling spell of 5-11 had routed the Aussies once more.

The stump is probably long rotten, it is certainly long forgotten because in Botham’s larger-than-life world mementos can go to Lahore, where he once jokingly said he’d like to send his mother-in-law.

What he cherishes more are the memories and friends formed by that momentous Test series.

It spawned the legend, one which has grown down the years in direct proportion to his numerous scrapes with police, cricketing authorities and long-suffering wife Kath.

Despite the lurid tabloid headlines and his contempt for the “gin-slinging dodderers” he claimed ran cricket, however, Botham’s greatest asset has always been his relationship with the public.

Swashbuckling performer. Lovable rogue. Forthright expert. They have always adored him for his candour and his swagger. And, of course, his concern for those less fortunate.

How fitting then that Sir Ian, the charity champion, now has the ultimate accolade.