Hignell awarded CBE in honours list
The 53-year-old who now lives and works in Stroud, Gloucestershire will be going to Buckingham Palace later this year to pick up the award.
He admitted he was "overwhelmed" by the award and hopes it will serve to boost his mission to raise awareness about multiple sclerosis.
"I received a letter about a month ago. I was amazed to get it, deeply honoured and overwhelmed.
"It's been extraordinary, absolutely fantastic to be so honoured.
"I've been so overwhelmed and gobsmacked by the reaction of people in sport and now this. It's been very humbling and absolutely wonderful to be recognised in this way, not just for the sport but also for the charity."
He is well-known to people in the West Country as the voice of rugby, having trained as a broadcast journalist with the likes of John Inverdale and Mark Saggers at the BBC in 1985.
But he is also one of only a few people to combine a career as a rugby player and a cricketer.
In rugby, he played at full-back and eventually scrum-half and played for Bristol Rugby until 1980.
Between 1974 and 1983, he regularly opened the batting for Gloucestershire CCC.
And in 1975 he made his debut for the England rugby team as full-back in a brutal encounter with Australia in Brisbane – eight days later he was playing for Gloucestershire against Middlesex at Bristol and five weeks later he made 60 in the Varsity match.
He went on to represent his country at rugby 14 times.
When he retired from professional cricket and rugby, Alastair plunged into a new career - teaching at both Bristol Cathedral School and Sherborne School.
It was a chance encounter with his former Gloucestershire captain Tony Brown which saw Alastair's life take on a whole new direction.
Alastair said: "I saw Tony at a game and he asked me if I wanted to come and sit next to him while he did some radio work for the BBC.
"I eventually was asked to be an expert summariser on some rugby games in the West Country and when a vacancy arrived on Radio 2 for a rugby summariser I applied and got the job.
"Then in 1985, the BBC took a chance on me and enrolled me into a broadcast course where I started out just as a dog's body in the sportsroom.
"I first started reporting on games and did my first live commentary in 1986.
"It was the France v Ireland Five Nations game at the Parc des Princes in Paris. I remember it as if it was yesterday because it was well-known for being a stadium which didn't have very good views and renowned for having technical difficulties as well.
"So I was thrust into my first live commentary with a scrum virtually on the try line that I was unable to see and with no sound coming through my headphones was unable to hear. Apart from that everything went well."
But Alastair's life was thrown into turmoil when in 1999, he was diagnosed with MS and since learning more about the condition he has typically thrown himself into raising money for the MS resource centre.
He is now patron of the national charity which has as its philosophy "Life is for living".
He said: "MS is an incurable and progressing disease and it can be daunting for those who are diagnosed with the condition. It can be very very scary indeed.
"The charity's raison d'etre is to promote the fact that it is not a life threatening illness but it can be a life ruining one if you do not take the positives out.
" We try to encourage people to keep working and keep being a valuable member of society and their family.
"We are absolutely passionate about that and that fits in very much with our philosophy.
"As a result a couple of years ago some friends of mine decided to run the London Marathon in aid of MS and became known as Higgies Heroes.
"Since then we have had 30-odd people running the Stroud Half Marathon in aid of the charity - including family, friends and acquaintances and that was a huge success.
"That struck a real chord with me and now we are asking anyone who wants to do anything like this to get in touch with us.
"We are trying to get 100 runners in the Stroud Half Marathon in October and we are calling it 'Help Higgie Hit Hundred' and anyone who wants to join us can do so by going to our website MSRC.co.uk"
Despite his illness, Alastair continued to commentate on rugby games and has been to three rugby World Cups, two Lions Tours and numerous England away matches.
As a real patriot it is not surprising to discover that Alastair's most memorable game was when England beat Australia in the 2003 rugby World Cup.
He said: "Everyone remembers Bill McLaren's commentary when Jonny Wilkinson kicked for glory to win the World Cup, but for me what was more memorable was what happened at th end.
"I had been despatched on my scooter from the commentary position down to the sidelines to get interviews after the final whistle.
"As you can imagine there were hundreds of reporters waiting to get their interviews and to get to the area where they were taking place I had the prospect of driving through a muddy patch of ground.
"I was thinking 'there's no way I'm going to have the embarrassment of getting the scooter stuck in that mud, so I got out and walked with the aid of my stick to get the interviews.
"The adrenalin was going around so fast I didn't realise that I was completely shattered - it was then that I realised that I hadn't interviewed Clive Woodward.
"The then England press manager realised this and dragged Clive back from the celebrations in the dressing room - complete with beer in his hand - to do an interview with me."
His final commentary for BBC Radio Five Live was the 2007-08 Guinness Premiership Final at Twickenham, where Wasps beat Leicester Tigers 26–16.
Retiring Wasps captain Lawrence Dallaglio dedicated the victory to Alastair.
In 2008, Alastair won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Helen Rollason Award for his work in spreading awareness of multiple sclerosis.
It seems that the Palace has now realised the importance of the work that Alastair and the Multiple Sclerosis resource centre is doing as well now.
* Read Alastair Hignell's column every Thursday in the Evening Post.
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