England legend's Twitter mishap

Sir Ian Botham has addressed the Twitter mishap which saw him trending worldwide for all the wrong reasons this week.

Writing for Mirror in the UK, Botham slammed the hacker he says posted an image of a naked man from his @BeefyBotham account, labelling the phantom menace “pathetic”.

“For those of you on Twitter who may have seen a distasteful photo from my account yesterday, let me assure you it was the result of someone hacking into it,” he wrote.

“I’ve played a few jokes in my time, but this was pathetic.”

Botham says he has enlisted the help of technical experts to see how he can avoid being hacked in the future, but after deleting the lewd image he changed his password.

“If some keyboard warrior has nothing better to do than post silly pictures, more fool them,” he added.

“The only impact it has had on me bizarrely is to give me more followers - strange.”

However, the lewd twitter pic is not the first time Botham has courted controversy with exposed genitals. 

There was no doubt to the ownership of the manhood in display during Botham's final first-class match, when Sir I an was playing for English county side Durham against the touring Australians during the 1993 Ashes series.

In a revealing interview with the UK's Guardian newspaper in the lead-up to receiving his knighthood, Botham recalled bowling the final over of the final day in his final first-class match, with David Boon on strike.

"Boony was struggling for his Test place and was deadly serious. But he just about fell over laughing and shouted, 'Beefy, you can't do this to me.' 

"I was midway though my run-up and he'd spotted that I'd unzipped my fly and hauled out the meat and two veg. 

"The old man was dangling in the wind as I steamed in. If I'd got it on target I would've bowled him. 

"I thought it was a nice way to go out." 

The story was later confirmed by Boon himself.

"I wouldn't say that I was struggling for my Test place," said Boon. "He's exaggerated that, but everything else is absolutely correct.

"As soon as he bowled the ball he started laughing, I was creasing myself. He did this big half-circle and ran straight off the ground.

"He mucked around all that over (imitating Jeff Thomson's action). Then the last one was the piece de resistance or whatever you want to call it. He's telling the absolute truth."

The legendary former England allrounder was the victim of an apparent internet hacker on Monday, with hundreds of thousands of people exposed to a lewd image of genitals posted via his Twitter account.

While we of course would not expose cricket.com.au readers to the photograph that was posted, the fact such a high profile person can have their privacy compromised should serve as a warning to others to regularly change their social media passwords.

After the image of a naked man was published via @BeefyBotham, the 58-year-old was alerted to it by former England Premier League footballer Robbie Savage.

Botham, who removed the image as soon as he could, then responded to Savage, saying; “yes mate just changed my password!!! There's some idiots out there!!”

But the security breach didn’t affect Botham’s sense of humour, as highlighted by a tweet he posted soon after thanks his hacker for attracting some new followers to his account.

And a story about Botham's recent tweeting wouldn't be complete without including his stitch up of fellow former England captain, Nasser Hussain

Ian Botham Flashback