End of the road for Pied Piper of charity walks ...
Botham’s last heroic effort sees grand total soar to £30m
IHAD to run to catch up with Sir Ian Botham. Most people do. If you stand still, the man is gone. And so, last Thursday evening, I weaved my way through some of the hundreds of people who had turned up to walk with him along the path that runs along the bank of the River Torrens in Adelaide until I saw Beefy’s distinctive frame up ahead.
He was forging on. Just like he always does. There is a relentlessness about Botham that has barely diminished since his glory days with bat and ball more than 30 years ago. He is 62 now and his knees are shot but he still looked like the Pied Piper, striding across a bridge over the river with a swathe of humanity trailing in his wake.
I wanted to be there because this was almost the last of the fund-raising walks that have come to define him as much as his great cricketing triumphs. They have taken him from John O’Groats to Land’s End, across the Alps and through Sri Lanka, until they brought him here under a stormy Australian sky to the banks of the Torrens.
Both am did one last walk in Sydney this morning and then that was it. After 18 often-epic journeys, which have raised more than £30 million for a range of charities but most especially l eukemia research, he has decided that it is time to put his trainers away, content in the knowledge that he has helped to transform the survival chances of children suffering from the disease.
It was in the summer of 1977 when Botham says his life changed. Already a Somerset and England player, he broke his foot and was sent to Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton for six weeks of treatment and rehabilitation. ‘One day I took a wrong turn on my way to physio and ended up in the children’s ward,’ he says.
‘Four small boys were playing cards so I had a chat with them. They looked pretty lively to me so, as I left, I said cheerfully: “See you in two weeks when I’m back for my assessment.” Little did I know that all of them would have passed away by then. A doctor took me aside and explained they all had leukemia.’
THE hospital had run out of money for funding the children’s parties t hey held, so Botham started paying for them himself. Then, in 1985, he walked the 874 miles from John O’Groats to Land’s End for Leukemia & Lymphoma Research and the response stunned him. Huge crowds thronged his route and he raised more than £1m.
And now, 32 years on, this walk to raise money for the fight against Type 1 Diabetes, the auto- immune disease that his daughter, Becky, suffers from, is his penultimate journey.
He strides on and, as we are walking past t he hulk of t he Adelaide Oval, where the Second Test between England and Australia began yesterday, I ask him whether he has gained more satisfaction from what he achieved with his walks or his feats in cricket. ‘The cricket and the walking go hand in glove,’ he says. ‘Without one, the other one wouldn’t have worked. Cricket was the springboard and that was how it progressed.
‘Without my achievements on the sports field, me walking from John O’Groats to Land’s End wouldn’t have meant anything. Both of them have brought me a lot of satisfaction.
‘I enjoyed that first walk the most. The first one will always be the best. It’s like an album, isn’t it? No one had ever done it before on that scale and no one anticipated the scale of the response we would get. In Bristol, there were 40,000 people on the streets. The last day was 26 miles to Land’s End and the crowds were six deep all the way. It was unbelievable. That was walking on air.
‘ The most recent one I did, in Sri Lanka a couple of years ago, was the hardest. The problem was that I factored in walking in 35 to 39 degree heat, I factored in humidity of 96 to 100 per cent but I forgot to factor in road heat. The road heat was 50 degrees, the longest day was 42km and I felt like I was being cooked.’ We turn now and walk back along the stretch of water known by its native name of Karrawirra Parri towards the finish line in Bonython Park. The walk is only 4km long but the pace is still fierce. I went on a t raining walk with Botham here a few years ago during an Adelaide Test and came back with blisters on my heels and toes. But he is making some concessions to age. On the last Ashes tour, I had dinner with him at Georges on Waymouth, his favourite restaurant in Adelaide. A meal with Beefy was always a privilege but it was also an exercise in fear. Trying to keep up with his wine consumption was about as easy as trying to keep up with him on a walk. It never ended well.
This time, at the end of the meal, he said his goodbyes and left to meet a car that was due to pick him up and take him to another engagement. The car was late so he strode back in to the restaurant, sat down and ordered another bottle of wine.
The next day, he was taken ill. It was a bit of a scare. It was a challenge to his invincibility. I mentioned it to him in Brisbane l ast week. ‘ I’m concentrating on quality not quantity these days,’ he says with a smile.
He says he is calling a halt to his walking exploits for a number of reasons. The pain in his knees is one thing. The increasing difficulties organising the walks because of the obstacles put in the way by the health and safety brigade, who Botham scorns, are another.
It is time for him to pass on the baton. ‘What kept us going is that, when we started these walks, kids with the most common form of leukemia had a less than 20 per cent chance of survival,’ he says. That’s now 94 per cent.
‘ Most of the walks were for leukemia and, because of their success, it allowed us to expand and create a foundation and raise money for other charities too. I’m very proud of what we’ve done.’
Up ahead in the middle distance, I glimpse a few people dressed as Star Wars paratroopers waiting to greet him at the end. Somebody wishes him luck for the last few hundred yards.
‘I’ve got a little bit of life left in me,’ Botham says to him. The strains of David Bowie’s voice drift over from the loud speakers at the finish. Let’s Dance, he’s singing.
We turn away from the river now and walk through an underpass and suddenly the finish line is a few hundred yards away. A couple of seven or eight-year-old lads, who have been doing the walk, dash up behind us with excitement in their eyes.
‘Are we nearly there?’ one of them says. Botham smiles again and looks at the kid. ‘You’re going to make it,’ he says.
Sri Lankan Airlines sponsored Sir Ian Botham’s walk in Adelaide and flew him to Australia on its new route from London to Melbourne, via Colombo.