AND IT WAS THE YEAR THAT CHANGED OUR BEEFY’S LIFE

MIRROR SPORT’S Sir Ian Botham, playing in only his second Test, has his own recollections of the momentous game in which Geoffrey Boycott scored his 100th hundred. Beefy (below) says: “These days I can’t remember what I was doing yesterday, let alone 40 years ago, but I recall the players all being on the balcony of the old pavilion at Headingley when he brought up his hundred. “I would have liked to be down the other end when he reached three figures, but I started my England Test career batting down at No.8, until someone put the selectors straight that I was better than that. “I took five wickets when we skittled the Aussies in the first innings (103 all out in just 31 overs), but I finished the game with a broken metatarsal and went for scans when I got back to Somerset, and that day changed my life.” Botham was on his way to the X-ray department at Musgrove Park hospital in Taunton when he was led through a children’s ward. All the young patients had been diagnosed with leukaemia and their prospects of survival were slim. Stopping for a chat with four boys playing cards, he cheerfully said: “See you in a fortnight when I’m back for my next check-up.” None of the boys lived to see Botham’s next appointment. Stunned by the brutality of innocent children’s fate, Sir Loin of Beef – as one friend christened him when he was knighted in 2007 – resolved to do something about it. Some 12,000 miles on the road and £20million raised from his legendary charity walks for Leukaemia Research later, survival rates for blood cancers have gone up from one in five to 96 per cent.